Lab Rats by Dan Lyons

Author:Dan Lyons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: None
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2018-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

What’s Your Tension? What Do You Need?

Back in the Holacracy workshop, Robertson asks for volunteers who will participate in some role-play exercises so that we can see what a Holacracy meeting looks like.

Imagine a dashing hypnotist declaring, on stage before a live audience, that he’s about to put a group of subjects into a trance. He waves his hands, recites his magic words, and looks fiercely into his audience’s eyes—but it doesn’t work, and they don’t go under, but at the same time they feel bad for him, and they don’t want to ruin it for everyone else, so they play along and pretend to be hypnotized.

If you can imagine that, then you have an inkling of what happens next in this sad upstairs meeting room at the Wah Ying social club. As far as I can tell, Holacracy is bonkers. There are no managers, but there is a role called lead link, which is kind of like a manager, only it’s not a manager, except that it kind of is. People work in “circles” and talk about their “tensions,” while a facilitator (played by Robertson) decides how to resolve disputes.

“What do you need?” Robertson asks.

“I want marketing to qualify leads before sending them to me,” says the head of sales.

“Okay, and do you have the right to ask for that? Let’s see. No, you don’t. It’s not in his circle. So we’ll have to add an accountability. Okay, head of marketing, will it serve your purpose to provide the head of sales with more qualified leads?”

The head of marketing looks puzzled.

“Notice that the question I’m asking you is not, ‘Are you okay with this?’ I’m asking, ‘Does it serve your purpose?’ It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to take it on. If it serves your purpose, you have to do it.”

“Okay,” the head of marketing says.

“My job,” Robertson says, “as referee, is to ask will it serve your purpose, and do you have a right to expect something. If the answer is, ‘No, you don’t,’ then we say, ‘Okay, let’s figure out how we can get you what you need.’”

Next role-play: the head of sales wants to lower the price of the product so he can sell more stuff. The woman who runs finance wants to keep prices high, to protect margins. Someone else says let’s do market research and figure out what other companies charge.

“So she says ‘Do market research,’ and does that serve your purpose?” Robertson asks the head of sales. “It does, so that’s what we’ll do.”

On and on it goes. Pretty soon people in the role-play meeting start getting pissed off. I don’t blame them. Just watching them is making me want to jump out a window.

Robertson asks everyone how they’re feeling.

“I’m getting annoyed,” a muscle-bound guy says. “Does that happen in real life? Because I’m getting really annoyed with you right now.”

Robertson remains unflustered. No matter what objection someone raises, he always has an answer, and the answer is always that whatever problem you have, you can solve it with Holacracy.

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