Pourquoi nous sommes-nous tournés vers Holacracy ?
TalkSpirit is an IT company founded in 2004, with offices in Malakoff and Montpellier. It publishes two product lines: blogging solutions under the BlogSpirit brand and corporate social networks and community platforms under the TalkSpirit brand.
At the beginning of 2014, Philippe Pinault, co-founder and CEO of TalkSpirit, was looking for new management methods. Taking inspiration from Zappos, he tried to set up a new, more participative mode of governance, without any real success. It wasn’t until March 2014, with Olivier Ricard and another of their colleagues, that they took part in a one-day in introduction to Holacracy « introduction à Holacracy » with iGi Partner. The former CEO knew straight away that this was what he needed to manage his business, so he decided to go ahead and take a 4.5-day Practitioner Training course « Formation de Praticien » and then ratify the Holacracy Constitution on 1 September 2014 . For four months, he was supported by iGi Partners to acquire the right reflexes and ensure the « PowerShift » of his company. Today, TalkSpirit continues to practice Holacracy independently, calling on iGi Partners when necessary.
“People have a job to do, holacracy or not. But the way in which they are going to work together is changing. Initialisation starts from reality and moves towards a new system that is supposed to resolve the old obstacles”
– Philippe Pinault
Philippe Pinault talks about his choice of governance method in a short video interview we produced following the implementation of Holacracy:
Video transcript:
Philippe Pinault : Switching to Holacracy doesn’t change what you do, it just changes the way you do it.
My name is Philippe Pinault and I’m co-founder of TalkSpirit, one of the leading publishers of enterprise social networks. We help organisations with their digital transformation.
The world in which we live today demands great responsiveness, agility and a capacity for constant innovation.
The way I present Holacracy is a little different from saying « There are no more managers »; in fact, there are only managers!
I think what’s interesting about Holacracy is that it gives you a lot of freedom, but within an extremely rigid framework that allows you to move quickly and develop [the company] in the best possible conditions.
This is one of the areas where Holacracy met my expectations particularly well: the ability to resolve tensions on a day-to-day basis, so as to finally resolve the gaps that may exist between what is being done and what could be done better.
Here too, Holacracy provides a framework that enables everyone to resolve any tensions they may encounter on a day-to-day basis.
Holacracy is a practice, a daily practice in the way we work.
Signing a Constitution is an important act, but I think that to be able to call yourself a Holacracy practitioner you still need to be able to practise it, particularly through the meetings that help to organise the day-to-day work in the company.
What may have been difficult for some of them was having to make decisions where previously they would systematically ask their manager to arbitrate on one situation or another. And I think it’s this change that is perhaps the most difficult and the most time-consuming.
We were supported by iGi Partners, who first trained us and then helped us to put in place the first stages of our switch to the Holacratic format. We gained in responsiveness and speed in implementing what needed to be done to fulfil the Raison d’Être of the roles or the organisation more generally.
Holacracy provides tools and a method for tackling these new challenges, and I would recommend that all organisations wishing to develop their agility, speed and capacity for innovation implement this type of governance in order to grow faster.
