Zappos organization dynamic

1. I would want to work at a place like Zappos. Due to my personal experience, i had a director very similar to Tony: Super friendly, very close to the employees, always joking, prefer doing hugs and wearing jeans/ t-shirt rather than the formal traditions.

Working in this kind of environment appeases stresses, creates a better relationship between managers and employees. In fact, I had also met some managers which prefers to stay professional, it creates more stresses at the employee scale. The communication is often complicated.

Zappos is one of the first company to adapt this method of management, the CEOs announcement was like a big bang, generally holacracy is not recommend.  If I had to work in this kind of environment, I would be sure, firstly be lost at the beginning. Having no more managers to guide or to keep the right focus, is hard. However, i would not leave the company and accept the challenge. Holacracy allows to take more responsibility have more autonomy and manage stress from ourselves which is key to become future managers.

1. “when cities double in size they become 15% more productive, but when companies double in size productivity declines “

Arising from this observation, Tony Hsieh, current CEO and co-founder of the Zappos company, implemented in holacracy, a new type of management based on decision-making distribution throughout the organization to make the company resilient and hyper- productive.

The aim: develop the auto-entrepreneur ship spirit and self management

A system where teams operate like small businesses managing their own profit and loss account. These working groups are encouraged to develop new ranges of products and services for Zappos customers. For the company, even if this can lead to internal negotiations and competition between the units, this operation nevertheless makes it possible to innovate, evolve and adapt more easily than in the holocracy model. where everyone gets involved in everything. To be more efficient, Zappos has therefore returned to an organization with well-identified, specialized groups working under the authority of managers. Of course, it is still a decentralized system that encourages entrepreneurship and self-management in the workplace, but it is no longer pure holocracy.

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