In a couple Holacracy meetings last week there were some questions about where to keep track of what everyone should be doing, so I thought I would share a portion of an e-mail I sent out to our team explaining how we should be tracking our individual tasks.

Basically, there are 4 different types of activities in Holacracy, and only two of those are actually tracked within the GlassFrog application, which is why there is some confusion.  It breaks down like this: Continue reading “Tracking Holacracy Work Items in GlassFrog” →

We are about a month and a half into our implementation of Holacracy and this past week we had our first Holacracy Tactical meeting.  Because the governance meeting is a core requirement of Holacracy it almost goes without saying that we’ve been having governance meetings since we rolled out Holacracy.  The Holacracy tactical meeting, on the other hand, is an optional meeting.  After having just one tactical meeting in my company I can see how valuable they are and it will be something we will be implementing throughout our entire organization.

Put simply, the governance meeting is for working ON the business, whereas the tactical meeting is for working IN the business.  The governance meeting is the only way for employees to propose changes to the structure of the company and for those proposals to be accepted and incorporated into the company’s governance documentation.  Without that process, there is no approved way for anyone to make any changes, so it is paramount that those meetings be held.

In a Holacracy organization, to communicate and get work done, employees don’t necessarily need to use the Holacracy tactical meeting. If a company has a current tactical meeting system they are using that is working, then by all means, they should continue to use it.  That is not the case with us.  We, like many companies, haven’t been holding the most efficient tactical meetings.  The meetings haven’t been time-efficient or structured and the output of the meetings hasn’t always been captured very well.

Like everything in Holacracy, the tactical meeting is very structured and well-documented.  It creates accountability by reviewing a check list and metric list each meeting, and capturing action items and projects in the meeting minutes that are distributed to everyone, even those that miss the meeting.  All the items are tied to roles and/or circles in Holacracy, so it just dovetails perfectly with governance.  In fact, when you assign a task to a person instead of a role it highlights it in red to remind you that you should probably have a role that is responsible for that work, not a person.

We currently have three circles that have been created, and only our Operations Circle is using the Holacracy tactical meeting.  This coming week our General Company Circle will start as well.

We’re about month into implementing Holacracy here at Intrust IT, and today we had our first awkward governance meeting. The good news is we learned our lesson so it doesn’t happen again to us, and hopefully after reading this it won’t happen to you, either.  What made it awkward was halfway through processing our tension list, one of the tensions resulted in creating a new Operations Circle.  The creation of the circle wasn’t necessarily the awkward part, it was what happened right after that. Continue reading “An Awkward Holacracy Meeting” →

Today I missed my first Holacracy governance meeting due to a board meeting I was required to attend.  Being the company champion of Holacracy I worried a bit that without me present the meeting wouldn’t happen, or worse yet something would happen in the meeting to cause everyone to become disenfranchised with Holacracy.  I think it’s a common fear that entrepreneurs have about anything they are involved with, and common among parents leaving their kids somewhere for the first time.  We all imagine the worst.

Anyway, I was very happy to find out that it was quite the opposite.  The meeting happened right on schedule, and afterwards I received an e-mail from Glassfrog reporting that five new roles had been created and one existing role had been modified.  I spoke to our facilitator and he said it was a great meeting and that everyone is starting to get into the flow and understand and appreciate the process.  Continue reading “Missing a Holacracy Meeting” →

After a role has been created in a governance meeting, then that role needs to be assigned to someone.  By default, all unassigned roles are the responsibility of the Lead Link until they are assigned to someone else, which is handled by the Lead Link.  It’s in the Lead Link’s best interest to assign a role to someone else as soon as possible, especially in the early phases of an implementation of Holacracy because a lot of new roles are created.

Today I got to assign my first role to someone.  Continue reading “Assigning a Role to a Person in Holacracy” →