How a Radical Shift to "Self-Management" Left Zappos Reeling

Re:How a Radical Shift to "Self-Management" Left Zappos Reeling by TheGirondin on Monday March 07, 2016 @11:26AM (#11239732)

>Another beneficiary is Derek Noel, 30, a onetime customer-service employee. Noel had wanted to transfer to Zappos’s culture team but found himself blocked by his manager. “As soon as I found out about how holacracy worked,” he says, “I was like, ‘Actually, my boss can’t tell me that.’ ” Noel’s ideas, which included weekday events where employees watch a movie in the auditorium while working on their laptops, gained traction. Now he works in the Fungineering circle, a kind of events-planning/pep squad.

Want to spend all day at work planning fun activities? No one can tell you no!

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Re:How a Radical Shift to "Self-Management" Left Zappos Reeling by forgetsusername on Monday March 07, 2016 @12:15PM (#11240019)

>Want to spend all day at work planning fun activities? No one can tell you no!

And one day, perhaps due to bad luck or competition, Zappos won't be Zappos. Sales will suffer, restructuring will be required, and layoffs will be necessary. Inevitably, there will be comments here asking, "Why is it that these common workers pay the price?"

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Re:How a Radical Shift to "Self-Management" Left Zappos Reeling by coldtea on Monday March 07, 2016 @12:47PM (#11240244)

>Inevitably, there will be comments here asking, "Why is it that these common workers pay the price?"

Well, such comments will be much less "inevitable" if workers indeed have such freedom in the shaping of the company's future.

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Re:How a Radical Shift to "Self-Management" Left Zappos Reeling by itsdrewmiller on Monday March 07, 2016 @12:46PM (#11240238)

They go into more detail near the end of the article on how this works in practice - each circle apparently has a different amount of points that the lead distributes to participants, and each person is expected to do 100 points worth of work. Doubtful that Mr. Noel got 100 points solely from Fungineering.

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Re:How a Radical Shift to "Self-Management" Left Zappos Reeling by pnathan on Monday March 07, 2016 @12:30PM (#11240134)

> Want to spend all day at work planning fun activities? No one can tell you no!

Oddly, though, the invisible hand of those who actually run the company will ensure that the Will of the People is that, after enough party members are on a team, no more than that will join. It's quite curious, and no one quite understands how that will happen, but the Will of the People is clearly observable. (Sorry, should have capitalized Party there).

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Re:How a Radical Shift to "Self-Management" Left Zappos Reeling by st3v3r on Monday March 07, 2016 @12:36PM (#11240175)

At the same time, if you want to transfer to another department, why should your boss be able to stop you?

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Re:How a Radical Shift to "Self-Management" Left Zappos Reeling by TheGirondin on Monday March 07, 2016 @02:45PM (#11241075)

If they don't have a need for another person, yes.

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Re:How a Radical Shift to "Self-Management" Left Zappos Reeling by st3v3r on Wednesday March 09, 2016 @05:48PM (#11256253)

That's for the other department to decide, not your current boss.

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