Seems we are hearing a lot these days about “holocracy”.  Its alliteration might stir up some fiction in your mind, with thoughts of Orwell, Roddenberry, or even Golding coming up. But it isn’t any of those things in the business world.

The Zappos announcement at the beginning of this year kicked off a media storm about holocracy “getting rid of managers” and doing away with hierarchy.  If you listen to much of what the media is writing, you would think that Zappos and other companies considering this type of structure are going to a free-for-all type of environment, an “anything goes” lark of a work environment where there is no accountability or structure.

If that were true, I’d place my bets on holocracy being a fad.  But, if you look at the actually well established constructs of a holocracy, you will find that much of what the media is portraying is incorrect.  Within this type of approach, there is most definitely structure, hierarchy, and accountability. The “Holocracy Constitution” does justice to the extent to which governance and structure is embedded in the assumptions of a functioning holocracy.

While Zappos is making news these days with this somewhat new term, there are companies that have been modeling this type of approach for decades. W. L. Gore might not call their structure a holocracy, but back in the 1950s when it was founded, it took a very different approach to hierarchy and management that it has sustained throughout its history. If you want to know if a company like Zappos can take this route and thrive, check out how Gore has done it (here’s a great Fast Company article) in a sustainable way.

I think that as the media hype settles down and people start to pay serious attention to the alternative approach a holocracy provides while also attending to a very human and social desire to organize around social structures, we will find that the ideas are here to stay.  It is a well thought out “social technology” that goes far beyond a surface thought of getting rid of managers and hierarchy. Whether older, larger, more established companies that have been in traditional hierarchies with autocratic or overwhelming bureaucracy can turn to something more distributed is certainly a good question, but don’t dismiss it too quickly as an idea, especially for start-ups or targeted divisions or groups within larger companies. I think it is here to stay, in some form or another, and as a viable alternative hierarchy to the often bloated and suffocating hierarchies of companies today.