Brian J. Robertson is a serial entrepreneur and the creator of Holacracy, a comprehensive practice for governing and running our organizations.
Holacracy is an often misunderstood, massively influential social and management system. Yet it is more than that, Brian's goal with Holacracy is to give people a taste of self-governance, personal growth and empowerment to impact society.
In this episode, we dive deep into the mind that has nurtured Holacracy and brought it to adoption within 10.000+ organizations worldwide.
To start with, Holacracy is a modular, open-source, constitution-based management system with clear rules and management responsibilities. It is not no managers (although it aims to reduce the need for managers), and not no structure.
Quite to the contrary, it is more structured. The analogy Brian uses is the emergent order market-based order vs. top-down planning. Markets come up with better, more adapted, and more fit-for-purpose sets of rules, institutions, and regulations.
Brian solves for me a tension I thought about for a long time: why is it that firms in a competitive market-based system are run to a large degree by central planners?
A key answer of mine we discussed is Ronald Coase's "Theory of the Firm" which talks about the planning horizon versus scale efficiency of greater size.
Brian's answer is Holacracy. Organizations can be run more like markets and adapt more to tensions as they arise instead of relying too much on top-down decision-making.
We discuss Marc Andreessen's reservations against Holacracy, as well as its place in the order of managerial vs. entrepreneurial capitalism, as well as how it steers organizations towards "Antifragility", a term coined by Nassim Taleb.
Holacracy is more than a management system. It can be a guide to personal growth and consciousness.
Not coincidentally, Brian is currently working as well on starting a psychedelic church by using some clever legal engineering in a Stranded Technologies-like fashion.
This is a rich episode and will give you an appreciation for the concept of Holacracy and how it can supercharge your organization and your personal growth.
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Ep. 49: Brian J. Robertson on Holacracy, the Operating System for Antifragile Organizations & Society, Psychedelic Churches and the Path to Higher Order Consciousness