One of my most transformational moments of my professional life came in a plane flying from Dubai to Vienna to attend the Society of Organisational Learnings Global Forum in 2005. In anticipation of this forum I read Alain de Vulpian’s seminal article about societal changes that are fundamentally changing the way we will organise, work and live together. The one insight that shook my world was his observation that:
[box] “We are in the process of moving from a pyramidal, hierarchical society to a single-story society where heterarchical relationships dominate”[/box]
He bases this, amongst other things, on the change that has happened to the family unit, the pivotal structure around which our society is still built. The family has undergone a prodigious transformation during the past 150 years. Some studies show that in western countries the proportion of those who think that the father of a family should be the boss in the home has been in steady decline over the past thirty years. In France, for example, 60% thought this in 1974 and 41% in 1984; only 29% thought this in 1999 with the Swedes leading the way in Europe with only 10% of Swedes thought that the father of a family should be the boss.
If people are not accepting hierarchy and authority at home it is only a matter of time before this translates into the workplace and chips away on the foundations laid down by Frederick Taylor on the traditional divide of work between managers and workers. The big question of course is: What Replaces It?
Zappos – the blogosphere’s poster child of new ideas on leadership and HR – has really embraced the ‘single story society’ concept and adopted a new organisational concept called “Holacracy”, in which the role of managers is being made redundant (The concept of “holacracy” was created by Brian Robertson in 19
Zappos has received tremendous amount of attention for its decision to adopt Holacracy and I am looking forward to hear whether it works in such a large company. My interests, however, lie in the fact whether a concept such as Holacracy would work in this part of the world.
Does an Authority-Less Society Make Sense in Asia?
The underlying question is whether the transition to such a society will be accepted in Asia. Our traditions (still) run very deep and the traditional view of the father’s role as head of the family remains extremely strong. Although every Asian father I meet will tell you that this has diminished by a significant margin over the past generation with all the indicators indicating that this change will only accelerate. However it will take a long time for the average Asian employees to feel comfortable with anything less than a (strict) hierarchical structure. We love the clarity that hierarchies provide and enjoy the shelter that a boss provides.
My personal experience with implementing concepts that steer away from clear hierarchical structures has been disappointing. Attempts to implement matrix organisations or organisational structures that give employees extensive empowerment and freedom assuming they would take the responsibility themselves have failed miserably (disclaimer: this could of course be linked to my inabilities rather than the organisation’s ability!). For now I think the hierarchical structure will continue to dominate the Asian organisational landscape, certainly for large organisations.
I would be interested – via comments – to hear your success story in creating different organisational set ups diverging from the traditional hierarchies.
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Photo Credit: Dan Zen
@ Paul, It’s true that extensive discussions has taken place within a timeframe of few years and accelerated when the concept of Holacracy has a couple of high-profile devotees such as Twitter co-founder Evan Williams (announced using it at his new company) and time management Guru David Allen (uses it run his firm) CEO of Creative Class Group and Author of UPGRADE Rana Florida (Supported the concept) Tomato processing organization Morning Star (a fully Self-Managed organization, operates with no hierarchy, no managers, and no command authority at all) and TravelBird from the Netherlands, but “Zappos” is so far the largest company to adopt the concept, in its real spirit and soul. Although it sounds nice as the concept is somehow new, to embraces the power of the company’s people, allows them to make adult decisions and trust they can be counted on getting their jobs done but this side is the world is far beyond the technological advancement and what we call “the workplace reinvention” terminologies. As we all are aware that a clear business-led strategy is the core to successful transformation, which should be understood, agreed and adopted by the whole organization and every member of the organization required to feel invested in the new process and may be taken into confident that the process is in their interest, having stated that I agree that the traditional norms of our society, in particular, is diminishing somehow but it can’t be as an example for the change in attitude or changes in complex organizational hierarchical structure straight away. The good news is our organizations are still passing through transformational phase (by the way) by allowing extensive empowerment, authority and freedom to perform under minimum supervision, in converse to the concepts of Holacracy, which has so far failed in our the social order, and the reasons for the failure remians as we are the peoples who firmly believe that some type of management and hierarchy should always be present, whether we call it “managers” or “bee-keepers” really make no difference.
Paul, feel free to continue to impress and educate us; it is our pleasure at all.
Great article and great questions. I would just clarify that Holacracy does not, “…steer away from clear hierarchical structures…” rather it advocates extremely clear hierarchical structures. This article may help: https://medium.com/holacracyone-blog/d1545d5dffa7
Thanks Paul for your article. If you’d like some answers to your question about Holacracy, you might find some in our free Holacracy webinar: http://holacracy.org/events or in the recording: http://holacracy.org/intro
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