Diederick Janse: Holacracy is a way for everybody to contribute with their hands, minds and hearts

Here is another special episode of my podcast devoted to self-management and specifically to Holacracy. This time we sat down with Diederick Janse, a certified Holacracy master coach and co-founding partner at Energized.org, a consultancy that helps organizations make the leap to radical self-management. He is a veteran Getting Things Done practitioner and has worked together with Holacracy pioneer Brian Robertson for years now. (Please do check out the episode with Brian as well – highly recommended!) Diederick is also the co-author of the book ‘Getting Started With Holacracy: Upgrading Your Team's Productivity’. This time I am hosting the episode again together with Paul Vahur who is the leading force behind the Getting Things Done movement in Estonia and an avid enthusiast of Holacracy as well.

“If we are talking about traditional management hierarchy, then one of its distinct characteristics is that there is this inherent split between the doing and the thinking. Here is where Henry Ford comes into picture. He was famous for saying: ‘Why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?’ He really just wanted the hands and let others do the thinking for you. In my opinion, the split between doing and thinking does not really make very much sense these days in most companies for most people. It might work in some places for short term, but in the long term perspective when people bring not just their hands into workplace but also their brains and maybe also their hearts – let’s put it really badly – you get more out of them. Even if that was your worldview and you wanted the most out of the human resources employed, it would be a better way to do it. Philosophically and morally, for myself, it is also more meaningful, more interesting, more right, if you will, way to organize work. It honors people, treats them with more dignity.”– Diederick Janse

Listen and enjoy!