Open Integral

Brian Robertson explains that in holacracy the “free will” of an organization is what governs, not the people in the organization. However the people in the organization will have perceive the organization’s will by “allowing this transpersonal space to arise often and easily for organizational steering.” (1)

The usual consent process in sociocracy allows for reasonable and paramount objections, but presumably the standard for such objections in holacracy is the “transpersonal,” or an altitute higher than rationality. And here we have the crux of the situation: Who decides what is the requisite transpersonal altitute to be able to determine the will of the organization and what is an acceptable objection?

This was discussed in an I-I forum and Peter Merry asked a similar question. (2) He wondered how holacracy would deal with a “closed” green objection to a yellow proposal, as they simply cannot see what is best for the organization, i.e., they don’t have the transpersonal signified to see its “will.” He concludes the following:

“at some point has to draw the line, or else you end up going round in circles. someone has to say – ‘we have heard you, got the essence of the objection, integrated it, and are now going to move on. if you cannot live with this, then you can choose to leave this group.’”

It seems we’ll inevitabley have someone(s) speaking for the “highest” altitude and intepreting others’ objections relative to their intepretation. And is the leader’s intepretations based on some outside evaluation of altitude? Or is it just an internal, circular process? Are such leaders elected to those positions or were they self-chosen? Can they be elected out or is election by consent not valid if those not consenting (objecting) are deemed of insufficent altitude to make such decisions? What if some outside source deemed the objecting parties to be of sufficient altitude? What if this whole notion of having a sufficient altitude to intepret correctly the will of the organization is itself just another manifestation of the hegemonic application of the myth of the given and speaking for God or the Ultimate Reality?

Oops, does that mean I’m green for asking the questions or raising the objections?

1. http://holacracy.org/?page=about_intro

2. http://multiplex.integralinstitute.org/Public/cs/forums/thread/12122.aspx