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Holacracy
Company blog · holacracy.org/blog · on HN as nomade0businessproductivity
Holacracy is the company blog at holacracy.org, writing about business and productivity. Since 2013, 25 different Hacker News readers have linked it 36 times, most often “Holacracy – purposeful organization through social technology”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
No feed foundVisit the blog
36mentions?
25HN people?
2013–2026first – last linked?
Too few sampled comments (23) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link holacracy.org's constitution and how-it-works pages as the reference for Holacracy, the self-management system Zappos adopted, when discussing manager-less or flat organisations.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 23 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Break free from rigid hierarchies. Holacracy empowers teams with a self-organizing system designed for clarity, adaptability, and real decision-making power.
Most-linked posts?
- Holacracy – purposeful organization through social technology6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2013-08-06
- /constitution4 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2013-08-06
- Holacracy3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-03-03
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-07-14
- Evan Williams on Building a Mindful Company2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-06-04
- /how-it-works/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-01-04
What Hacker News says?
Previous discussion about their move to Holacracy [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9431090 [1] http://holacracy.org/how-it-works Has anybody operated under Holacracy and speak to it?
Comment linking /how-it-works
on “210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum”Submitted Holacracy – purposeful organization through social technology as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSelf-organization at scale: Teal / Holacracy / Sociocracy. In the case of holacracy: Imagine a world where your company, its rules and all its employees including the bosses are bound by a constitution [0]. Or have a look at Coplien's Scrum patterns [1] patterns that do involve "planning", and that are also supplemented by his decade old organizational pattern work outside of just Scrum. [0] https://www.holacracy.or…
Comment linking /constitution/5
on “The SAFe Delusion”Submitted Evan Williams on Building a Mindful Company as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAs a candidate you might have better luck with companies that embrace Holacracy [0]. On the recruiting side, I have a hunch that the best way to get more Product Engineers is to have the Product Engineers in your org conduct interviews in addition to the pure technical ones. A requirement for this is that the Product Engineer's title is made explicit, otherwise "wtf, why is this person always doing the interviewing.…
Comment linking /how-it-works/
on “The Product Engineer”Submitted Evan Williams on Building a Mindful Company as a story · 2 points
HN discussionNo, the processes themselves are not explained in this video. This other one explains "tactical meetings": http://youtu.be/8NrsVBATZCM That said if you want the technicalities of the process, you'll find everything in the constitution (not as entertaining, but more accurate): http://holacracy.org/constitution
Comment linking /constitution
on “How Medium is building a new kind of company with no managers ”Submitted Holacracy - Social technology for purposeful organization as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI have to say I agree with your point 1) in general. But not with 2). Holacracy is not just a set of vague principles that you swear to apply as best as you can, or some bolt-on process to add to your box. It's a completely different way of governing a company, a different power structure, and its rules are specific and spelled out: http://holacracy.org/constitution Whether it works or not is another question, but a…
Comment linking /constitution
on “How Medium is building a new kind of company with no managers ”Submitted Holacracy as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIn my experience, there are less non-profits formally working with Holacracy mostly because they can't afford hiring the consultants to help them adopt it. And it's not easy to adopt on your own - it goes against a lot of oft-entrenched habits. That said I know that many have tried, though I don't know how it's going because I'm not even indirectly involved. Interestingly, the distinction between for- and non-profit…
Comment linking /blog/for-profit-non-profit-for-purpose
on “How Medium is building a new kind of company with no managers ”Well, technically, I'll grant you that it's impossible to rule out. IMO it's highly unlikely that someone came up with these rules: http://holacracy.org/constitution , but I'm not going to argue that, the novelty is not my main point. I'm interested in whether it's working. From what I've seen, it is. Perfect? Of course not. The be all and end all of running a business? No, you still need to do work. But it's a much…
Comment linking /constitution
on “How Medium is building a new kind of company with no managers ”But if you're pretentious about it, you can sell certification and licensing. http://holacracy.org/
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on “How Medium is building a new kind of company with no managers ”You're assuming this is a consensus or self directed free for all style flat approach. It's not: http://holacracy.org/constitution . There is structure, and there are explicit rules for how that structure is modified. There are rules that require decision making to be documented rather than held in your brain. Accountability is explicit. The entire system is designed to be scalable by a process that allows individua…
Comment linking /constitution
on “How Medium is building a new kind of company with no managers ”If you want to hear more about Holacracy, there is a webinar this afternoon at 1:30 PST: http://holacracy.org/events/intro-to-holacracy-free-webinar-... - Disclaimer: I work with HolacracyOne, the company behind the model. I'd love to address several comments I see on this thread (and will later), but I'd recommend the webinar for anyone genuinely interested in a comprehensive understanding. It's hard to discuss a '…
