I do holacracy - when hierarchy works

I experience that holacracy effectively disables, kills, slaughters, eliminates, eradicates, micromanagement.

Micromanagement usually happens, when people with authority are asked or they chose to take responsibility for the decisions of subordinates. This is never an uplifting story. It creates the image of one as a responsible, strong, capable, rescuer and the other as someone weak, incapable, who is not taking responsibility, and who needs to be saved.

Micromanagement is eliminated by the following things:

1. Distribution of authority - In holacracy power is distributed in a way that each role can and should do its job without unnecessary approvals.-

2. The integrity of roles and circles - Each role and circle is defined with a clear purpose. The role holder is firstly responsible to fulfill that purpose via her accountabilities. That makes a deeper commitment from the role holder reducing the chance of pushing responsibility away.

3. Defined domains - Since domains and accountabilities are defined for each role, any peer may express their tension if the work on your part is not done or not done according to what is the common understanding of your role's purpose within the circle. If the role of your peer is blocked, he can ask wether your role needs help, he may take individual actions and if the case is severe he may propose that certain accountabilities of your role are to be taken to make the work more even and fluent.

4. Healthy hierarchy - Or in other words, natural hierarchy. As no cellular structure is interested in molecular issues by its nature, no super circle is dealing with the issues of roles in the sub-circle. By its nature a governance meeting (derived from the constitution) is simply dealing with locally felt tensions that affect the present operation. In any super-circles the rep links and lead links present their tensions as speakers of the sub-circle, never as one role within that.

Where micromanagement may happen is the cooperation of a role and the lead link role within the same circle. But I experience that those partners who hold clarified roles, understand their purposes and hold themselves accountable are not the ones (or they are very hard) to micromanage. Also the lead link role is not a typical managerial role. It is just another role serving the circles purpose that can be criticized, helped, and further clarified.

Welcome to the world of pain felt, responsibility taken, decisions made and work done where and when it should be!