Refurbishing Conventional Management Hierarchy with the Muscle of Self-management Self-management is making businesses more streamlined and transparent, enabling even the newest employees to feel well-synced with the process
By Madhurima Roy •
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Ever wondered how it will be to be a part of a self-managed organization? The concept of self-management invokes the idea that businesses running on this track lack skilful management and supervision. But the wrong ideas and concepts spiral from the limited knowledge about it. In actuality, self-management is streamlined and involves a lot more supervision than traditional management structures. Self-management enthusiast Brian Robertson, who is the founder and Business Partner at Holacracy clears the cloud of misconception and spells what the idea is all about.
The idea of Self-management
Today Robertson's Holacracy is availed by more than 1,000 companies but the seed of self-management was sowed in his mind about 20 years ago when he started working for his first company. Being part of the organization, Brian constantly felt the need to run companies in a new and advanced manner that will break the hiccups of the conventional management hierarchy. "It seemed like every time a company grew, everything slowed down, it becomes really hard to drive change. So, I wanted a better way to run a company and I used my organization as a laboratory. I was building a software company. So, I went out and experimented with my company," Robertson says.
And, finally 11 years back, back in 2007, he finally shaped his dream of Holacracy into reality.
The Idea of Self-management
A company that adopts a self-management model, the need to have managers and CEOs to run organizations get eliminated altogether. "Somebody might need a CEO for the outside world but inside the company, there is no need to have a top-down power structure. The management operations are done without any managers and Holacracy is all about management without managers," he specifies.
However, questions about accountability, alignment and designated roles of employees might cross your mind. How are these arenas managed in a streamlined and transparent manner? With Holacracy, instead of managers defining these things, there is a governance process that the teams engage in. With the help of its software GlassFrog, the company stores every data of the process. It structures and stores all the data.
Everyone is a CEO of their Role
Companies running with Holacracy have more stringent structure than a management hierarchy. "Self-management organization like Holacracy has an altogether different approach. The digitally created structure clarifies who makes which decision, decides the role of the teams, what we expect of each other. And all of them are documented and clarified but at the same time stays very flexible," explains Robertson. As an added feature Holacracy is customizable. Any process that is not working for the team can be changed at any time and the change can be done in every single team. Anyone can propose changes in the structure. Do, it is a much more dynamic way to organize and is a more transparent process. It is streamlined in a way that people know exactly who to go to and doesn't feel lost even on the first day of a new job. This is possible because the process is transparent.
