brian robertson
August 2006 
Holarchy plus Sociocracy equals Holacracy?
Diederick
‘Holacracy' refers to a structure of governance resulting from a synergy between the ideas on sociocracy and Ken Wilber's work on holarchies. Sociocracy was developed mainly by Kees Boeke and Gerard Endenburg in the Netherlands. Its global website defines the sociocratic method as "a way of producing and leading organization on the basis of equivalence in decision making through the principle of consent". I first came across it while looking for a subject for my graduate thesis. I read the book on sociocracy and participated in a sociocratic thesis circle consisting of my thesis coordinator, other students writing their thesis and Gerard Endenburg, who is a professor at the University of Maastricht, where I study international business.
More recently, I was sent an interview with Brian Robertson, President and CEO of Ternary Software, a company organized around the principles of sociocracy. In this article, Robertson combines his understanding of Wilber's work on holarchies with the ideas of sociocracy, to arrive at what he calls ‘holacracy'. These ideas turned out to be very relevant to a conversation I'm involved in, concerned with the design of the organizational structure of the Dutch node of the Center for Human Emergence (the story of which is told over at Peter Merry's blog, here on Zaadz).
From what I had seen of it so far, I had a feeling that sociocracy seems to be leaning a bit too much towards consensus-based decision-making. Living in a country that has taken consensus to its extreme in political decision-making, I am acutely aware of the limitations of it. As such, I intended to write a critical article on sociocracy and holacracy, but in the process of re-reading and reflecting, I hit upon some partial assumptions and projections of my own. I'm glad I did, because it turns out that a conversation around Robertson's version of sociocracy might well be an interesting and fruitful investment of time! (Apparently, the Integral Institute is also considering adopting holacracy [source: Integral Visioning, Robertson's blog].)
The four main tenets of sociocracy, and therefore of holacracy, are:
1. Decision Making by Consent: Consent is a method of decision-making whereby the arguments presented in discussing a decision are of paramount importance, and the result of the discussion is that no one present knows of a paramount reason to continue discussion before proceeding with the proposed decision.
2. Circle Organization: The organization is built of a hierarchy of semi-autonomous circles. Each circle has its own aim, given by the higher-level circle, and has the authority and responsibility to execute, measure, and control its own processes to move towards its aim.
3. Double-Linking: A lower circle is always linked to the circle above it via at least two people who belong to and take part in the decision making of both the higher circle and the lower circle. One of these links is the person with overall accountability for the lower-level circle's results, and the other is a representative elected from within the lower-level circle.
4. Elections by Consent: People are elected to key roles exclusively by consent after open discussion (this is not a democratic majority-vote election!). Most notably, the election process applies to the representative elected from a lower-level circle to a higher-level circle.
(Taken from the interview with Brian Robertson)
The essential difference between consensus and consent is that with consensus, everyone needs to agree, ‘whereas consent requires that no one know of a reasoned and paramount objection to making the decision'. Consensus is necessarily personal, involving emotions and ego-based politics, while consent is impersonal, considering the functional value of the decision. While the meaning of the words consensus and consent is very similar, in my view the main difference is in the quality of the interactions. When engaged in from an egocentric or ethnocentric position, the interactions will get personal and outcomes will, at worst, serve one person or faction, and at best be a compromise. However, when interactions in the circle take place at the worldcentric level, individual positions are no longer fear- and ego-based, but serve ‘the whole'. Again, this is my interpretation of things - Robertson also discusses these issues in his interview.
Without going into too much detail on the principles of sociocracy and holacracy themselves, I'd like to mention the following strengths of this system, as I see them:
- taps collective intelligence
- more adequate in light of increasing complexity, interdependency and speed of change, human need for self-actualization, and pathological effects of existing structures
- facilitates conscious evolution of the organization (in the Top Circle)
- scales horizontally and vertically (organizational span and developmental depth)
- bottom-up empowerment, rather than top-down control
However, there are still two issues on my mind, one more fundamental and one to do with Robertson's use of holarchies. The fundamental issue I see has to do with the difference between consensus and consent. As I see it, the long-term success of the sociocratic method hinges critically on people's capacity to take an impersonal, worldcentric stance. Robertson mentions that possible attempts at sabotage or stonewalling decision-making are prevented by the principle of consent, and that it actually helps one figure out where such attempts are coming from and address the root issues. I agree that this is possible, and this is proof of sociocracry's potential. However, it presupposes that people are willing and able to recognize and address their root issues. That takes a lot of courage, and I know I don't succeed as often as I'd like to. I don't think sociocracy/holacracy is for everyone, and I don't think it's 100% foolproof. I'd love to hear (different) opinions on this!
