I do holacracy - after the third year..

Three years ago with two owners of Doctusoft, István and Tamás, we were heading to Vienna lo learn about holacracy from Brian Robertson at a teaser workshop. After three years I just booked my ticket to the holacracy practitioner Forum to be held in Vienna by dwarfs and Giants. I am about to share our story and learn from others.

So many things happened. A major thing was that Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics gained more recognition via Frederic Laloux's famous book Reinventing Organizations. With likeminded friends we founded a learning circle in Budapest to help each other towards both Teal practices and holacracy.  

Fun fact: we named our learning circle Circle43 which is the holon incorporating 42 - a relevant info on Towel Day. Today we provide help and knowledge for other entities and individuals, not just each other. Come to one of our meetups if you are in Budapest!

Meanwhile in Doctusoft Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics helped us to understand why holacracy works and why it is hard to practice. We incrementally learned more and more about the nature of purpose, responsibility accountability, domains, proactivity, empowerment and how these can be integrated in a closed system.

But the most interesting episodes of the story are always those that are not told. The ones in the personal and in the organizational shadow. Classic consulting has no tools where Teal starts and holacracy starts to work seamlessly. The tool and the tool using consultant need to act as one and be continuous. So for the sake of the change – I quote Ghandi here - be the change you want to see in the world. I share these stories personally, like at the Integral European Conference.  

During these three years I failed and we failed several times to practice holacracy properly, and we kind of dropped it. Every time we let it go after these failures, some elements of it crept back under the door and became part of our practice which made us to try it again. Also in every iteration the power shifted a bit more towards those who had less in the beginning.

My key learning of these years is that organizational change has a natural pace. This pace mostly depends on the adaptive capacity of the power holders and the change agent and of course the environment. Holacracy is not just a good system for mature companies already having a culture of self-management. It is also a good measuring tool. It measures the maturity of the culture we have. Are we mature to self-manage and shift power? Are we mature to define our purpose and go for it? Are we mature to be sincere, mindful people and build a culture for wholeness? 

I will be kind of proud in Vienna when I share the Doctusoft story with other practitioners. First of all three years is a long time. Secondly, standing up after each failure proves that we had commitment and character. But most of all, we grew while we walked on paths that very few might walked on before us in Hungary. And that really kicks ass.

I do holacracy - 2014 retro

I let myself to enjoy the online Holacracy Practitioner Certification Assessment during the Christmas Holidays. I was excited in a positive way to take this test. My first try in the beginning of December resulted in 69%. I did not prepare since I wanted to have a clear picture about my level. After waiting two weeks and learning from my mistakes I finished the test with 97%. This was a perfect way to close my 2014 holacracy efforts.

This blog is only one part of my holacracy journey. I started it because I desperately needed something like this. To be accurate, I wished for some other guy's report on holacracy. I wanted to learn, to try, to do holacracy following someone else's real life guidance. I believed and still believe that holacracy is something that will slowly bring a paradigm shift in organizational cooperation. So I chose to become the other guy and started reporting to you.

First I had no clue where to start. The few holacracy stories, rare case studies lacked in depth information to start building on. My employers were not fully convinced and both of us had higher priorities to spend our money on than to finance a holacracy training. So we chose an introductory event in Vienna held by Brian Robertson. That was the starting point.

We are currently experimenting in two organizations. Doctusoft has grown from 25 to 40 employees during this year. One third of the company runs on holacracy in a more or less orderly way. The rest of the company is mixed: partly agile, partly self governing, partly waterfall project management. We did not sign the constitution but the CEO, István is holding the space for us. Great guy! Respect for that! Also respect to my collagues who undertook the pain of facing themselves in governance and tactical meetings. I received and learnt a lot from them! Thank you guys!

The other organization was founded in 2013 September. With some friends and colleagues in Budapest we started a group to share best practices in the field of organizational and personal development and leadership. It is not surprising that the group - called Circle43 - now runs on holacracy as well. First it was just a practice to talk about, but soon it became the operating system. First I held the role of the Facilitator in the anchor circle, currently I serve as Lead Link. My colleagues supported me a lot and we grew together personally and as a group as well. Thanks Fellows!

I read several books this year but two of them helped me significantly to put holacracy in a more understandable context. Getting to know Ken Wilber's Integral Theory, the concept and the nature of holon and holarchy enlightened several aspects of holacracy. Also Frederic Laloux's Reinventing Organizations was a revelation for me. He drew a roadmap for every organizational developer, and also drew a detailed picture of the major paradigm shift we live in today. Great books! Great authors!

Several communities provided me valuable inspiration and feedback such as the Holacracy groups on facebook and Linkedin. I have also found help and inspiration in John Kellden's Conversation g+ community and George Pór's Mindful Together facebook group.

I want to express special thanks to Bence Ganti who helped me to overcome hardships in my role as a change agent. Also to Mieke Byerley who is my New Zealander conversation partner with whom we had deep discussions on several not so obvious issues of holacracy. 

In 2013 q3 I believed that I deploy holacracy alone in 6 months. By the end of 2013 I had learnt that it might take the whole of 2014 with the help of some colleagues. Now I see that we made a tremendous job by continuously transforming our culture while growing the company and delivering the projects. I don not set deadlines anymore because I only focus on the next horizon. I have a transformation program in my mind and some fantastic friends and colleagues to collaborate with. I believe there is a lean way to build up transformational capacities for the organization, so the transformational leaps may need less effort and pain even if it is necessary.

Finally I would like to thank the Partners of HolacracyOne for being stewards of this elegant and powerful organizational concept. Guys, thank You for providing all the materials and resources for free, for taking the time and answering my questions and now for the new online practitioner assessment.

The show will go on! :)