Introduction
Jeremy’s back! And he brought alcohol! This episode is brought to you by chocolate bourbon. If you’ve ever wanted to drink a brownie, just mix some chocolate bourbon with your cola of choice.
It’s probably not a good idea to give these guys liquor that tastes like candy before they record an episode. If you pay attention, you can catch the moment it hits Jeremy. Think of it like a buzzed Where’s Waldo.
I don’t know if you’re aware or not, but Jamesplaining is when James breaks something down so that you can understand it. Does that make sense? Sorry. I just Jamesplained Jamesplaining.
The Show
In this thrilling adventure, the hosts set out to discuss different ways of organizing businesses.
Jeremy sets the stage for the hosts to talk about their experiences with different management structures and which structures they currently employ, but it quickly apparent, however, that the real discussion is about Holacracy. Do you want to know about a hot business organizational methodology from 2014? If so, you’re in the right place!
To kick things off, James does his best to butcher the opening story from the book about Holacracy in which the author describes a harrowing plane flight. James’ rendition his harrowing as well, but for different reasons. With the formalities out of the way, everyone jumps into discussing what Holacracy is.
God bless them, the hosts do their best to describe Holacracy, so here’s the definition I copied from Wikipedia:
Holacracy is a method of decentralized management and organizational governance developed by HolacracyOne, in which authority and decision-making are distributed throughout a holarchy of self-organizing teams rather than being vested in a management hierarchy.
Jeremy and Rob use boring ole’ traditional management structures, so they spend much of this episode asking about Holacracy.
James and Kevin implemented Holacracy nearly eight months ago, and they share some of their experiences. These include both the good and bad of Holacracy, although they feel like overall it’s been a good experience.
They throw around buzzwords like tensions, governance, tactical and such. If you don’t know what those are, don’t worry, James will Jamesplain it.
Kevin relates that some of the biggest challenges that they’ve faced in the implementation process have been cultural, getting employees into a place where they feel comfortable addressing their tensions.
Holacracy, James Jamesplains, is not designed to handle HR issues out of the box. This can be another challenge of using Holacracy; it describes how you improve how you get your work done, but the system assumes you have people in the seats that want to do the work. At Saturday Drive, James and Kevin created an HR app for Holacracy to enable employee growth and to address performance issues. At this point, I’m not sure the word app means anything. At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, you can’t call everything an app! I thought it was a computer thing. Now you can get apps for your refrigerator!
Our Recommendations
In what could be seen as a selfless plug to get himself some more credit card points, Jeremy recommends that you sign up for an American Express. He suggests that you only spend as much as you can pay off every month. I mean, it’s really not very veiled; Jeremy is trying to get you to sign up for a card so that he can get some bonus points (Aff).
Rob recommends an app called Over that lets you put text on images and stuff. Rob likes the fact that he can quickly make “sharables”, which is totally a real word, on the fly, especially using client’s photos. It sounds like a fancy meme generator, and personally, I prefer memegenerator.net.
If you want more information about Holacracy, James recommends the book Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World by Brian J. Robertson. I mean, you probably would have gotten there on your own; Google is a thing. James also confirms that listening to audiobooks is a valid method of consuming books.
Kevin’s recommendation is a book called User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product by Jeff Patton and Peter Economy. I mean, one of the author’s name is Economy. You can’t go wrong with a book about a business topic written by a guy with Economy in his dang name!
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