The second issue I have with holacracy is more specifically tied to Robertson's application of the notion of holarchy to the organizational structure. While he recognizes the need to distinguish between individual and collective holarchies, he goes on to confuse them anyway. The individual holarchy of atom, molecule, cells, etc. is clear enough (if not, I've explained this in another post). However, as an example of a collective holarchy, he mentions teams to departments to companies. This is where I don't agree. When you move to a higher level in a holarchy, it implies that the higher level transcends and includes the lower level - that's why it's called a holarchy. Transcendence implies a qualitative transformation, emergent properties, novelty.
Moving from a team to a department to a company, in my view, is not transcendence. It's not a qualitative transformation, and therefore it's not a vertical holarchy. Wilber has commented upon this in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (p. 50) where he considers the common confusion of horizontal communion, or self-adaptation, and vertical self-transcendence:
Some writers, such as Koestler, lump together self-adaptation and self-transcendence and refer to them interchangeably, because both embody a type of "going beyond". But apart from that similarity, the two are different in degree and in kind. In self-adaptation or communion, one finds oneself to be part of a larger whole; in self-transformation one becomes a new whole, which has its own new forms of agency and communion. [...]
As Ilya Prigogine puts it, the various levels and stages of evolution are irreducible to each other because the transitions between them are characterized by symmetry breaks, which simply means that they are not equivalent rearrangements of the same stuff (whatever that "stuff" might be), but are in part a significant transcendence, a novel and creative twist.
(Emphasis in the original)
While I agree that there is a developmental holarchy (e.g. Piaget's preoperational to concrete operational to formal operational cognitive development) that can and often does to some extent coincide with the organizational hierarchy, I don't agree that the organizational hierarchy from team to department to company is itself a holarchy. However, since they do often coincide to some extent, this problem is not insurmountable in practice. A more problematic use of holarchies occurs when Robertson jumps to the industry level and likens the company to an individual and the industry to the collective, claiming that this is a different holarchy altogether:
Just like a human maintains its own dominant monad even while a member of a company, so too do companies maintain their own dominant monad even while a member of an industry. An industry is a collective of individual companies just as a team is a collective of individual humans (and an industry is also an individual in its own right, just like a company, but in a completely orthogonal way to the individuality of its membership).
Again, I don't agree - the implications of this line of reasoning are somewhat dangerous, as a dominant monad has absolute control over its sub-holons (see Wilber's Excerpt C: The Ways We Are in This Together on ‘constitutive components' and ‘participating partners').
I think this use of the notion of holarchy is deeply problematic. However, it can easily be corrected and is in no way central to the strengths of the sociocratic and holacratic method, nor to most of the conclusions of Robertson's article. I would enjoy a conversation on what exactly a more healthy use of holarchies would mean for this aspect of holacracy.
All in all, I am impressed with the organizational potential of holacracy, which essentially transcends and includes sociocracy by adding some more depth and meaning, using the work of Wilber and others. I hope to continue the conversation around the organizational design of the Dutch node of the Center for Human Emergence and see if we can use the insights generated by Robertson's pioneering work to develop ourselves individually and collectively. To be continued or, better yet, to be transcended and included!
Access: Public
I sent the following e-mail to Diederick, then it occurred to me that others might be interested in it as well, so I've copied it below:
Hi Diederick,
Thanks so much for taking the time to share your thoughts and analysis - fascinating to read! If you have a chance, you might be interested in an audio dialog between a colleague and I about consent and its uniqueness from consensus - you can download it here.
Regarding the individual/social holarchy issue, I believe I understand what you're saying and it all resonates with me, yet I think there's something more going on as well. Unfortunately I don't yet know how to convey my perceptions very well. The challenge I think is in the definition of things like “team”, “department”, and “company” - those words aren't quite capturing the entities I'm sensing are transcended and included by each other. I don't mean a “team” in the sense of a group of people working together, not at all - that's not transcended by a department, as you point out.
