Obey me or go back to the wasteland

[Fabio Cecin]

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh: Adopt Holacracy Or Leave

http://www.fastcompany.com/3044417/zappos-ceo-tony-hsieh-adopt-holacracy-or-leave

:-)

Looks like Zappos is getting rid of "Management", but it clearly still
has a big boss. And he seems to be acting a bit angry and bossy. I can
imagine an employee opening this memo and feeling the "lack of
hierarchy" in all its glory, especially if he had something to say
about that memo; say, god forbid, some sort of retort.

I've seen Zappos being referred to as a "cult" again, on Twitter this
time. This is funny because, ultimately, every company is a cult, but
usually a multi-modal one -- a cult of "capital," of trade, of
"performance", of competition, of an hierarchical pantheon of managers
and executives, of historical figures (founder, legendary projects,
...). Some companies have flags, and in some companies you are shunned
if you don't participate in the "bonding" exercises and retreats
designed by people who specialize in understanding how to make people
"happy", i.e. how to manipulate people to get the most out of them.
Creepy cults.

So Zappos being called a "cult" seems mostly a projection to me. And
what Zappos is doing is simply shunning the tradition of having a
buffer zone between the ownership class and the serfs. This is a huge
heresy for the MBA factories -- that the owners can let the serfs
self-organize to do whatever the owners want to do.

( The ownership class, in case people aren't aware of, are the people
who have enough money to live off of interest if they fail at
everything else, and still be able to build "businesses", i.e. create
economic flytraps for desperate people to step in to get "jobs" so
they can build whatever toys they want to, the way they want to. For
the ultimate good of the world, or so the cultural story of state
trade and property, and its latest API, "capitalism", tells us. )

Zappos will ultimately succeed, because in a surveillance police state
you don't need wasteful social buffers, be it state assistance through
public policy, or manager which-doctors within the companies, to
create the illusion that "the economy" is just and that it takes care
of you somehow. A small minority of "hard-working", "successful"
high-performer people are becoming ready to defend the economic
master-serf system more directly, without the need of a machine that
reinforces the illusion for them. They have no problem in seeing the
Matrix and serving it, if that means avoiding the fate of all the
"losers" who aren't as interesting to the dominant social machine as
they are.

"Management" of "knowledge workers" is about maintaining a social
illusion. If a knowledge worker thinks about the machinery it is going
to have its suspension of disbelief challenged; it is going to start
de-constructing the social stories that surrounds him.

Fabio