Stop Your Agile Transformation Right Now

Ignoring that the article ends with a sales pitch . . .

Caveat: I'm a Zappos.com employee and former IBMer and Amazonian.

The point of the Zappos model is to capture and grow ideas from anywhere inside the organization. As the story goes, in a traditional organization, if you have a great idea for a new product, expansion of business, or whatnot, your manager or his manager can kill the idea. In a self-organized company (like Valve or Zappos) you can sell other people on the idea, form a team, and build it. The top-level circle in a Holacracy is there to allocate budget to the team, at least long enough to determine if it provides value.

The year-over-year continued growth of Valve and Zappos show that this can work, but only when control is granted to every team, circle, and employee, and if there's a strong business model in place to afford to experiment.