Holacracy at Springest

How we run our company without managers and more productive and happy Springeteers

Er is ook een Nederlandse versie van Holacracy bij Springest

What is Holacracy?

Springest works according to the Holacracy method. Holacracy is a new management model for organisations, whereby authority is distributed in an organic, flat structure with ‘circles’ (teams) and ‘roles’ (defining the responsibilities each team member has). Due to its distributed authority system each employee is empowered to decide how to energise their ‘roles’ and bears the responsibility for its operation.

Holacracy & Springest

Since 2012 Springest has been using Holacracy as a way to grow without the potential barriers of bureaucracy. Due to the dynamic and transparent structure, the organisation is able to stay agile. In Holacracy the mission (purpose) of the entire organisation and the objectives of all activities are central. Tensions and problems cannot be swept under the carpet, but serve as fuel for the development of the organisation. This is done by means of effective meetings, with plenty of room for initiative and influence of all team members.

While introducing Holacracy, Springest was supported by Energized.org – a licensed Holacracy implementation training provider. Energized.org strives for the creation of environments where work becomes liberated from traditional constraints. You can find multiple implementation stories on their blog, one of them is the story of our colleague Debbie

Articles about Holacracy practice at Springest

Learn more about Holacracy

If you want to learn more about Holacracy, check out the HR / Holacracy subject on Springest.co.uk.

Here’s what a tactical & governance meeting looks like:

Springest organises Meetups for Holacracy enthusiasts on a regular basis, together with HolacracyOne and Energized.org. Please join the Holacracy Meetup Group to stay informed and participate!

Our cartoon on decision making in Holacracy

Inspired by the famous cartoon “what if we invest in learning, and those people leave > what if we don’t, and they stay?”, we asked famous cartoonist Nozzman to create a Holacracy cartoon for us. It  shows two manager types discussing red graphs going down, while an employee stands in the background, ignored, with an idea and green graph going up. It reads: “What if we let people make decisions and they’re wrong? | What if we don’t, and they’re right?”.

The idea behind the cartoon is that Holacracy makes decisions “cheaper” by creating a bottom up approach to decision making. It allows for rapid iteration and experimentation. That way, decisions become more data driven, since they’re grounded in reality and proven by experimentation. That in turn makes bad decisions become less costly, and good decisions more likely to bubble up in the organisation.

Click on the image on the right for a bigger version. Feel free to use it without alteration, and by linking to or mentioning this page as your source. You’ll find the Dutch version of this cartoon on our Dutch Holacracy page.

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