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 - an inside out structure

There are discussions about the structure of Holacracy being hierarchic, but still showing charachteristics of a flat culture. How can that be? I have found holacracy building the structure three different ways.

Firstly it is top down, since its initial structure is derived from the anchor circle and its purpose. Also from an initial proposal. As the differentiation in the first circle cascades down to the final roles, the first iteration of the hierarchy appears.

Secondly, the hierarchy is bottom up. Each and every tension felt holds the potential to affect the organizational structure. One proposal may go on smoothly without objection, another may be escalated (via the rep link) to result in a new role or circle on a higher level. It may even alter the company purpose.

The third direction is inside out. Defining the purpose is creating a higher consciousness in a circle to reach deep down for our shared values, passions, principles and anything that drives us. The purposes of circles higher in the hierarchy may be more abstract, while granular roles may have very specific purposes. Anyway, to have clarity the conscious work on defining the alignment of purposes needs to be done.


The clarity in the aligned purposes of roles and circles has an impact on the overall consciousness of the role-holding partners. Personal energies are freely flowing and filling the roles since the tensions and obstacles are constantly removed. This energy fine-tunes the structure by adjusting the roles to the personal element.

Holacracy is neither flat nor bottom up. These terms are not useful to describe it. Holarchy works differently in different phases of the organisation. Did you experience it?

I do holacracy - how we changed

This post summarizes my experiences based on six months exploring holacracy in Doctusoft. If you are interested in details you may find more about our story here.

Holacracy changes us. It is a tool we use, but we adopt to it. The tool brings clarity, accountability, but after a while it is us who bring clarity and accountability to life and sustain it via holacracy. I experience a slow but major transformation of me and my colleagues in several aspects. Be prepared to read nice stuff :)

They wish to be part of it.

We have applied holacracy to only one part of the company yet. Since we are a software developer group practicing agile management methods, the project groups were managed quite well. We chose holacracy for the supporting functions like HR, finances, sales. Now these circles are a little bit envied by the developers. They hear about effective meetings, clarity and wish to be part of it.

Personal consciousness in the way we handle issues.

Colleagues started to come up with tensions and suggestions out of the governance meetings. In cases it is not clear in which role did they feel the tension. Lots of roles are not clarified yet. Since undefined roles have no clear purpose it is hard to tell whether the proposal moves the circle forward or backward, but sometimes there is a gut level knowledge about its rightness.

Clearer messages, more attention in communication.

Processing tensions have multiple learnings for each participating partner. I simplified these learnings to focus on the partners' feelings

- I can have my tensions resolved the way I think it is best for me. Perhaps if it does not hurt anybody else. 

- I am not allowed to oppose without reason. I have to face my irrational self if I intend to.

- I see others change after their tensions are resolved. It makes the subjective change of others an almost tangible experience for me.

- I see how "expensive" is fighting and how pointless it is. We have to reengage in governance tension resolution again anyway.

- It happens a lot that I have contextual suggestions or objections that are brought up by another partner before I have time to speak. Firstly my ego wants to be heard, later I start to enjoy that I can save my voice and can trust others to work out the objection we both feel necessary.

- I see that meetings can be effective and informative, less time consuming and less frequent if we start with the tensions and process them.

These learnings provide positive assuring feelings and "aha" experiences that lead to personal confidence, emotional balance, and predictability in the group dynamics.

Real proactivity and responsibility

Circles and roles are clear. So as the constitution. It means that everything I do have clear boundaries and connecting points. The way I work has more autonomy than any empowerment gave me previously, since I am almost self-managing. I fill a role with a clear purpose. If I have any problem or roadblock that is a tension to process that is to be triggered solely by me. If I have no roadblocks the work is to be done solely by me.

Letting things go - transcending the ego

After the most of the evil blocking tensions are resolved people start to get their things done. They have less and less time to focus on positions, pesonal gains, fear, games, and assumptions. Meanwhile they discover that self-managing or at least autonomous work is much more fulfilling than playing daily games for maintaining position, security, whatever. So they step back from the previous conflict zones since those are not beneficial or necessary after all.

All of us experience this which leads to less "threat" and more personal focus. The results are plenty. Just to mention some:

- Success - as etymology says: an advance, a happy outcome

- Reaffirming results

- Responsability taken, being accountable is building character

- Reflection on personal work methods

- Reflection on personal feelings, worldviews

- Assertivity

I experience that holacracy enhances personal growth.

Do you categorize these learning s differently? Have you got anything to add?