Rather, I mean something else, something natural that once existed as just a team and now exists as something much more, leaving its original transcended self behind. If you read the section of my article on how Ternary grew from a one-team company to a multiple-department company with this thought in mind, it might get closer to conveying what I'm perceiving here. It's not actually a “team” that I'm trying to refer to, but something else; wish I had the language (most of what I write comes not from theory but from my own direct experience and interpretation of these entities, so it's quite hard to communicate effectively sometimes, particularly when our culture lacks the language to capture these perceptions accurately!).
Hope that helps - cheers!
- Brian
~D,
i see that you found this recent geeky AQAL(TM) terminology. nice. i'll leave it to your uber-geekiness to slice and dice this new thing. then let's see if we can get consensus. LOL.
~C
awesome,, so glad to hear discussion begin to take place around this. Brian visited us here in Boulder last week where Integral Institute is adopting Holacracy and it was very enlightening. Brian got us started applying Holacracy a few months ago and it has been an eye opening experience. I-I has been a flex-flow, agentic, loose organization of folks with a deep passion to further the work of Ken Wilber in any way available to us. As we grow we are learning that an organizational sturcture that can trancend and include this freedom will make us much more effective in the world. Holacracy immediately resonated as a good possibility.
As we have implemented this system the biggest thing we notice is all the stuff( tensions, things falling through cracks, etc) that is actually going on in our organization that was previously not explicit.
Since Holacracy is so new, we are one of the early guinea pigs that will experientially iron out all of these growing pains and help to distill this system into the most effective form possible. We can talk about it all day,,and we will,,the real learning comes from living it.
Lets do it,
casey
Brian, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this - much appreciated. I would listen to the mp3, but I'm caged in by corporate firewalls and such, so I'll try and get it some other way later. Looking forward to hearing this.
You mention that the collective holarchy you're referring to is not one of a literal team, department and company, but rather something about the interactions that take place in the space we refer to using those words. I appreciate that nuance. Part of the problem is the language, since there isn't any, really.
I've been thinking about what exactly it is that is holarchical in what you're referring to. In one sense, it feels almost like company might be the 'lowest rung', as it may be more fundamental (more span), while actual functional teams might be some rungs up the 'ladder', as they could be viewed as being more significant (more depth). Still that doesn't seem to work exactly.
Another way of looking at it might be to let go of dimensions of size (team, dep't, company, etc.) and look at the deep structures, for example by using Spiral Dynamics or some other line of development. Maybe we'd find deep collective structures layered on top of each other, such as an informal, clannish network structure (purple), a body of rules and procedures (the traditional view of 'an organization') (blue), a functional, task-oriented, entrepreneurial organization (a more modern view of 'an organization') (orange), an informal (postconventional informal, not preconventional informal as with purple), people-oriented network of relationships (green) and perhaps a functional-processual-holarchical conscious organization (yellow), with new forms of organizing (as a verb) continually evolving. Just thinking out loud, obviously. This might cut across the measures of size, such as team, dep't and company, and be more of an underlying holarchy showing up in communication and leadership styles, conflicts of values and the likes. It makes more sense to me, but then again it's also a lot harder to talk about and see this kind of holarchy than it is to talk about and see the organizational hierarchy based on size. We'd need to work on evolving the language to enact this worldspace. An exciting challenge to be sure!
Casey, thanks for dropping in and tearing the veil of doubt concerning I-I's adoption of holacracy: this is great news! Having observed the I-I organization from a distance and talking to some people in and around it, I have wondered about the level of organizational evolution it 'was at'. There has been 'evidence' for seeing it as a red, imperial, power-driven empire, but then again, there has been as much evidence for seeing it as a yellow, functional organization or even a 'ruthless compassion' coral one. It's hard to tell, for me at least. Obviously, a language as simple as that one (of one values line, i.e. SDi) can never get close to signifying all the levels of complexity and subtlety of the actual reality, but remembering that fact, we can still try, right? What are your thoughts on this? If it has been a bit of an empire, sociocracy will be a radical change of course, don't you think? If not, it's less radical but still a course with an incredible potential for conscious collective evolution!
That's enough for now, signing off,
Diederick
I think we have several organizational transformations going on. I-I is only a couple of years old and was started in a totally bootstrap manner by Ken himself. This has resulted in a slow, steady and controllable entrpreneurial venture with Ken at the helm. Over the past year we took on a lot more projects and more staff and we are outgrowing the ability to be managed by just Ken(or any one person.) In light of this we felt the need for a clear structure that could place I-I in a 'liberating framework.' Standard models we're not too appealing to Ken or the people at I-I. Holacracy came to us almost divinely as a perfect solution in theory so we decided to put it into practice.
