> The lack of structure brings out the worst in human behavior.
Well, that's your experience, and you're entitled to it. I'm finding the opposite. Though describing holacracy as a "lack of structure" seems like a pretty serious mis-statement. Holacracy is extremely structured - way more, and way more explicitly, than most organisations.
It's kind of like the classic traditional observation that "agile is basically no processes". Yeah, if you use agile as an excuse to throw out process, you might equate the two. But actually agile (at least at its beginnings) involved a lot more process and rigour than traditional waterfall development. Agile is not an absence of process. Holacracy is not an absence of structure.
I guess humans will be humans - which means they will misinterpret, distort, exaggerate, etc, especially when exposed to newness.
I have little comment about what holacracy is like to work in, because I haven't worked in one. But I started a business that now operates by principles fairly closely related to those underlying holacracy (though the implementation is fairly different). We have less structure than holacracy, however... and yet what I'm seeing is that quite the opposite of your statement, it is bringing out the best in people.
Then again, I've not implemented a fake holacracy for all the wrong reasons. We're still in the relatively early days of this sort of culture. There are many more ways to get this wrong than right. Unless the people making this happen are truly committed to creating an open culture, and are doing it for the right reasons (i.e. this is the way they want the business to operate because it's good - not "well, this seems like a good tool to get people to be motivated without paying them nyeh nyeh nyeh dr evil laughter"... unless it's done right, it will probably be a horrible distortion of what it's meant to be. Kind of like what you describe.
I think you should consider the possibility that the allegedly holacratic organisation you worked in just got it really badly wrong.
I think that's very true, and I appreciate your perspective. I have no doubt it's very truthful, and there are some great things about the openness that might be possible with a holocracy or something like it.
I agree that the organization I worked in got it really badly wrong, but I also saw how the structure that was being followed (and there is a structure) sort of enabled that. It was a small organization and there were many other things going on that I think caused issues—so perhaps it's not 100% attributable to holocracy, and wasn't perhaps the best situation for it to be effective because of that.
I'll admit it was anecdotal. But I don't trust a process that, when followed fairly closely, had what appeared to be many holes in its organizational model that were suboptimal.
Well, that's your experience, and you're entitled to it. I'm finding the opposite. Though describing holacracy as a "lack of structure" seems like a pretty serious mis-statement. Holacracy is extremely structured - way more, and way more explicitly, than most organisations.
It's kind of like the classic traditional observation that "agile is basically no processes". Yeah, if you use agile as an excuse to throw out process, you might equate the two. But actually agile (at least at its beginnings) involved a lot more process and rigour than traditional waterfall development. Agile is not an absence of process. Holacracy is not an absence of structure.
I guess humans will be humans - which means they will misinterpret, distort, exaggerate, etc, especially when exposed to newness.
I have little comment about what holacracy is like to work in, because I haven't worked in one. But I started a business that now operates by principles fairly closely related to those underlying holacracy (though the implementation is fairly different). We have less structure than holacracy, however... and yet what I'm seeing is that quite the opposite of your statement, it is bringing out the best in people.
Then again, I've not implemented a fake holacracy for all the wrong reasons. We're still in the relatively early days of this sort of culture. There are many more ways to get this wrong than right. Unless the people making this happen are truly committed to creating an open culture, and are doing it for the right reasons (i.e. this is the way they want the business to operate because it's good - not "well, this seems like a good tool to get people to be motivated without paying them nyeh nyeh nyeh dr evil laughter"... unless it's done right, it will probably be a horrible distortion of what it's meant to be. Kind of like what you describe.
I think you should consider the possibility that the allegedly holacratic organisation you worked in just got it really badly wrong.