Holacracy
In 2012, Springest officially adopted Holacracy as its operating system. As part of our onboarding for new 🧑🦲Springeteers
IN THIS ARTICLE
- Holacracy Constitution
- Holacracy at Springest - A quick guide
- Rep links within Holacracy & at Springest
- Secretary role: tips & tricks
- Facilitator role: tips & tricks
- Governance Meeting documents
- Holacracy Articles
Holacracy Constitution
This “Constitution” defines rules and processes for the governance and operations of an organization. The “Ratifiers”are adopting these rules as the formal authority structure for the “Organization” specified upon the Constitution’s adoption, which may be an entire entity or a part of one that the Ratifiers have authority to govern and run. The Ratifiers and anyone else who agrees to take part in the governance and operations of the Organization (its “Partners”) may rely upon the authorities granted by this Constitution, and also agree to be bound by its duties and constraints. You can find the newest version of the Constitution here .
Holacracy at Springest - A quick guide
Springest has implemented Holacracy : within this system, responsibilities and power are distributed in a new way, in which traditional concepts of leadership and management are abandoned.
Why Holacracy?
Springest has implemented Holacracy, so we would be able to grow without having to deal with bureaucracy and other productivity-killers. Because Holacracy is transparent and dynamic, we can now constantly evolve and change our company structures.
Most important is the purpose of the whole organisation, the purpose of the roles and the goals of the accountability each role has. Instead of a static organisation, we aim to have a constantly evolving, self improving organization. To get to that point, so-called "tensions" (not necessarily negative, merely the gap between the current state and a better or ideal state) cannot be ignored but must be used as fuel to move forward. Whenever you have a tension with something, as a Springeteer you are obliged to process this, for example in a tactical meeting (add it to the agenda) or by giving someone a task in Asana.
Roles instead of jobs
Instead of traditional "job description", each Springeteer has several roles. That means you are not a "sales manager", but you have a role "Key accounts", and a role "Provider sales", a role "Phone outreacher" etc etc. Every separate (bundle of) task(s) is made into a role, which has specific accountabilities. We even have a role "Green Officer", that is accountable for watering the plants and a role "Bread" that goes to the bakery every morning.
Roles are created during Governance Meetings , so with the entire team. Every role knows it’s own accountabilities, (example roles in Asana ) . From these accountabilities stem projects and tasks, which will come back in the next part on Asana. Everything is clearly formulated, with the aim to make it very transparent to which role you should go, when you have a question or a project-request. Roles communicate directly and there is no old-skool manager to intervene in this.
In Holacracy, circles and roles evolve constantly. Here you find an overview of the core circles in Alignment. Within alignment, every sub circle is a role in itself. These roles are the lead links of their own circles, which in turn consists of roles. Check out this overview of the roles at Springest !
Tactical meetings
Holacracy aims at having efficient and to-the-point weekly meetings, called Tactical Meetings. Specific Holacracy rules are followed when project updates and agenda items are discussed, which are best experienced in practice.
The idea behind the tactical meeting is that so-called ‘tensions’ are discussed as agenda points, after a quick project update per person. Within this system, every employee is an agent that detects tensions and brings these to the fore during meetings, with the aim of improving Springest and the general productivity and quality. Whenever there are tensions to be discussed between different circles, an appointed Rep-Link will bring this to attention during Alignment meetings.
Each agenda item should either be there for clarification/posing questions or immediately be made into a next action; a task assigned to one of the roles. Making next actions is very important in Holacracy, since someone is made accountable for an action and the distribution of responsibility is made visible.
Example of a tactical-meeting-agenda in Asana, with some clarifications about what is what in pink:
The concept and terminology might still sound a bit vague, but as soon as you participate in the meetings, things will start to make a lot of sense. Of course, questions remain and we are (since the introduction of Holacracy in 2013) still learning every day. That is why we have the role Holacracy Coach which can help you with guidance in the process and answer complex questions. Do not hesitate to ask the Coaches (there are many) for help; they are here for that purpose!
Rep links within Holacracy & at Springest
Rep links are one of the most important roles, within Holacracy but especially at Springest. Within Holacracy the Rep links voice and solve tensions from their circles to the supercircle.
Rep links are the chosen (literally, via elections) ones that know what is going on in the circle. At Springest, we let Rep Links read out all the metrics during tacticals of the super circle and update on the project-chances. This role owns the metrics and can explain the numbers to others, rep links are (or should be) eloquent and up-to-date and also very important: they counterbalance the "power" of the lead links, by being the role that represents the circle at super-circle level and is responsible for clear updates.
