Hierarchy versus holacracy

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Before we delve into whether or not holacracy is right for your organization, how many of us know what holacracy is?  Holacracy is a social technology or system of organizational governance in which authority and decision-making are distributed throughout a holarchy of self-organizing teams rather than being vested in a management hierarchy.  In theory, holacracy empowers people to make meaningful decisions and drive change.

Instead of a traditional management structure where questions must go from the bottom to the top and decisions go in reverse, organizations that adopt holacracy empower agile teams of people to make and implement decisions.

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Self-organization models typically share three characteristics:

Teams are the structure

In holacracy, there are “circles” or many companies simply call them “teams.” Whatever they’re called, these basic components are not, individuals, and not units, departments, or divisions but they are the essential organizational building blocks.  Individual roles are defined and assigned in order to accomplish the work. As in more traditional hierarchical organizations, there may be different teams for different projects or functions like finance, tech, sales. But self-managing enterprises have a lot more of them. After Zappos implemented holacracy, 150 departmental units evolved into over 500 circles.

Teams design and govern themselves

Although self-organizing companies try to avoid the traditional hierarchy, the teams are a part of a larger structure, which they are actually able to shape and refine. Holacratic organizations have everyone sign a constitution—a document outlining the rules by which circles are created, changed, and removed. So the circles not only manage themselves; within those guidelines, they also design and govern themselves. The constitution doesn’t dictate exactly how people should do their tasks. It explains in a broad way how circles should be created and operate: how they should assign roles, what boundaries the roles should have, and how the circles should interact with one another. 

Leadership is constantly changing

In self-managed organizations, leadership is distributed among roles, not individual people.  People usually hold multiple roles, on multiple teams. Leadership responsibilities continually change as the work changes and as teams create and define new roles. Technology is essential for keeping all these changes straight. The information is accessible to anyone in the organization and each individual’s commitments are visible to everybody at the company. Supposedly, transparency enables cross-team integration.

Although it is becoming a buzz word, holacracy is not being adopted at a rapid pace. The organizations who have tried to adopt it run into a myriad of issues, including increased turnover and decreased productivity given the endless meetings.  While some look at it with interest, others simply say it does not work.  Next week we will delve into some of the issues that have arisen when organizations have tried to implement holacracy.

 

Let leaders lead

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Most who enter the Human Resources disciplines due so out of a desire to help others and to help the organization to align their employee workforce with the goals of the company to further productivity.  Often times, however, we forget to let our leaders lead.  Especially as an organization grows, HR functions need to adopt a “train the trainer” approach more than a train everyone approach.  Although enlightened organizations put their full support and resources into HR functions, the team still has a responsibility to be able to scale the organization without adding significant numbers of HR team members.  Efficiency is key.

Train- the- trainer

A train-the-trainer model allows experienced trainers to show a less-experienced individuals how to deliver courses, workshops and seminars. http://work.chron.com/train-trainer-model-5463.html Usually, a new instructor first observes a training event led by the course designer. A train-the-trainer approach can build a pool of competent instructors who can then teach the material to other people. Instead of having just one instructor who teaches a course for a long time, you have multiple instructors teaching the same course at the same time. This ensures that employees get timely training to complete tasks according to company policies and procedures.

Identify SME’s

SME’s or subject matter experts exist in all corners of the organizations and at all levels.  It is a fairly good bet that your excel gurus are not sitting in the corner office.  Tap those resources!  Find out how has a skill set that the rest of the organization could benefit from and engage the SME to deliver the training. This serves two purposes.  One, it enhances your pool of trainers and two, it gives well deserved recognition to a group of people who might be overlooked otherwise, further engaging them in the business.  

Step out of the way

The inclination is to teach every class to every audience, but the real goal is to get the training out to a broad audience in a timely manner.  Like a proud parent, you need to teach your junior trainers your techniques, ensure that they know their material, do a few dry runs with them and then let them launch.  Will it be perfect, no. Will it improve with time, yes and will you gain far more by engaging your workforce then trying to do it all yourself, a big YES!

Training is not a one and done.  It is a process over an unending period of time that, done correctly, not only teaches a new skill, but also engages and inspires a workforce to do greater things both in their work and personal lives.

Microlearning

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Micro learning is the new buzz word in the Learning and Development Community.  It is defined as 3-5 minute short, focused learning sessions that are designed to meet a specific learning outcome.  As with many buzz words, the term is often misused and misunderstood. Many have taken it to mean that all learning should be conducted in bite sized chunks as demonstrated in the graphic below which indicates that humans have only 24 minutes per week to devote to actual learning, and that is based on a 40 hour work week, which is a thing of the past for many of us routinely working 60 hour work weeks.   Others will site the growth of the millennial workforce that will make up over 75% of the total workforce by 2025 and their much talked about short attention span of 90 seconds.

However, it is unlikely that complex new skills can be acquired in 24 minutes a week, but new skills acquired can be reinforced, practiced and lead to a performance gain in 24 minutes a week.  This is where micro learning really needs to be focused.  On the refinement and not on the acquisition.  Millennials, right alongside other generations, can be uber focused for longer periods of time when the content is engaging and rewarding.

Microlearning modules are best focused on moving right to the point without all the history behind the why, which should be captured in the original training.  Video should be an important and engaging component, as should real life scenarios.

Microlearning can be an excellent approach to training for simple tasks as it improves retention and fills in performance gaps and is certainly more cost efficient.  However, it should be used in conjunction with, not as a substitute for, more traditional types of learning as it is not suitable for complex tasks and can easily run the risk of seeming fragmented. 

How Can You Become More Effective At Your Job?

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When individuals have been working a job for a while, it’s easy to just find a daily groove, and go with the motions. But going with the flow doesn’t always mean we are being as effective as we can be in our positions. The reality is that some employees fall into their normal workflow, and are not entirely sure what else they can be doing in order to improve their effectiveness at their job.

I’ve spent some time pondering ways that employees who are looking to avoid stagnation can start to develop their skillsets at work. There are a few major steps that one can take to become more effective at their job.

 

Determine the Purpose of Your Work

The first step to improving is to understand exactly what you are trying to improve. Effectiveness in any job can only be achieved if there is a full understanding of what the job is. The easiest way to do this is to conduct a thorough analysis of your current position.

  1. Look through the formal documentation that is available for your position. Determine what the objectives and main priorities are on the job description. If you have access to the the rubrics for performance reviews, review those as well. They will give you an accurate picture of what is expected of an exemplary employee.
  2. Seek out any available training that is available for your job. Training materials are a great resource because they go beyond just telling you what you’ll get rewarded for. Training materials will also give you best practices and provide some (hopefully helpful) instruction on how to do your job well. Seeking out training materials also shows initiative to your superiors. (Bosses love when their employees show dedication to betterment.)

After you’ve reviewed those documents and materials, you should be armed with a better understanding of what you should be accomplishing and working towards in your current position.

 

Turn Up the Positivity

This may feel cheesy to some, but there really is something to be said about adopting a good attitude within the workplace. Positivity can go a long way in terms of productivity.

  1. Studies have shown that people who are consistently positive have a better ability to handle stress, work related challenges, and general adversity.
  2. Maintaining a positive attitude also helps you to see things more clearly. If you’re less stressed, you can make more rational, and beneficial decisions.

Be sure to check back next month to determine what else you can do to become more effective at work.


 

Resources: Mindtools – 1 , Mindtools – 2, Positively Presents