The Zappos Exodus Continues After a Radical Management Experiment

When I saw the buzz around Holacracy I thought this isn't going to end well as the negatives and cliques that occur have been experienced before in bullying in high schools around the world, early Marxist movements with their purges and plenty of other situations that rely on humans being egoless and fair, when they're not.

I was also reminded of the story of the communes in Adam Curtis' All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2eagvn_all-watched-over-by...

Go to 46:45 for the bit that's relevant.

Eventually all that would happen with a Holacracy is that the people who drink after work and become friends would back each other up during meetings, the smokers would make decisions whilst smoking that the others have no input into, and the alpha personalities (sales, marketing etc.) would bully the beta personalities (tech, ops, support etc.) into submission, and anyone who is marginalised would look for others that have been marginalisd and form groups to support each other.

Next thing you know there's silos of power and dysfunction.

I'd bet that Hsieh is an Alpha, but a kind one, and thinks given the opportunity everyone would be as fair as he is.

Working or not, I do admire Hsieh taking a bold step to experiment - if it worked brilliantly he's be the leader of the year.

Looking backward, I wonder if there was a "lean" way to test a smaller version, before going company-wide.

I find fascinating what's happening at Zappos. Most people spend their entire work life complaining about their bosses and claiming more freedom and responsibility at work. Zappos introduces Holacracy that in theory looks amazing and the way to go and people just can't get use to it.

When you spend your all adult life working in a system where there is a boss and someone in charge it's really hard to wire into a new system. Will keep on following the Zappos experiment. Kudos to Tony Hsieh for the courage and leadership.