I-I as an organization has never been power driven. Our old system was so loose, it depended on the styles of the individuals to get things done. it was a bit chaotic as you can imaging, but we manage do to a whole lot with very few resources. Think what we might do when our Requisite Structure is revealed and implemented.
case
~D
after actually reading everything you've written, i'm just floored by the keeness of your observations and critical skills. in short, you are uber-geeky and then some :)
you said: Without going into too much detail on the principles of sociocracy and holacracy themselves, I'd like to mention the following strengths of this system, as I see them:
- taps collective intelligence
- more adequate in light of increasing complexity, interdependency and speed of change, human need for self-actualization, and pathological effects of existing structures
- facilitates conscious evolution of the organization (in the Top Circle)
- scales horizontally and vertically (organizational span and developmental depth)
- bottom-up empowerment, rather than top-down control
although Holacracy implied this already, i would add collaborative intelligence. collaborative intelligence, although a subset of collective intelligence, is more focused. there are lots of similarities but there are also important subtle distinctions. i posted about collaborative / collective intelligence a while back. check it out. i would love to hear your thoughts on it using your Holacrical beer-goggles :)
also, if you haven't done so, i suggest you check out Wisdom of Crowds. i think it has lots of important stuff that can be applied to a Holacracy (that is if holacracy hasn't transcended and included its ideas yet).
” Under what circumstances is the crowd smarter?
There are four key qualities that make a crowd smart. It needs to be diverse, so that people are bringing different pieces of information to the table. It needs to be decentralized, so that no one at the top is dictating the crowd's answer. It needs a way of summarizing people's opinions into one collective verdict. And the people in the crowd need to be independent, so that they pay attention mostly to their own information, and not worrying about what everyone around them thinks. ”
keep on hacking my friend. exciting challenge indeed!
~C (for Collaborative Intelligence)
Casey, thanks for responding to my provocations and speculations ;-). I'm really glad to hear your views on this. It's obviously difficult to get a balanced perspective on things from such a removed position, so there will always be a lot of projection and speculation going on. In that respect, I do think the I-I could be more vulnerable and transparent in its communication, but I have a good amount of trust in the discerning judgment of those that manage to attract such a consisent stream of pure wisdom and compassion, so I'll shut up already. I will go back to observing the unfolding in the loving embrace of my awareness ;-).
~C dude, it feels very good to have floored you, and I'll try and make sure it happens more often. I don't differentiate between collaborative and collective wisdom and/or intelligence, but I appreciate your not-so-subtle plugging of this book and will put it on the list. There is just sooo much stuff that is waiting, no begging to be integrated and flex-flowed into the Big Picture. I'll keep on doing just that for a while, until I tire of it and decide to stop slicing 'n dicing up reality and relax into not-knowing for a while. But that can wait for a couple more years. I'm far too young to get to that stage.
;-)
~D Dude, with my beer-goggles, i differentiate between collective / collaborative intelligence by their more focused “awareness” and participation. in general collective intelligence can manifest in crowds without the crowd's conscious intention, while in collaborative intelligence there is a general purpose and intention even though it's enacted via flex-flow. hence i used the DEPTH and SPAN analogy very loosely.
you've always floored me so no need to exert more effort. just keep slicing and dicing and relaxing into not-knowing in between :)
~C
hiya - thanks for your as ever insightful analysis diederick.
i have experienced the consent / consensus difference in practice, and it is very noticeable. when you say to people, “we are not asking you all to be fully behind this decision, but just that you have no major objection, so that we can move on, and revisit it later once we see what happens when it turns into practice” - it somehow helps people to get their more emotional attachment out of the way. and when people do dig their heels in, so far it has proved to be important insight. however i do agree that this would probably not work with primarily ethno- / ego-centric consciousness. it is a world-centric technology that requires world-centric interiors to create fit.
on the holarchy issue - i had a similar reaction as you when i read brian’s piece at first. the way i explain it to myself is that the collective agency emerges out of the interaction between individuals - it is the field between us - ie the lower left quadrant. that is a holarchy that can transcend and include itself. eg people may start relating together in a primarily sd-orange field, that may evolve through sd-green into sd-yellow (and can always regress into sd-blue / -red).
what i hear in his response and original article is that the department emerged out of the interactions within the team. this description is a lower-right perspective. that development would have happened in strong co-evolution with the developments in the lower-left, so in that sense it could be seen as a holarchy. however, what one cannot do is say that all the teams in a department are transcended and included by that department in a holarchy - unless the department structure emerges out of interaction between all the people in the teams, reinforced by a collective evolution in the lower-left. see what i’m trying to get at…?
love, peter
Thanks everyone for this great discussion. I’m very interested in Holacracy, and the idea of a more Integral form of organization/government, and I’ve been trying to keep up with at least some of the ideas behind it.
