About measuring holacracy 2.

Last time I wrote about the need. In this post I would like to establish a common ground for those who are interested in measuring holacracy by trying to answer the core questions below. Without these we can not really go on.

1. What is holacracy?
2. What nature of holacracy do we want to measure?
3. What are our paradigms?

I believe it is important to try to answer these questions precisely. Let me picture why.

Imagine a red Ferrari viewed by a single young adult guy. From his point of view the Ferrari is a luxurious sport car. He finds the driving experience its core nature. Without measuring it we already know that the driving experience of the Ferrari is outstanding.

What can compete with a cool Ferrari in respect of a driving experience.

Now imagine the Ferrari from the point of view of a young little girl in her pink-and-pony years. Looking at the Ferrari she sees a flat red car and finds its color the core nature. For her a pink horse carrier has a greater esthetic value.

When its about color some may find pink cars more attractive than red cars.

I dare to state that holacracy is not widely understood. Just read its critiques. To measure it a common understanding needs to be established at least between those who collect and those share data about it. Why? Because to measure you need the data (or responses) out of the people who experience holacracy from the inside. We need to speak a common language.

So let us define: What is holacracy?

To start with I collected all available data from HolacracyOne. Great thanks for that! These information gave me a strong start. But I still felt a gap. Because of my paradigm I missed some aspects.

But what is my paradigm? And how does that affect my thinking? How could I say that mine is right? How could I see through it and adjust the definition to the measuring purpose? Even the step of adjusting can be self-justifying in cases. 

To answer this I used three clarifying questions that let me be experiential, reflective and iterative.
- What are the best possible descriptions I can give to holacracy?
- Through what lenses, worldviews or paradigms do I make these descriptions?
- Integrating and iterating on the answers for the above questions can I improve the present descriptive definition?

What is my paradigm?

I made my last (until now) definition of holacracy by the help of the AQAL framework (by Ken Wilber) and the organizational worldview system of Frederic Laloux that is also based on the Integral Theory and spiral dynamics.

The AQAL framework. Using the quadrants help to change the point of view while observing anything. 

To serve measurability I separated my descriptive definition to four parts. These parts describe holacracy as follows.

Subjectively: Holacracy as I personally experience it while I work in a holacratic organization.	Objectively: Holacracy viewed as a thing objectively from the outside.
Intersubjectively: Holacracy as our shared experience, while we work and live in a holacratic organization.	Interobjectively: Holacracy viewed as part of a larger social and economic system

Thanks for your patience!

The descriptive definitions of holacracy...

to further iterate on. To use them for measuring purposes. To debate about...

Subjectively: Holacracy is a cooperation practice that helps practitioners to build their capacities in consciousness about organizational, role and personal purpose, mainly by surfacing tensions.	Objectively: Holacracy is a comprehensive practice for structuring, governing and running an organization by creating clarity, empowering practitioners on a system level and distributing decision making to relevant roles.
Intersubjectively: Holacracy is a cooperation practice that provides us a shared experience of the organization's purpose, a shared understanding of our values and principles.	Interobjectively: Holacracy is an agile (evolutionary) social technology for purposeful organizations. It is described as a closed system, renewed periodically by versions and written in legal language

Next question please! :)

What core nature of holacracy do we want to measure?

I used the same framework, the AQAL quadrants. I had my hard time to choose one for each quadrant but I will go into details only later. 

Subjectively: Consciousness. Holacratic operation forces the participants to face their reactions, emotions and their ego every day. This consciousness focuses directly on the accountability of work, the domains a circle or a role has and the authority and lead functions distributed to steward a purpose. This consciousness indirectly may unveil parts of the individual's purpose.	Objectively: Efficiency Efficiency in decision-making, in holding meetings, in working a self-managing way, in aligning circle and role purposes, and gathering information via transparency.
Intersubjectively: Shared mindfulness Shared mindfulness as an ongoing engaged shared presence, work and communication of conscious individuals. Shared mindfulness about our current reality, our story and our everyday life.	Interobjectively: Competitiveness. Competitiveness by adoption to the market via the purpose, connecting to the customers in distributed authority, having the constitution culturally embedded in legal context, having Holacracy One as a steward constantly updating the system.

Conclusion for now

When measuring holacracy some may see its purposefulness, some may see its efficiency the more important aspect. Some of us may feel it important to observe its cultural aspects. I encourage us to look at it integrally through all the quadrants.

Please feel free to comment and criticize! It needs to be tested. I would appreciate any suggestions, insights regarding the scale and method of measurnig! I would also be grateful for any specific questions you would use for measuring purposes! If you are interested, please think about and indicate your intent about participating in a measuring survey!

I plan to continue this post by working on the measuring method of the specific quadrants.

I would like to thank the inspiration of this work for the HolacracyOne team, the Doctusoft team, the Circle43 team and to members of the Holacracy Linkedin Group, especially Mieke and Michael. Thank You All!

