Anarchic Business Models

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Austin GatlinLinkedInGitHubMastodonX
April 21, 2022 (last updated September 12, 2022)

A Teal Organization appears to be a bottom-up, self-managed, self-organizing, whole-human focused "organic organization".

A Holocracy is an organization that has a constitution and is broken into circles, or groups, of arbitrary depth (like a fractal, or self-same depth model). A circle has roles, which are essentially a collection of duties to be performed. Individuals move in and out of roles, and in and out of circles. Individuals can have multiple roles (at least within a single circle), and (I think) can belong to multiple circles.

Agile is somewhere in here, construed as a "vertical slice" of business. A "vertical slice" is an independent entity capable of performing every required activity to achieve the desired business outcomes within that "vertical".

Notes on Models

Decision making does not have to be consensus oriented. Consensus doesn't have to be involved at all. People can "vote with their feet". So, a fringe idea can still be worked on, but just not by many people. One drama in such a "anyone can do anything", non-consensus model, is when actions are perceived as causing potential harm to the group.

Adaptation seems to be a key theme. This is potentially at conflict with reliability, according to the HBR article linked below. The article implies that reliability is better secured via a hierarchical organizational structure.

Confederated Businesses Model

A confederation of businesses is another form of anarchic, or pseudo-anarchic business.

An umbrella company, holding company, parent company, etc., typically has majority ownership in its subsidiaries. Ownership as proxy for control would imply that typical holding companies are more analogous to federations, or a unitary system of states (like the United States).

I am unaware of a business, or business proxy, that represents itself as a confederation of businesses, though in principal this is possible (legal implications notwithstanding). For example, a profit-sharing arrangement could be entered into, where a percentage of company revenue is contributed to the confederal governance body, whom would oversee any matters deemed appropriate by the collective.

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