B2C Data

Today’s organizations are often faced with increasingly complex challenges, requiring unprecedented agility and responsiveness . By revolutionizing the way businesses operate, holacracy presents itself as an answer to these challenges.

This decentralized governance system offers a bold alternative to classic pyramid structures. But how can this method really transform the dynamics of a technical team ?

At Adimeo, within the Framework & DevOps Pole, we have experimented with this approach… and the results are convincing. In this article, we explain what holacracy is, but above all we share our experience with you.

Informal discussion between colleagues in a modern workspace, illustrating an article on holacracy.

What are the foundations of holacracy?
The pyramidal organization, with which we are used to working, has advantages such as clarity of structure and team cohesion, but it also involves risks and limitations.

For example, an employee's innovative ideas may be ig database misunderstood or poorly communicated by the manager, functional boundaries may be unclear, and decision-making may be slow because of the need to escalate up the line of command.

Conversely, holacracy is based on the decentralization of authority and the distribution of responsibilities, allowing for faster and more relevant decision-making at all levels of the organization.




Instead of fixed roles, holacracy proposes dynamic roles, defined by a purpose , clearly established areas of authority and accountabilities . These roles are grouped into self-organizing circles, each with its own structure and objectives, but aligned with the overall vision of the company.

Diagram illustrating the circle of the organization in holacracy, showing a super circle representing the company, sub-circles representing skills, and interconnected roles within.

These two contrasting approaches to organizational governance offer different perspectives on how to structure and manage a business.

How does holacracy work?
Holacracy is distinguished by its operational structure that promotes self-organization and collective decision-making. Structuring meetings are at the heart of this system . They include strategy, governance and triage meetings, each playing a specific role:

Strategy meetings are dedicated to thinking about the company's long-term directions and defining the broad outlines of collective action.
Governance meetings focus on the organizational structure itself, allowing members of the organization to create, adapt, or remove roles and policies to meet the changing needs of the business.
Triage meetings address current operations and immediate issues, focusing on identifying obstacles and implementing solutions.
These meetings are structured to ensure efficient management of time and resources, while allowing active participation from all members of the organization. This organizational system thus encourages a culture of transparency and accountability, where each employee has the opportunity to contribute to the governance and success of the company.



Webinar
Technical management: how to deploy holacracy to promote innovation?
Contact us
What are the benefits of holacracy?
The benefits of holacracy are multiple. It offers unprecedented agility , allowing the organization to continually adapt to changing markets. Transparency is also increased, with each role defined in writing, clarifying expectations and responsibilities. In addition, shared responsibility strengthens employee engagement, making employees feel more involved and better understood in the company's objectives.

# Feedback from Adimeo
At Adimeo, adopting this management style has been beneficial for the Framework & DevOps Division. Employees express an increased sense of involvement and appreciation, and the diversification of tasks has allowed for better ownership of the topics that interest them. Holacracy has also served as a springboard for autonomy and speaking out, particularly for the team's juniors.

I share with you their impressions on this change:

"We are more concerned. It shows good consideration for employees ."
"It's a good way to show that we are interested in the well-being and good understanding within the team."
“It allows us to diversify the work of developers and to tackle subjects that interest us .”
"It's something I like. Overall it's positive ."
"We are improving day by day, so I find it extremely beneficial for us. I am fully convinced."
"It works well . I think it's cool that we're changing our ways of doing things, that we can discuss, suggest things to improve the subjects."
These testimonials reflect the enthusiasm and commitment of Adimeo teams towards holacracy and the new dynamic it brings to their daily work.

How to implement holacracy?
Illustration of the steps to implement holacracy, including announcement, ally strategy, deployment, improvements, feedback, and next iteration.

Here is a suggestion of possible steps to implement a mode of governance based on holacracy.

The announcement  - Point out the weaknesses of the current organization by projecting it into the future. Present how this new mode of organization works and how it can solve future organizational problems .
The ally strategy  - Take individual time with each person to discuss the announced organization and reassure them . Take the opportunity to question employees about their future role based on a first version of the role register prepared in advance.
Deployment  - Conduct a 1st governance meeting in which to assign roles via application. Officially communicate the organization within the company.
Improvements  - Modify, create, delete roles through regular governance meetings . And above all, lead by example ! Go back on decisions you have made yourself if they are questioned with the team and do not fit with reality.
Feedback  - Organize feedback on the organization by a third party , after one year.
Subsequent improvements  - Iterate in subsequent years to adapt the organization to external changes by completing and governing the circle's scope of intervention.