The huddle coaching dilemma
We're taking people out of the meeting. And that feels uncomfortable.
When we started Respellion, we were one small huddle. A group of people who kept the organisation running by taking on roles with the activities that needed doing. The structure is based on Holacracy, but in practice we lean more and more on Sociocracy 3.0, because that model gives us more freedom to set things up pragmatically.
By now we’re over twenty software developers. And in principle we still all sit in one huddle, which meets once a month for an operational meeting and a governance meeting. There we discuss operational matters and how the organisation is set up, and we raise tensions: the gap between how things are going now and how they should go for you to fulfil your role well.
That huddle does something else too. It’s also the group in which we give each other feedback on development and contribution, every two months, based on a personal development plan. That only works if you really know each other and feel safe.
And that’s where my problem lies. Twenty people is too many for that second part. But it’s also too many for the first: some of the developers have less ambition to take on a role. They sit in a meeting where they mostly pick up information. Nobody can be blamed for that, but it can be a waste of everyone’s time.
To tackle that problem, we’re going to try the following: small, fixed huddles of four to five people, with a huddle coach as facilitator. The group stays the same for the whole year, so a real bond can form. Alongside that, a smaller operational meeting, mainly with the people who carry role responsibility, who then report back to their huddle.
Now for the uncomfortable part.
One of our contribution elements is what you contribute to fulfilling a role. Whoever doesn’t hold a role contributes less on that point. That’s simply the case, and that’s fine. But you do accept the consequence, including in how colleagues view your contribution. I think that’s fair, because it’s part of the foundation of Respellion. I also find it nerve-racking to write down like this.
And the second objection is even bigger: doesn’t this just look like hierarchy we’re introducing? A smaller circle, with coaches above it?
It mustn’t become that. Contribution may differ, but the right to raise a tension may not. Everyone can put one into our tooling themselves, always with a proposal attached. The huddle coach must always be open to that and work as free of judgement as possible. And the role holder must be actively challenged in the operational meeting on whether there are tensions, or whether things should be assigned differently. If that route silts up, this plan has failed.
What I don’t know yet is who appoints the huddle coach, and what we do if the chemistry isn’t there. A fixed group is safe, until it isn’t. I’m going to gather feedback from the huddles, but exactly how, I haven’t figured out yet.
And then the question that occupies me most. How will we know in six months whether this worked? More tensions, or fewer? Deeper conversations? A shorter meeting without people feeling left out? I don’t think that’s for me to decide on my own.
So: what would you look at?