About measuring Holacracy 1.

I suppose holacracy is usually sold by great stories, testimonials and reasoning around key values. I have bought the idea about a year ago in a taster workshop, but I was unable to resell it the same way.

For a long time I thought I was missing a piece. Luckily I was patient enough to let time work for me and by now it turned out that mostly others missed pieces. Also today there are some fellows who have actually found their pieces. But that is far from enough.

Missing a piece may mean missing a whole different prespective.

During getting to know holacracy I have learnt that human consciousness has typical stages. On top of that it is not surprising that human cooperation has the very same stages. Between developmental stages there is a need to make a leap. And that leap is frightening. It is a crisis for the mind. It is a crisis for the cooperation as well. But adoption is always a result of a crisis. In some cases a proactive one, in others a reactive one.

What I did not see when I dived into this complex organizational transformation project that I tried to force more than one step a time.

To be able to adopt holacracy you have to be prepared to change several things at once:

- The way you look at work

- The way you do your work

- The way you communicate at work

- The way you do meetings prepare and make decisions

- The way you govern, build strategy and sense operations

All this at once. That is the hard part. It is such a cultural shock that even very intelligent people back off when trying it. Some do it consciously and admit their hardships while others explain themselves that holacracy is wrong. I admit I backed off several times.

Our mind protects itself from accepting new perspectives. It is a risk for our integrity. 

I came to the conclusion that there is a clear need for data and facts that lie behind the great stories and testimonials. I want to start a conversation with you about measuring holacratic operation. Some future holacracy users demand tangible results as rewards. For some ROI is simply necessary to start a deployment.

In a next post I will further explore the ways how holacratic operation could be measured. Please do not hesitate to join in a conversation about it.

Mi az a holacracy? – De röviden ám!

Sok olyan kérdést, kérést kaptam, hogy ugyan mondjam el, mi az a holacracy. De röviden ám! És ne legyek bonyolult!

Hát eddig jutottam. Az alábbi négy bekezdés azért négy, mert bár a tömörség volt az igény, ha az alábbi leírásból bármi is kimarad, akkor már nem pontos a meghatározás. Fontosnak tartom ugyanis a megértés szempontjából, hogy mi a holacracy önmagában szubjektíven és objektíven, valamint tágabb kontextusában szubjektíven és objektíven.

A holacracy egy átfogó gyakorlat, amelynek része a munka szervezése, irányítása és a szervezet működtetése. Fő jellemzője a döntéshozás elosztása a szervezetben, amihez rendszerszinten hatalmazza fel a munkatársakat, akik így lépésről-lépésre önmenedzselő partnerekké válnak.

A Holacracy felszabadítólag hat a szervezetben dolgozó egyénekre, miközben az elválasztja a munkahelyi szerepeiket a személyüktől. 

Tágabban tekintve a holacracy egy teljes cégre kiterjesztett agilis módszertan, amelynek az alapvető szabályait egy jogi nyelven megfogalmazott alkotmány rögzíti.

Együtt alkalmazva a holacracy szabályait, a szervezet küldetését motiváló, közvetlen élményként tapasztalhatjuk meg. Egyértelművé válik a szervezetnek azt a rendeltetése, amit a piacon, a tágabb közösségben és a mi életünkben egyaránt betölt.

Vízióökológia

Mi a vízió? Talán egy elképzelt kép, amit a jövőbe gondolok, és amelynek a vonzásában létezem.

Mi egy szervezet víziója? Talán egy olyan kép, amelyet a szervezet vezetője és mindazok, akiket ebbe bevon, együtt alkotnak a kívánatos, vonzó, motiváló jövőről.

Mi ennek a víziónak az ökológiája? Talán mindazon tényezők összessége, amelyek ennek a képnek a kialakulásához hozzájárulnak. Talán a vezető személye, szocializációja, a szervezet kulturális és társadalmi kontextusa, a gazdasági helyzet és sok egyéb felsorolható elem összessége. 

Talán nem. Talán egy kép ökológiája inkább egy értékkészlet, ahogy egy látvány egy adott perspektívából bontakozik ki. Vízióökológia címmel adtam elő röviden pár gondolatot a Kürt Akadémia Klub augusztus 28-i azonos címet viselő estjén. Nagy vonalakban az alábbiak hangzottak el. 

Többek között Frederic Laloux úttörő munkája, a Reinventing Organizations alapján úgy vélem egy szervezet víziójának meghatározását alapjaiban határozza meg az, hogy maga az együttműködés milyen tudatossági szintet ért el. Ebben a vezető szerepe az elsődleges.

