Huge Cajones
According to “No Managers Required: How Zappos Ditched The Old Corporate Structure For Something New”, by the end of 2014, Zappos.com will have dismantled their corpo pyramid. Under the stewardship of maverick CEO Tony Hsieh, the 1500 employee company will be transitioned into a “holacracy” of 400, self-governing circles.
Talk about having huge cajones. Just think of the disruptive risk to business performance of making such a daring structural/operational change to a billion dollar enterprise.
Although I look forward to watching how the transformation plays out, I’m a bit skeptical that Mr. Hsieh can pull it off. After visiting the site of the “consultant” that will be advising the company during the transition (holacracy.org) and browsing through the ungodly long, complicated, formal Holacracy Constitution, the first thought that came to mind was “D’oh!“.
Twitter friend and guest blogger @serialmom sums up the situation with this insightful tweet:
I work in a triangular shaped organization and the ‘disruptive risk to business performance’ has already happened. They could let Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes run through the building taking all the managers away on their battle ponies and there’d be less disruption to business performance than what happens every single day because that DIDN’T happen.
Hah, and LOL! Genghis is da boooomb!