Holons and Holacracy

Building a sustainable moneyless world

Holons : circles within circles

Introduction

The idea of building a sustainable moneyless future based on holons [koe] has been at the core of EOS’ ideology [design] for the last 20 years (as of writing). It’s odd then that I hadn’t come across “Holacracy” by Brian J. Robertson [hol] until last year and it took until the start of this year for me to read the book. There’s a lot in the book that overlaps with EOS and there is a lot more in the book beyond that. So, I thought I would do an article that both reviews the book and looks at how it fits in with EOS’ ideas for the future.

A quick overview of “Holacracy” by Brian J. Robertson

The book advertises it self as “The revolutionary management system that abolishes hierarchy”, which, I would say, is partly true. Holacracy is revolutionary but we still have hierarchy (at least for now). The system presented in the book is aimed at business management and is a holonic based decentralised and adaptive structure that focuses on governance and processes but not people (and the book emphasises that point multiple times). It is a system where power and authority is distributed to those people who do the work, as the book says “the person on the front line has the authority”. In contrast to the top down way most companies are run. The introduction explains holons and holacracy as circles within circles. In holacracy, a “circle” is a holon.

After introducing holacracy, the book then goes on to talk about governance. Governance is about dealing with the way the holacracy is organised. The book outlines how that works within holacracy and the meeting structure that it uses. The way meetings are structured allows everyone to contribute and help to clearly define roles, authority, and expectations. Note “roles”. In holacracy, roles come with authority and responsibilities. People are then assigned roles. Role information and who has what role is well documented so everyone knows who has what responsibilities and authority within a holon / circle.

Operations are what the company does. They are handled in tactical meetings. And like governance, like governance meetings, give everyone the opportunity to contribute. The book gives examples of how these meetings operate.

One thing I found interesting is the idea of “tension”. In holacracy, a “tension” is either an opportunity or a problem and they are both handled the same way. They are the “gap between how things are and how they could be”, as the book says. People see an opportunity or a problem and they can propose a course of action to resolve the problem or exploit the opportunity. And it is through this process of resolving tensions in the governance and tactical meetings that the organisation adapts and evolves. The dynamic nature of a holacracy is one of its strengths. Decision making is distributed and close to where the action is needed making for quick and well focused decisions. As the book says “[e]ach tension human beings sense is a sign-post telling us how the organization could evolve to better express its purpose”. All this is wrapped up in the constitution, a document that lays out how the holacracy works.

The last part of the book deals with installing a holacracy. As a holacracy is a revolutionary way to organise it can have a steep learning curve and there can be opposition for more conservative minds and from those who don’t want to distribute their power and authority. The book discusses these types of problems.

Here are a few quotes from the book :

“Holacracy moves from structuring the people to structuring the organization’s roles and functions”.

“Evolution is an algorithm; it is an all-purpose formula for innovation”.

“… the focus is always on quickly reaching a workable decision …”

“… an organization’s design is an emergent result of an evolutionary algorithm …”

“… govern the organization’s work and its roles not the people.”

Holacracy and EOS’ Approch

In EOS, a holon is based around a task. Multi-skilled teams are then formed to achieve the given task. The team organises itself and it own work. Anyone can form a holon if they see a task that needs to be done so long as that holon works towards the common goal. This is how the technical side of a technate is managed. Holons within holons within holons all focusing on building a sustainable moneyless society. Holons are also the foundation of building the people side of the technate. This type of holonic structure is very dynamic, holons are formed as and when they are needed and disbanded when the task has been accomplished. Like holacracy, EOS’s system of holons distributes authority, power, and responsibilities throughout the system so that people who know what they are doing make the decisions. However, EOS’s system does differ from holacracy in one major aspect. In holacracy we have more a formal structure with meetings, definitions of rolls, and responsibilities.

Conclusion

I think the more formal structure of holacracy does have its advantages. Structure gives clarity. One of the difficulties with holons is that it is not a familiar form of governance. Thus, people can have trouble understanding it and how it works. Having a more formal structure could help with that. Something that EOS should try?

References

[koe] http://www.panarchy.org/koestler/holon.1969.html

[design] https://eosprojects.com/Design.pdf

[hol] https://www.holacracy.org/