Friday wasn’t a full day, which was good because it had been a long week and I was looking forward to wrapping up the training.  We started off the morning with a Constitution Review.  We again broke up into groups of four.  Each person was assigned a portion of the constitution to read and then report to the group any interesting things we found.  We all found some interesting information that reinforced some of the things we experienced this week. We all agreed that it made a whole lot more sense reading over it now than when we all read it before experiencing Holacracy.  Some of us also found information that would have helped resolve some of the issues we had in our meetings.  The constitution is short enough that a regular review of it can be done very easily.

We then reviewed some different ways that Holacracy can be implemented, but not much time was spent on that because most of the people in attendance had already implemented it.  Instead, Brian asked if anyone had specific questions or challenges they wanted to discuss.  He wrote all of them down, then consolidated the list and setup about 6 different tables and then the group got to pick which table they wanted to go sit at based on the topic discussed at that table.  I floated the topic of “Accountabilities and Consequences” which was accepted and I got about 8 people at my table to discuss it.  I wasn’t sure how companies dealt with agreements that need to stay static and are signed, like non-disclosure agreements, HR policies, acceptable use policies, etc.  The feedback I received was that those documents are referenced in Holacracy, but aren’t contained within policies in Holacracy because those evolve and change too much to be legal requirements.  However, some companies do reference Holacracy in their employment agreements.  The agreements require that the rules of Holacracy be followed, or they can be terminated.  That was interesting to learn that.

The entire class then re-convened and each group reported any interesting things they discovered.  One of the other groups was talking about scale.  For companies with shared roles, like customer support people at Zappos where they have hundreds of reps, they allow the first four people that sign up with a tension to attend a meeting.  Some other companies have the groups elect a rep, who then presents a person’s tension as their own in the meeting.  I really liked Zappos’ model.

We wrapped up the meeting by going around the room and sharing our thoughts on the training and our favorite take-away.  As one of the few Holacracy virgins in the meeting I told them that I thought this was a great way to come up to speed on Holacracy quickly.  I had a ton of take-aways, but the Zappos model for shared roles was one of my favorites.