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Learning more about Holacracy

After sitting in on more holacracy meetings and reading the introductory PDF, I'm beginning to get the hang of it. And in just under 2 hours I'll be attending my first strategy meeting for Bay Area Integral.

The introduction provides the big picture overview of holacracy, which is a bit breathtaking. Holacracy aims to liberate organizations from human egos and ownership, which if successful would have the effect of giving them even more of a life of their own than they already have. And its fractal design could scale from local communities all the way to a global government, all while linking each level to the next.

I'm not sure if I love the idea or want to kill it before it breeds. On the one hand, we have enough problems with organizations that live forever and corporations being treated as people. If corporations already cause too much injustice and environmental damage do we really want to "liberate" them into further autonomy? On the other hand, it seems that human ego and limitation are exactly the things holding us back from significantly shifting humanity's course toward a less perilous future. If Holacracy delivers on its promise to turn corporations into more direct tools of evolution, perhaps it's exactly the kind of thing we need to save us from ourselves.

As for the implications for government, well… I think the biggest obstacle to global governance is that our current forms of government are barely sufficient for running nation-states, let alone a planet. Of course people are terrified at the concept of One World Government—we have enough tyranny and corruption without giving politicians and bankers even more power. But Holacracy distributes power through the structure rather than allowing it to concentrate at the top. Whether or not it could work as a political structure is an open question, but it's much more intriguing than trying to mindlessly spread democracy everywhere.

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