Rep Link
[ According to HolacracyOne consitution :] An elected Role used to represent the interests of a sub-Circle to its super-Circle. Also note that the Lead Link of a Circle may not serve as the Rep Link of that Circle. Rep Links allow Tensions from the sub-Circle to be processed by the super-Circle when the issue seems to extend beyond the sub-Circle’s current authority.
Purpose:
- Within the Super-Circle, the Rep Link holds the Purpose of the Sub-Circle; within the Sub-Circle, the Rep Link’s Purpose is: Tensions relevant to process in the Super-Circle channeled out and resolved.
Accountabilities:
- Removing constraints within the broader Organization that limit the Sub-Circle
- Seeking to understand Tensions conveyed by Sub-Circle Circle Members, and discerning those appropriate to process in the Super-Circle
- Providing visibility to the Super-Circle into the health of the Sub-Circle, including reporting on any metrics or checklist items assigned to the whole Sub-Circle
Secretary role: tips and tricks
Yaaay you were elected Secretary ! What now? Here are some tips and tricks on how to be an effective secretary for your circle.
Accountabilities:
- Scheduling the Circle’s required meetings, and notifying all Core Circle Members of scheduled times and locations
- Capturing and publishing the outputs of the Circle’s required meetings, and
- maintaining a compiled view of the Circle’s current Governance, checklist items, and metrics
- Interpreting Governance and the Constitution upon request
Let's break these accountabilities down:
Scheduling the Circle’s required meetings, and notifying all Core Circle Members of scheduled times and locations
Schedule the meetings in Google Calendar and make sure all (core) role holders are invited. Usually the calendar event already exists, you can request the previous secretary to transfer ownership to you so you can edit the event. The constitution expects the Tactical and Governance meetings to be held separately. At Springest we schedule them back to back 99% of the times (first Tactical, then Governance).
Alternatively, a Core Circle Member may distribute a Proposal to all other Core Circle Members asynchronously, outside of a Governance Meeting, using any written communication channel approved for this purpose by the Circle’s Secretary.
Holacracy also allows asynchronous Governance. The preferred location for this is the "Conversations" part of the circle's Governance project in Asana. Talk to your Facilitator on how you want to tackle the proposal, as he or she decides how that proposal will be processed: "the Facilitator may either apply the same process and rules used within a Governance Meeting, or may allow each Core Circle Member to directly declare whether or not he or she has Objections to integrate.". You can check out this example of one held in the Organisations circle .
Capturing and publishing the outputs of the Circle’s required meetings
The actual meetings is where the meat of this role is, 95% of your role as Secretary is spent here.
- Make sure you get comfortable with the Zoom software.
- Set it up a little bit early before the meeting starts. See How to use the Zoom Room meeting software in Rokin and Singel rooms .
- When sharing your screen, only share the "Chrome" window instead of your full screen for less visual distraction.
- Get good at using keyboard shortcuts and train your typing speed. This will help to keep the momentum of the meeting going.
- But: don't stress out when somethings not working out, for example when you're making typos or you forgot someone's initials. Because of the multi tasking you're doing you sometimes draw a blank, just take a breath and continue. It's also fine to ask the Facilitator to wait for a second when you're writing down something yourself. The meeting can wait for a few seconds, nobody minds.
- You can see all Asana shortcuts if you press Command + / in Asana. Check out the most loved shortcuts for Secretaries .
- Start the meeting with a good, clean setup. Make sure everything you need is within hands reach, that means:
- Close all irrelevant tabs. Or open a new Chrome window (
command – n) - Open all the relevant pages in advance.
- One tab with "circle Tactical" Asana project open
- One tab with "circle Projects" Asana project open
- One tab with "circle Governance" Asana project open
- One tab with KPI Master open on the correct sheet
- Zoom in to at least 150% (
command – +) - Hide unnecessary controls in KPI Master. Click the upwards pointing caret on the most right in the formatting bar (or
ctrl – shift – f) - Hide unnecessary controls in Asana. Close the sidebar and collapse the header. Our Asana Chrome extension has a nice "meeting mode" which does this automatically for you.
- During the meeting:
- Try to scroll as little as possible. It's hard to follow when you're not behind the controls. Try to scroll all metrics or projects for one particular role into view at once. Use the short natural breaks when switching who's talking to scroll.