I’d like to add one thought… I imagine that one of the cornerstones of an Integral organizational structure is that because the main goal is the health of the entire organization/geographical region/SD spiral, it does value and even need the first tier SD folks. And the way that this happens is that everyone, no matter where they are developmentally, has innate talent and skills they’ve acquired. Those talents and skills are put to work to add to the collective intellegence and resulting product (be it a gizmo, a set of policies, or a thriving school). And the individuals at the baseline circles don’t need to be thinking in a worldcentric way because their jobs don’t require it. In consent-focused discussions, people only need to bring up the concerns they have at the level and in their circle. That’s why I think this structure is so powerful, because it allows and encourages everyone to be responsible for their own health and success, while offering support and resources from the top to actually make that happen. It seems to be to be the best of both top down and bottom up organization.
I say this because as a sometime preschool teacher I’m aware of how important it is to allow individuals at all levels of development the space and encouragement to thrive so that the whole community (teachers, parents, other staff, and, of course, the kids) can take care of itself, on both an individual and community level. Having Red and Purple and Blue members of a community is not at all a problem when you value and focus on the positive skills that are being learned at those levels.
Finally, I just want to add that my own experience of consensus has been pretty much exactly what you folks are describing as “consent”. So you may want to consider that the subtleties of the various terms being used are causing more confusion and frustration than you may want. I’m not sure what a solution would be, though! Perhaps just less of a focus on terminology, and more of a focus on process?
Thanks again!
Peace, Love, and Bicycles,
Turtle
great input. Regarding 'consent' Brian Robertson has offically change the terminolgy from 'decisions by consent' to “Decision by integrative emergence' to address some of the confusion around this issue. In practice, the two are very different. more info at www.holacracy.org.
c
Hello Dathane here. Whats up Brian. I loved the four hour program Brian and Tom hosted. They causes me to think deeply about innovative business practices such as holacracy and sociocracy, corporate wellness, and corporate cultural studies.
I tell you; holacracy is a business practice which is hard to explain but its in the practice that one gets it.
I remember Tom Thomison, Brian business partner in the HolacracyOne venture, that orange stage achievers was curious how Tom convinced those “tree huggers” folks to implement an alternative business practice that spoke directly to being a competitive advantage in a traditional capitalist system. The “tree hugging” green-meme folks wondered how Tom sold them on a system based on collaboration and social equality to those entrenched “top-down” capitalist money hogs. The point is, as Tom and Brian stated, Holacracy is a cup that can be filled with (almost) any value system. This is why I do not see the growth hierarchy interpretation in the concept of Holacracy. Green, Orange, Blue, and Yellow folks have different reasons for implementing this system. The point is any stage (notice I didnt mention red) can implement Holacracy I feel. However, the move towards an egoless decision making process in which the solutions are emergent is a tough call and it takes work for those who are willing to work towards this ideal of getting to those root issues that Diederick said talks about. That maybe a motivation for employees within an organization towards a 2nd tier center of gravity is needed for a holacratic business to flourish long term.
Holarchy might be defined not as “measures of size, such as team, dep't and company, and be more of an underlying holarchy showing up in communication and leadership styles, conflicts of values and the likes.” as Diederick talks about, but communication, styles, and values as examples of the holons that constitute holacracy does not jive either. I know Diederick is thinking aloud and so am I. Individual and collective holons deals with person(s) place(s), thing(s), but idea(s)? Mark Edwards and Ken Wilbur discussion that individual and collective holons are perspectives (Edwards' view) and actual realities (Wilbur's view) is illustrates the ambiguity of what we mean by holons fundamentally. It is tough to wrap language around this elusive topic, but I am glad that i am discussing it.
As I deepen my knowledge of Holacracy, I will contribute more in the future.