Written Case Assignment #1

Who Needs a Boss?

AAKASH TANWAR

300298449

BUSN-1210-002
Q1- What is Holacracy?

Answer: Holacracy, in my understanding, is a highly unstructured organization arrangement. It’s

an arrangement without any levels or hierarchy in which the central goal is free flow of ideas,
along with work effectiveness. Without any formal job titles and hierarchical structure, all
employees form what can be described as ‘a single entity’ or a group of entities that’s expected
to complete all the organization’s work without being influenced by any nonproductive and
unwanted corporate quagmire, a quagmire in which many brilliant ideas fail to ever see the light
of the day. Holacracy is pretty much analogous to freedom, freedom to decide what to do and
how to do it as long as it’s a productive organizational activity.

Q2- What benefits do you see in an organization where there are no job titles, no managers, and
no hierarchy?

Answer: A free flowing organization that is free from any obvious hierarchical structure
certainly presents many astounding possibilities. We should see an increase in productivity levels
of the employees since they have to engage in only one thing that really matters: work. Also, any
new idea can be transmitted to everyone without any hindrance and the best ones can be
implemented much quickly. This makes Holacracy a self-refining organizational arrangement.
Since there are no departments, contributing to the organization in the domain you always
wanted should be a cakewalk. Struck in operations despite having an amazing knack for business
development? Holacracy is for you! For you can easily and actively contribute to marketing
activities of the organization. Since there are no managers, every person will get the opportunity
to take up leadership roles and initiatives. Ideally, no employee would overburdened since he/she
will take up only that many roles that they are capable of fulfilling in the most efficient and
effective manner. Further, no one will be able to take credit for someone’s work owing to the
transparency of the entire structure, which makes it crystal clear who the initiator is. It will also
be supposedly easier to identify the ones who aren’t pulling their own weight since the number
of roles they would take up is going to be relatively few.
Q3- What challenges does a Holacratic approach have?

Answer: As cited by our instructor Mr. Simon Parker in his PowerPoint presentation “Changes
doesn’t necessarily lead to fewer problems, it leads to newer problems”. Holacracy is one
significant change and it comes with its own set of challenges. In order to understand the adverse
effect Holacracy may have on an organization, we need to first comprehend what an organization
is. “It’s a deliberate arrangement of people to accomplish some specific purpose” (Robbins,
Coulter, Leach, Kilfoil, Management Essentials, 12th Canadian edition, Page 6). Since by
definition, an organization is a deliberate arrangement, it’s somewhat enthralling how an
arrangement with such a high degree of randomness would function effectively. Further every
organization-and every department within an organization-exists for a specific purpose. It’s
almost guaranteed that due to existence of such ease of cross-functional movement, many people
will be tempted to try things that they ‘feel’ they can contribute to, but might actually end up
hampering that particular function. There is also a possibility of emergence of a dominant group
that will take the most rewarding activities under its domain despite that group not being the best
at it, leading to resentment among the fellow organization members. Further, it is absurd to think
that number of roles taken by an employee is an indicator of how much weight the employee is
pulling since it’s pretty easy to take up a lot of roles and yet be a slacker. Not everyone is a
leader, although the idea of decentralizing the leadership role is quite appealing to start with, it’s
comes with one big drawback: confusion. A person who isn’t an initiator/ leader might find the
arrangement chaotic and almost impossible to work in. One may argue that fellow
group/organization member will come to the rescue but it always comes with the risk of
improper guidance and an employee may end up with not realizing his/her full potential leading
to misery at most. To conclude, a Holacratic approach definitely isn’t a divine revelation that can
potentially transform the ways organizations function. It comes with its own set of unique
problems that, without proper and rigorous risk mitigation, may put an organization in a not so
pleasant situation.

Q4- Discuss why would you or would you not like to work in an organization like this.
Answer: I would not like to work in such an organization. I believe specializations/ separate
departments consist of different set or people with arguably different and defined thought
processes because of a reason: they are the best at it. Obviously, if a structure like Holacracy is
adopted, it’s very likely to prove to be more of a distraction to rather than an enhancement. What
would prevent a person from operations from wasting time and efforts in business development
that has much greater rewards than the former? Further, it’s expected that employees will
contribute “wherever they can”. Without holistic cross functional training, employees will
eventually end up doing things what they usually do and will have absolutely no idea about what
they are best at and how they are going to go about doing it, rendering the whole exercise of
Holacracy meaningless. Further, one argument proponents of holacracy model present is that
good ideas get clogged in traditional organizational structures warranting the implementation of
Holacracy. However, this is far from true. Nowadays majority of organizations are trying to best
foster innovation and are implementing ways to do so. “63% of the US companies now hire
Chief Innovation Officer”, according to Forbes coaches council report (July 2017). I believe that
it will be more fulfilling for the professional and the organization if a professional were to train
someone to do his job and then go about exploring cross-functional opportunities while keeping
an eye on one’s existing department to ensure its proper functioning. I consider myself a good
planner and even for my career, I prefer a clearly defined career path, with scope of taking up
additional responsibility, than ambiguity. Further, I prefer an organization that has its unique
culture since it gives the employees a sense of belonging. Holacratic environment leaves none to
little space for a unique cultural development. Rather, it’s possible that the entire workforce
picks up the traits of the dominant group, something that can harm the organization especially if
the acquired traits are counter-productive.
 BIBLOGRAPHY

 Management Essentials by Robbins, Coulter, Leach, Kilfoil, 12th Canadian edition.

 PowerPoint presentations made by Mr. Simon Parker.

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/07/13/what-can-your-
organization-do-to-become-more-innovative/#61b514254bfa