Hi Niels, you seem to be saying that all these people in the community that see something good and positive in Holacracy are essentially falling for a “fad”, spend a lot of money and get no value out of it. Essentially, they are plain stupid according to your analysis. Otherwise they would stay away from such snake-oil practices. Right?
My view of the situation is that Holacracy actually did bring some worthwhile innovations to the table that some not so stupid people (Tony Hsieh, David Allen, Ruben Timmermann, Ev Williams) found convincing enough to give it a shot. All of them just stupid and deluded? Hmmmm. Unlikely, Niels, very unlikely.
As I mentioned before: I don’t think that any and all criticism of Holacracy is illegitimate. For starters, one is certainly well advised to distinguish Holacracy as a practice from the business decisions made by HolacracyOne. Both are imperfect to a varying degree — as any management practice or any particular business.
What I particularly object to in your argumentation is the lack thereof. You refer to third party articles as if those sources have decreed once and for all that Holacracy is dead in the water. I can assure you that it is pretty alive, but you are free to ignore that, of course. I read Zeuch, Culen and Denning and — apart from a few legitimate points — found them mostly unconvincing, misguided or uninformed. I actually responded to Andreas Zeuch (you can find it below his blog post).
To summarize:
People who see value in Holacracy are not stupid, there actually is plenty of value for anyone willing to see.
Does that justify the pricing and licensing model of HolacracyOne? Honestly, it may not work for everybody and I have my doubts from time to time as well. Still, the overall value of Holacracy practice is beyond doubt for me. It is pretty good stuff, IMO.
But as with any serious practice you can only find out if you practice it for a while. (And even practicing it for a while, like Julia Culen, doesn’t help, if you get the practice wrong.) It is hard to tell from afar. Attempts to judge it from the outside quickly degenerate to mere armchair criticism and calling it “dead”, “failed” or something of the like. That’s too simplistic for a general judgement of the situation. I recommend you be honest and say “dead for me” or “failed for me” instead of passing a global judgment that nobody asked for. I thought you were a bit more sophisticated than that, Niels.
Instead you try to market yourself on top of the alleged “failure” of a competing solution. You didn’t engage Holacracy in any way. You are just a bystander, passing a fleeting and shallow judgement. As such I will treat your remarks in this regard. You may be a big shot in the org dev world, and your work may contain valuable contributions to the future of work that many companies may benefit from, but in this regard you “failed” while trying to create a fad. That’s the irony.
