In her session ‘Decentralising leadership: a story of Holacracy in practice’ Sandy will share her story of implementing Holacracy at a New Zealand tech company, whose CTO gave her a one-line instruction: “I’d like you to make it happen.”

1. Holacracy for Humans
sandy@nomad8.com

3. We want to collaborate better!

4. “Every time the size of a city doubles,
innovation and productivity increase by
15%. When companies get bigger,
innovation and productivity go down.”
— Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos

5. ‣ treat people like responsible adults
‣ move authority to where the information is
Beliefs about collaboration

6. What is Holacracy?

7. Holacracy is a method for
creating a truly self-organising
organisation

8. A method of decentralised management
and organisational governance in which
authority and decision-making are
distributed throughout autonomous,
self-organising teams

9. Holacracy
2009
Sociocracy
1970

11. “Scientology meets agile
meets paleo meets crossfit”
— Miki Szikszai, CEO, Snapper

12. Let’s try this …

13. 1. Autonomous circles
2. Roles
3. Tensions & consent
Key concepts

14. 1. Autonomous circles

15. Snapper General Circle
Make transport ticketing more attractive
Purpose
Accountabilities
• Design ticketing service
experiences that are attractive to
the people that interact with your
service
• Grow business sustainably

16. Finance Marketing
BI (Tech)Customer care
Create great
customer experiences
Snapper General Circle
iOS
Backend
Systems
International
Android
BI (Tech) Circle

17. a hierarchy of purpose
- not people

18. Lower circles have a
narrower focus

19. “If I had Hubspot I could have a
much better dialogue with
prospective customers.”
— Lauren, Marketing

20. iOS
Backend Systems
InternationalAndroid
BI (Tech) Circle

21. 2. Roles

22. My job description
What I really do
Board Report
Writer
Refund
issuer
Customer
insights
Audit co-
ordinator

23. Roles
‣ helped us split work into smaller roles that
could be assigned to the most appropriate
person
‣ allowed people to develop new skills
‣ dynamic allocation

24. Employment law
‣ it can bite you …
‣ make all roles “trials”

25. The process of defining roles …
… was incredibly tedious but paid off
… helped us focus on the important parts of our work

26. Roles today
‣ roles are part of people’s daily lives
‣ we do a check-up every 3 months

27. 3. Tensions & consent

28. ‣ the gap between what is and what could be
‣ continuous improvement is baked in
Tensions

29. decision making by
consent

30. Finance Marketing
BI (Tech)
Customer care
Snapper General Circle

31. Dynamic re-organisation
International
Snapper General Circle
Marketing
Finance
Dev
Security coach
Dev coach
Test
BA
Integration
Wellington
Marketing
Finance
Dev coach
iOS
Policy City council

32. Look outs
‣ meeting formats didn’t work for us
‣ tools made us collaborate less
‣ don’t wait for a meeting to act

33. 2 years in …

34. “Things were definitely difficult in the beginning. The
rigid rules felt at odds with the organisational culture.
However, we didn’t give up, tried everything for
ourselves and things have worked out well.”
— Anthony, Business Analyst

35. “This is everything I ever wished for.
But it’s really hard because I sometimes feel
overwhelmed. And I miss my friends in finance.”
— Kathryn, Finance

36. We collaborate better
‣ holacracy across the entire business
‣ circles are self-managing and performing well
‣ Snapper could add another 20 people

37. Keen to try it for
yourself?

38. live with the strange language

39. follow all the rules
- to start with

40. follow the principles
- not the rules

41. What I think about
Holacracy now

42. Holacracy will amplify the
culture that's already in place.
It won’t change or improve it!

43. Holacracy, Agile and common
sense will make a big difference

44. It’s not about doing
Holacracy but about being
holacratic!

45. sandy@nomad8.com @smamol
If you’d like to have
this talk at your
company, get in
touch!