A szervezeti és együttműködési tudatosság lépcsőzetesen - eddig 5 lényegi lépésben - alakult az elmúlt évezredek folyamán és feltehetőleg ez így is fog folytatódni. Az egyes lépcsők, szintek meghaladása újabb és újabb vívmányokkal gazdagította az együttműködő partnereket. A szervezeti vízió kialakításához pedig egyre szélesebb értékkészlet vált elérhetővé.

De mi ebből a sok elméletből a gyakorlati útravaló. Talán annyi, hogy ha nem hajt minket nagy átalakító hév, hanem a meglévő alapon szeretnénk finomhangolni az együttműködést, nézzünk őszintén a szervezeti víziónkra és pontosítsuk azt a valódi -  az uralkodó paradigmánk - természete szerint.

Ha szeretnénk a személyes és az együttműködési potenciált a meglévő alapokon túl is kibontakoztatni, ha szeretnénk egy lépcsővel feljebb lépni, nagyobb mélység fölé merészkedni, akkor a megfogalmazott vízióhoz komolyan vett változásmenedzsmentre és abban résztvevő érdekeltekre van szükség.

Az előadáshoz köszönöm a teret a Kürt Akadémiának, az inspiráló partnereket a Circle43 tagjainak, a mindennapi kísérleti közeget pedig a Doctusoft nagyszerű csapatának!

Co-creation of Organizational concepts

I invite you to join this open discussion!

Project name: Co-creation of Organizational concepts in multiple contexts

Purpose: Clarity in the intersubjective aspects of organizational evolution and holacracy

Scope: Co-creation of key concepts in organizational operations with significantly different mindsets/worldviews. The examination of how these mindsets cope with the basic value set of Holacracy

The mindsets/worldviews are taken from Frederic Laloux’s book Reinventing Organizations and described as follows.

• Achievement Orange - Corporations viewing orgs as machines. Their competitive advantages compared to former cooperational forms are: Innovation, accountability, and meritocracy
• Pluralist Green - Corporations viewing orgs rather as families. Their competitive advantages compared to former cooperational forms are: Empowerment, value driven culture, and a stakeholder model
• Evolutionary teal - Corporations viewing orgs rather as living things. Their competitive advantages compared to former cooperational forms are: Personal wholeness, evolutionary purpose and self-management

Frederic Laloux’s work strongly builds on Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory.

Work style: Open collaborative. Anyone can join. Sent your mail to gergely.orban@doctusoft.com

Project structure: No such thing, but I will hold the role that synthesizes comments.

Deadline: Does evolution has such thing? :)

Work method: Work is done through a shared Google sheet. The sheet is open for you  in a ‘can comment’ mode after contacting me. Whenever a concept is debated we use the comment feature.

Output: The major output is our shared understanding, and certainly its written  will post and share, rewrite and refresh anything that seems to be tangible enough to be considered a milestone. Hope you will as well.

Please feel free to contact me if you are interested either in the contribution of the outputs. Please feel free to suggest improvement in the cooperation.

I do Holacracy 14. - Operation System, but who is the User?

I often read that holacracy is described as an operation system. While I completely agree with the similarities I miss more details and sense something funny in this comparison. If we look at holacracy as an OS, we have to admit that we are rather the hardware of the system, than its users. But then who is the user?

In case of organizational structures and operations most often we find the metaphor of a machine. In the metaphor there are the C-level people and the board members who give direction to the machine. They can be considered the users. And there are those who run the machine, they are the bigger and the smaller cogwheels, who are definitely not users, rather parts of the machine.

The metaphor of the machine is ok until you are a user not a part of the machine and the concept of 'spare parts' does not emerge.

By experience and analysis I tell you Holacracy is more than an operation system. To describe its further qualities I use the four quadrants of the Integral Theory. If you need detailed explanation on the quadrants you may find this useful. 

Briefly Integral Theory says everything has four natures. A thing can be viewed individually in itself, or as part of a collective existence. Also everything has an exterior, measurable, outer nature and an unmeasurable interior.

If we view holacracy by its objective (exterior and individual) nature, we see 
- An operation system for purposeful organizations,
- That enables agile governance and tactical operations. 
- It also has a capacity to harness more personal power via processing tensions
Almost all descriptions stop here.

If we view it by its interobjective nature (exterior and collective) we find
- That the so called OS serves as a platform for more software applications.
- The OS and the Apps together represent a highly differentiated, very conscious cooperational form
- Which has the competitive advantage of differentiating those parts of it that are necessary to run with more consciousness and leaving the others as they are.
- It is written in legal language and updated by versions providing a common denominator for our technology and law defined world.

