Holacracy was developed at Ternary Software in Exton, Pennsylvania.[6] Ternary founder Brian Robertson distilled the company's internal practices into an organizational system that became known as Holacracy in 2007. Robertson later developed the “Holacracy Constitution”, which sets out the core principles and practices of the system. In 2011, he released a document titled Manifesto 16 of Holacracy, which he later expanded, in June 2015, into the book Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World, detailing and explaining these practices.[2] He has stated that Holacracy bears similarities to the Scaled Agile Framework, sociocracy and Nexus.[7] Robertson has also indicated that the term holacracy is derived from the term holarchy, coined by Arthur Koestler in his 1967 book The Ghost in the Machine.[8]
Koestler wrote that a holarchy is composed of holons (Greek: ὅλον, holon, neuter form of ὅλος, holos, “whole”), or units that are autonomous and self-reliant but also dependent on the greater whole of which they are part.[9] Thus, a holarchy is a hierarchy of self-regulating holons that function both as autonomous wholes and as dependent parts.[9]
Influences and comparable systems
Holacracy, which is an alternative to command-and-control management,[10] is one of several systems of flat organization. It has been compared to sociocracy, a system of governance developed in the second half of the 20th century.[11][12]
In 2016, the consulting firm Findasense, founded by Rafael Tamames, announced that it had implemented Holacracy as its management system, describing itself as the first Spanish-speaking multinational to do so.[13]
Essential elements
- Roles instead of job descriptions: The building blocks of Holacracy's organizational structure are roles. Holacracy distinguishes between roles and the people who fill them, as one individual can hold multiple roles at any given time. A role is not a job description; its definition follows a clear format including a name, a purpose, optional "domains" to control, and accountabilities, which are ongoing activities to perform. Roles are defined by each circle—or team—via a collective governance process, and are updated regularly in order to adapt to the ever-evolving needs of the organization.[2]
- Circle structure: Holacracy structures the various roles in an organization in a system of self-organizing (but not self-directed) circles.
