The world of work is changing - we have already discussed it several times on our blog. This also includes the fact that employers and employees today are more and more at eye level and that the employer has to prove himself more and more with his employees. But what if the line between employer and employee becomes blurred? Or it disappears?
This has already happened in many places in recent years: Companies without a hierarchy have established themselves, also known as holocracies. They were formed as a derivation of the Scrum method and in recent years have sloshed over to Germany from the USA, where they were developed by Brian Robertson around 2007. The core principles of these companies are therefore self-organization, agile methods and collective intelligence.
A holocracy needs four pillars. These are the following:
- Double connection: Each working group needs a representative, who takes over the communication between the remaining circles. This ensures transparency and topicality.
- Separation of operational and control meetings: Personnel, finances and money - these are all operational topics and should be avoided at control meetings. Instead, strategies and ideas are discussed.
- Distribution of roles: Roles and areas of responsibility are clarified in advance or redefined in control meetings. This avoids confusion and lack of transparency.
- Dynamic control: In the working groups already mentioned, every employee should have a chance to contribute his or her ideas; each group is therefore equally involved in the control of the company.
It is possible that the traditional, hierarchical management style is still so widespread because it is so firmly anchored in people's minds. Without wanting to discredit that traditional style, however, the Holocratic style of leadership does not treat people as mere commanders, which in turn can lead to increased motivation and thus increased productivity.
Clearly, radical change is not always easy, especially in our rigid, bureaucratic systems. But in everyday working life everyone has noticed that something has to change - a more relaxed way of dealing with colleagues and a varied day after all do mean a lot, and the holocratic system makes a significant contribution to this. Of course, you don't have to implement the whole thing all at once, step by step, with compromises is the way to go. Maybe, instead of getting rid of management, integrate the head-offs into their teams first? If you have confidence in your team, giving everyone an equal amount of responsibility shouldn't be difficult for you. So - maybe just ask your superior to take a step in a new direction?
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