- It has a capacity to transform machine-like and family-like companies to organism-like ones 

The subjective nature (interior and individual) of holacracy could be grasped from the point of view of a single practitioner. It is experienced as a system that:
- Pushes me to complete self-management what is personally fulfilling.
- Provides me clarity in the organization, in my circles, roles, accountabilities, and crystal clear alignment of my purposeful contribution
- Provides me power and space to contribute and means through which I may ask for help and influence change.
- Provides me an everyday experience about the border of my work roles and my private self

The intersubjective nature (interior and collective) is touched by the last slide of the taster workshop, which runs like 'it takes a village to raise an organization'. This intersubjective nature is
- Our shared story of the evolutionary purpose
- The capacity to transform our shared beliefs about cooperation, self-management and self-leadership
- To opportunity for us to evolve our organizational cooperation to a living entity
At this point we have found the User! :-)

To sum it all up.

Holacracy viewed in itself is an operational system for purposeful organizations. Holacracy is experienced empowering by all practitioner partners in the organization, who slowly turn to self-managing role holders withclarity about their work and their private self. Holacracy in a greater context is a very competitive agile cooperation form that may be amended with more compatible applications. It is laid down in a constitution in legal language. It has the competitive advantage of differentiating those parts of it that are necessary to run with more consciousness and leaving the others as they are. Holacracy when practiced together has a certain cultural capacity to transform and transcend our shared beliefs, so we can start to live the story of the living purpose of our cooperation.

Bit more than an operating system, isn't it.

Most of us still look at organizations with the machine paradigm. But in that paradigm holacracy is not fully observable. It simply does not fit in. To grasp more about it first imagine that your organization is rather a living organism than a machine with frictional parts.

Az integratív döntéshozási folyamat

Ezt a módszert a Holacracy kormányzási meetingjein (governance meeting) használjuk feszültségek, problémák feldolgozására és végül döntéshozásra. A Módszer azt szolgálja, hogy szervezettebb legyen az adott kör működése, így hatékonyabban töltse be a küldetését. Ehhez megfogalmazzuk a feszültségeink és azokat feloldó javaslatokat teszünk párbeszéd és vita nélkül.

A módszer a következő 6 lépés betartása révén segít abban, hogy növeljük a megértést és a felelős, együttműködő megoldáskeresést. A folyamatot egy választott Facilitátor kíséri végig, ő segít a résztvevőknek betartani a lépések sorát és tartani a teret a felszólalásra jogosultak számára. 

Az integratív döntéshozási folyamat

1. Javaslattétel
Kié a szó? Csak a javaslattevőé, kivéve ha segítséget kér valakitől, akkor az aki felszólal helyette.

A javaslattevő teret kap, hogy megfogalmazza a feszültséget és tegyen arra egy feloldó javaslatot vita és hozzászólás nélkül. A javaslattevő opcionálisan kérhet hozzászólást, vitát a javaslat tisztázása érdekében, de nem azzal a céllal, hogy konszenzust keressen, vagy hogy előterjessze az aggályait.

2. Tisztázó kérdések
Kié a szó? Bárki kérdezhet, a javaslattevő válaszol; ismétlés

Bárki feltehet tisztázó kérdéseket, hogy további információkat kapjon és tisztázza, amit nem ért a Javaslatból. A javaslattevő megválaszolhatja a kérdést, vagy jelezheti hogy az nem releváns. Reakciók, párbeszéd, vita nem megengedett.

3. Reakciók
Kié a szó? Mindenkié, kivéve a javaslattevőt.

Minden jelenlévő teret kap reagálni a Javaslatra, annak illeszkedésére a jelen működésbe. A reakcióknak E/1 és E/3 személyben kell megfogalmazni, "én" vagy "ő" üzeneteknek kell lenniük. Válasz, vita nem megengedett.

4. Pontosítás és tisztázás
Kié a szó? Csak a javaslattevőé.

A javaslattevőnek, lehetősége van mélyebben tisztázni a Javaslat szándékát, a visszajelzések alapján pontosítani a Javaslatot, illetve továbblépni. Vita, hozzászólás nem megengedett. A facilitátor leállít bármilyen vitát, megjegyzést, megszólalást.

5. Ellenvetések
Kié a szó? Bárkié, a javaslattevőt is beleértve. Sorban (körben) haladva, egyszerre csak egy beszél.

A facilitátor mindenkitől megkérdezi: "Látsz bármilyen okot, ami miatt e Javaslat elfogadása kárt okoz, vagy hátráltat minket?" (a válasz az “Ellenvetés” maga) Az Ellenvetések elhangzanak, azokat tesztelik és leírják, vita és hozzászólás nélkül. Amennyiben nincs ellenvetés, a Javaslat elfogadásra kerül.

6. Integráció
Kié a szó? Többnyire az ellenvetést megfogalmazóé és a javaslattevőé; a többiek kérés esetén segíthetnek.

A cél egy módosított javaslat mefogalmazása, amely ellen már mincs ellenvetés és a javaslattevő feszültségét is feloldja. Egyszerre egy ellenvetés legyen a fókuszban. Ha mindegyik integrálásra kerül, újra az Ellenvetési kör következik.

Forrás