What’s interesting about the Zappos version of corporate reform is that it combines several familiar tropes of management theory. Hsieh is a successful entrepreneur and a heroic CEO and an inspirational “happiness” guru (his book’s subtitle is A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose) who happens to be fascinated with ideas derived from network theory and evolutionary biology, with systems that are at least partially self-regulating and self-organizing, like ant colonies and, to some extent, cities. Thus, it’s not really surprising that he would be attracted to a management technique like Holacracy.
Holacracy is, at its core, a commercial product.
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Roger Hodge, First, Let’s Get Rid of All the Bosses
Yet another attempt to get past the superficial at Zappo’s and the company’s ‘adoption’ of Holacracy. This one fails like all the rest, and perhaps suggests that understanding the Zappo’s-culture-on-Holacracy is unknowable, just like any other corporate culture. But in general we’ve accepted as foundational so much of what makes up conventional business culture that we simply accept the stereotypes and social rules that form the fabric of our everyday work places. It’s only when those practices are called into question that we notice all the warts and weirdnesses, like looking closely at your face in the mirror makes you realize how blotchy your skin is.
But in a typically American fashion, as awareness grows that something is profoundly wrong with business culture, some enterprising soul turns that gap into a commercial product. Which is something like wanting to write the great American novel and winding up with Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, instead.
from Stowe Boyd http://stoweboyd.com/post/130741101257
