My Octopus (self-management) Teacher


Johannesburg, 19 May 2022

Voys South Africa is the only officially recognised company in the country that practises holacracy. We’d like to shed some light on this remarkable management philosophy and practice. And why partnering with a holacratic organisation makes excellent business sense.

Nine minds are better than one.
Nine minds are better than one.

Lessons galore

As most of us know, My Octopus Teacher is the singular South African documentary that richly deserved its Oscar win last year. What many of us might not have considered is that the common octopus has so much more to teach us. And some of these teachings apply to rather unexpected fields.

Take, for example, corporate management. Would you believe that the unique physiognomy of octopus vulgaris is the analogue of one of the most progressive management systems in the world? Holacracy is the highly evolved organisational philosophy that embraces our individual humanity, autonomy and creative problem-solving capacities.

Sincerest form of flattery

Holacracy dispenses with the top-down hierarchical management system that reached its sell-by date at the end of the first industrial revolution. It does so in favour of a self-management model that transforms outdated command hierarchies into agile, self-organising networks. Instead of waiting for managers to dish out orders, colleagues use their specialist skills, experience and expertise to determine how their specific roles add maximum value to the company.

It is here where a holacratic organisation resembles the matchless biology of the octopus to such an extent we could classify it as biomimicry. Quite astonishingly, the octopus has nine brains: one in each of its eight arms and one in its head. Each arm acts autonomously from the others while all transmit information to each other, allowing for complex co-ordination. The central brain fine-tunes movement, allowing each arm greater precision and control. This decentralised structure allows the octopus, much like the holacratic organisation, to achieve a fundamental aim of holistic design: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Golden ratios

"So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work," said influential modern business thinker Peter Drucker. Holacracy, according to Edward ter Horst of forward-thinking Dutch management consultancy, Soople, achieves the opposite effect. "Self-management means creating the right parameters so that all colleagues can make independent choices in pursuit of the purpose of the organisation," he says.

And so back to our octopus: the creature achieves maximum efficiency by distributing authority; radically embracing the quasi-autonomy of its constituent parts; and eschewing the concentration of control in a single, central place. Voys has been paying close attention. The different ‘brains’ of the company work best when left to their own devices while simultaneously interacting with one another for the greater good of the organism.

Servant leadership

It is important to note that transcending ossified management structures and strictures does not imply the absence of leadership. That remains the function of the ‘central brain’, whose job is not to unilaterally dish out commands for others to blindly follow but to provide oversight, co-ordination, inspiration and direction. Leadership becomes an innate, collective element of the organisation’s culture and behaviour. In this regard, holacratic organisations embody Peter Drucker’s famous dictum that "management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things".

In the octopus's garden.
In the octopus's garden.

While this may be dreadfully fascinating, let’s get down to brass tacks: why does partnering with a holacratic organisation such as Voys make good business sense? Well, much like the octopus, we are nimble, agile, flexible and fast. We are also professionally highly evolved, offering peerless products and industry-leading customer service excellence. We have a long list of customer testimonials that run along the lines of: "I’ve been waiting two weeks for your competitor to get back to me – you had me up and running in less than a day."

Hearts and minds

On a more granular level, working with a company composed of highly experienced individuals built of weapons-grade independence, self-motivation, passion and pride is almost always going to get you better results than one whose employees labour under the dictates of an out-of-touch manager. If there’s anything to the idiom that two heads are better than one, then nine brains are most certainly exponentially superior to a single iteration.

Share