English: This is a picture of Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Zappos is going holacratic: no job titles, no managers, no hierarchy
During the 4-hour meeting, Hsieh talked about how Zappos’ traditional organizational structure is being replaced with Holacracy, a radical “self-governing” operating system where there are no job titles and no managers. The term Holacracy is derived from the Greek word holon, which means a whole that’s part of a greater whole. Instead of a top-down hierarchy, there’s a flatter “holarchy” that distributes power more evenly. The company will be made up of different circles—there will be around 400 circles at Zappos once the rollout is complete in December 2014—and employees can have any number of roles within those circles. This way, there’s no hiding under titles; radical transparency is the goal.
What do you think about this style of management? If you happen to be in Asia, do you think this kind of style is suitable for Asian culture? Feel free to leave us comments or contact us for discussion.