- Don't do housekeeping, like updating state or changing progress. This should've been done by the owner of the project before the meeting. If you do it in the meeting there is no incentive for them to do it themselves. This is a pet peeve of mine though
. - Complete projects at the end of the change update of that particular project. That way the context of what's being talked about it still on the screen and other relevant stuff like the progress, why now, due date, etc. are still visible.
- Write down short, one or two word agenda items with the initials of the owner. Example: "Conversion rate RM".
- Unfollow all agenda items. Else your inbox will be spammed. Easiest way to do this is after agenda building. Select all agenda items and remove yourself as follower.
- Let people literally dictate Next Actions. This way there is no ambiguety in your possible interpretation of what someone really means. It also forces them to really think about the desired NA. It leads to better and clearer actions.
- After the meeting:
- Immediately integrate Governance. As we assume governance to be active directly, we want the records to match as soon as possible.
Maintaining a compiled view of the Circle’s current Governance, checklist items, and metrics
- This is mainly making sure the current governance records are kept in order. There is a certain way these need to be set up, in order to show up properly in roles.springest.com . See the article on how to fix missing roles on how to structure them.
- Checklist items are just regular tasks in the tactical project list, not much to keeping those up to date.
- Metrics are handled somewhat different in different circles. Officially you're accountable to "maintain a compiled view", a.k.a. the sheet for your circle in the Master KPI document. In some circles this accountability has been transferred to a specific role or this simply done by the Lead Link. Note that you are not accountable for filling in the metrics, only for the "compiled view" or the structure.
Interpreting Governance and the Constitution upon request
Finally you can interpret how we should actually do Holacracy and read specific governance records. You can be asked to "interpret", and there are some rules on that in the Constitution .
Basically this is some kind of fallback structure for when people disagree on how things should be. We also have a Slack channel (#holacracy) where stuff like this can be discussed.
Facilitator role: Tips & Tricks
Some more, borrowed from Koen Bunders (a Holacracy coach, working together with Diederick), tips for faciliation:
- Ask the question: "What is your tension, what do you need?
- If someone keeps describing the tension, repeat: "What do you need?"
- If someone doesn't know how to solve his tension, start a short discussion with the group. Always be clear about when the discussion has come to an end
- If someone is talking to another person, pointing to a specific person or is pointing to "we", He/she" then always ask the question: "What role are you talking about?"
- Make sure you stay with the original tension, if there appears a new tension then let the tension holder create a new agenda item. You can bring the focus back to the first tension by asking: "What do you need?"
- Make sure next actions and project requests are written clearly (you may expect this from the Secretary)
- Always check if the original tension is solved when the task has been made. You can ask questions like: "Did you get what you need/Is your tensions solved?" If you get the answer "yes", then move to the next agenda item. If the answer is "no", start over and ask what they need.
- See these tips to speed up the tactical
- Advise circle members to only accept tasks or projects if they are accountable for it from one of their roles. You can point them to the Governance meeting if they're not accountable but they must be. If they accept a task or a project outside their accountability, we call this an "individual action'. You can find the rules of an 'Individual action' in the Constitution
- Watch out for deadlines when making tasks, deadlines are not used within Holacracy
- If a circle member is not available at the tactical, the Leadlink can accept or reject tasks and roles. If the Leadlink is also unavailable, then each circle member can requests tasks and projects from unavailable circle members.
Guidelines for introducing guests for Holacracy meetings?
- The Secretary is responsible for inviting external people to one of the Holacracy meetings (via calendar).
- So talk with secretary if you have a contact who requests to join one of our meetings
- Facilitator should start the meeting with a small introduction round for the visitors and explain in short the meeting planning
- External participants should be informed with the following information before the meeting:
- Date and time of the meetings
- Small introduction to Holacracy / Asana
- Have respect for our meeting: Be on time, do not disturb, do not just leave the meeting (, unless the Facilitator is informed beforehand.)
Governance Meeting
Holacracy Articles
Must read Holacracy especially for beginners (perhaps you have already watched/read this during pre boarding, if so, feel free to skip):
- Ruben's article, Holacracy for Beginners
- Nice article from Holacracy One on what to expect from this system
- 7 things you can learn from Holacracy
- Holacracy Tactical meetings & Facilitator Tips
Must watch:
- Holacracy book summary (5 min)
- Full Holacracy Tactical Meeting at Springest (45 min)
- Brian Robertson's TedTalk on why he started HolacracyOne (15 min)
Questions about Holacracy and you can't find the answer? Join the slack channel #holacracy and ask your Hola guru's for help!