A Way Forward to Meritocracy, HR News, ETHRWorld

By Prof Kamal K Jain

Rupert Murdoch often says, “The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.” In this fast-paced world, anything that delays the process of decision making is to be treated as a culprit of development and growth.

Hierarchical organizations for long have been associated with a system that invariably delays decision making. No wonder that organizations today are getting attracted to the concept of holacracy.

Holacracy is a self-management system developed by programmer Brian Robertson. The idea of holacracy is based on the principle where the tasks that need to be accomplished in the organization are recognized and articulated and then people are given the authority to adapt their professional roles to these new tasks as per their competency.

Holacracy intends to reduce the time required to make decisions by making four key changes to the organization: (1) it organizes the work to be done by roles. There are no job titles—only roles. Job descriptions and job titles become dynamic roles and responsibilities that evolve as the organization changes. (2) specific accountability is associated with those roles, (3) it gives the person complete authority to make the decisions required for that role, and (4) people in similar roles are grouped into “circles” that have the authority to take…