A journey with up's and down's is normal

Wednesday 14^th of November 2018

We did a lot of coaching practice in teams, in peers, but also in the plenum in a fishbowl style today. I quickly explain, how that works. Brian and Eric were acting like a classical CEO and COO roles of a company adopting holacracy. Three of us always were coaching them and there is one free chair, which could have been used from any of us, to join the groups discussion. But as a consequence, any of the others have to leave and leave one chair free, to provide the opportunity to others to jump in.

To be honest, adopting to holacracy is a long journey and it can be very awkward! It is a huge shift from the classical system with centralized authority and power to a distributed power approach! Not only for a founder, or the managers, but also for employees! And the good message ist - It is normal! You need to change your habits! Habits which were valid for what and how you worked until now!

And there are different challenging phases on the journey, which are also actually common on the way to adapt holacracy, and need to be well coached. It is important to get support to pass “downs” on this journey very well. That they are not too long! Otherwise frustration and fallbacks to the old system can be the result.

In that fishbowl setup Brian & Eric played common behaviour and asked common questions depending on which phase they are in on their journey! It was great to profit from their experiences and it was very challenging, but very helpful to coach according to these situations.

Thanks to different approaches in which we were practicing our coaching today, I received many answers to my open questions.

Integrated decision making process

One of the big changes, but very powerful part of the approach, are governance meetings. In a governance meeting, which scope is on a specific circle, members with roles can make proposals in their roles to change the system. It is important to understand, what their tension is they have.

So, one member for instance has a tension, that some of the activities he or she does, do not fit into one of his or her roles and therefore proposes to create a new role, with accountabilities, which describe these activities. The unique integrated decision making process makes sure, that a proposal does not harm the circle and especially integrates the perspective of any other role in the circle.

First of all, they can ask questions, then they can mention their reaction to that proposal. If one or more of them have an objection, it will be tested with a predefined set of questions. And if the objection is valid, the objector has to propose ideas, how the proposal can be changed, that the objection resolves. If the proposer can accept that amendment or change the proposal has been improved already. These way of finding a solution is called consent. It is not they idea to find consensus, or make a democratic vote for the solution. What counts is, that system is developed further on and the proposal is safe enough to try. With the knowledge, that any member of the circle has the change to change, improve it again, if it did not work as expected.

An interesting mindset on that is, that a member of the circle might sense a tension in one of his or her roles, which he or she can address with a proposal in the circle’s governance meeting, but that the proposal can be seen as it belongs to the circle! With that in mind, one can better differentiate between the personal tension and objections which focusses on the proposal. And that has nothing to do with my person, but should solve my tension. And with the support of the circles members view on the proposal, we might even build a better proposal and bring the system further on.

Another important finding for me of today’s training was, the importance to find the right balance between active coaching and providing the right space to experiencing the way new organizations work according to holacracy. So it helps much more to get experience on how it feels like and how work can be organized in a totally different way!

Holacracy controls things differently, then it was in a classical management set up. And the good thing is, that through the toolset available, everybody participates in controlling the system and not only one person from a hierarchy point of view.

great food - made by sascha del torre