Comment linking /events/intro-to-holacracy-free-webinar-19
on “How Medium is building a new kind of company with no managers ”Have a look at Holacracy for interesting ways in how to structure teams and at the same time gearing up for continuous change. It's a very different approach than creating hierarchy, but it's not completely flat either. http://www.holacracy.org/ and http://www.responsive.org/ for more interesting philosophies surrounding movements like Holacracy. (We have a team of 10 people and are thinking about adopting Holacracy…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: How do you manage and structure a team?”My understanding of "guilds" is the notion of people coalescing around projects based on needs and interest vs a top down hierarchy. Like Valve vs Amazon, etc. At a prior employer (~1000 person company) we used the word "guild" for a cross organizational team that are tackling a short term, low-medium value problem - with the notion you go back to your existing team when you're done. Or you handle 2x load while the…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Guild/Studio structure for Software Engineers?”The Zappos Holacracy documents I read were nuts. Bad, batshit crazy. "Tensions" and "next-actions" and "accountabilities" and Policies and Domains and . . . the Holacracy Constitution reads like they were going for flat, but freaked out and decided to obfuscate a power structure after all. The Glassfrog documents are the hesitation marks of ditching a hierarchy. It's like they want people to execute a script rather…
Comment linking /constitution
on “The Zappos Exodus Continues After a Radical Management Experiment”Reading the Holacracy page on "processing tensions" [0] feels like document written by Dogbert. Poe's law resonates so strongly here that had I not known that this was for real (since there's a book, and Zappo's is doing it), I would have thought it was satirical. I feel like I need to read it three times, and still it feels like mumbo-jumbo. 0: http://holacracy.org/blog/processing-tensions
Comment linking /blog/processing-tensions
on “Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave”It's not tomato tomato. "Lead Link" is a specificly defined term from a management process theory called holacracy (as mentioned in the original article). You can read the details of holacracy here: http://holacracy.org/constitution There are signifigant differences between what a lead link does and a traditional manager. They act more as a spokesperson for the accountabilities and priorities delegated to them by a…
Comment linking /constitution
on “Zappos says goodbye to bosses”I work with HolacracyOne, the company behind Holacracy. It's not as simple as Lead Link = Manager. You can find more in this video if you're interested in the difference: http://holacracy.org/resources/the-lead-link-role-in-holacra...
Comment linking /resources/the-lead-link-role-in-holacracy
on “Zappos says goodbye to bosses”For more information about this particular management style, see: http://holacracy.org/ It's linked from the article, but it deserves to be more prominently noted.
Comment linking /
on “Zappos says goodbye to bosses”Catherine, you are confusing "Holacracy" for a generic term that means "flat organizations" and "lack of structure". Holacracy® is a specific system with clear rules (available here: http://holacracy.org/constitution ), and is far more structured than what you describe in your article. See for example the structure of my organization running with Holacracy: https://glassfrog.holacracy.org/organizations/5 It's mistak…
Comment linking /constitution
on “Holacracy is Bullshit”But that's not what Holacracy pushes for. The organization is supposed to have people with power to decide certain stuff and be accountable for it. It's just not supposed to have a single hierarchy that ends in the CEO and which concentrates all power, but a bunch of "circles" that have role-specific powers. http://holacracy.org/constitution It seems that everyone is blaming the process without following it. Not tha…
Comment linking /constitution
on “Holacracy is Bullshit”But isn't that why the people behind the Holacracy concept have a whole structure (with pretty pictures!) that is supposed to replace the managerial layer? http://holacracy.org/how-it-works I have no idea if holacracy is bullshit or not (it does feel like a concept invented to sell training classes), but claiming it replaces managers with nothing is plainly false.
Comment linking /how-it-works
on “Holacracy is Bullshit”Many people could be in charge of synthesis, come up with their own ideas, and use Holacracy to get them tested http://www.holacracy.org/how-it-works/
Comment linking /how-it-works/
on “A Few Billionaires Are Turning Medical Philanthropy on Its Head”Seems to me they are structured in a holacracy[1] distribution. [1] http://www.holacracy.org/
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on “The Disney Recipe (2013)”Holacracy actually has way more structure than a hierarchy. Just look at the constitution ( http://www.holacracy.org/constitution ), or read about the rigid way they conduct meetings.
Comment linking /constitution
on “Are Bosses Necessary? A radical experiment at Zappos”Valve is run more like a FOSS project with no official hierarchy. Holocracy is about refactoring the traditional org chart into a more task-based model. Brian Robertson, one of the guys who started the concept, explains the differences here: http://holacracy.org/blog/whats-wrong-with-your-organization...
Comment linking /blog/whats-wrong-with-your-organizational-structure
on “Zappos gets rid of all managers”Positive spins: http://holacracy.org/ http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-what-d... http://www.elezea.com/2012/06/user-centered-organizations/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8955706 Negative spin: http://www.wired.com/2014/03/tyranny-flatness/
Comment linking /
on “How Elementary School Teachers Biases Can Discourage Girls from Math and Science”
