Interview with Professor Dr. Michael Zirkler, ZHAW (Zurich University of Applied Sciences)
In March, the Product Advisory Board for Magile—our all-in-one software for agile organizations—held its inaugural meeting. We spoke with board member Professor Dr. Michael Zirkler, an expert in organizational development and consulting. He warns against viewing work processes exclusively through the lens of efficiency.
You are very busy with research and teaching. Why did you also agree to join the Product Advisory Board for Magile?
Because I am convinced that software can help people shape the way work is organized. Magile suggests a particular way of working by promoting self-management and enabling tasks to be handled in an agile manner. When organizations engage with Magile, it helps them better understand how they work—and how they want to work. The software can act as a kind of organizational fitness tracker. I find that very appealing.
What did you take away from the demo? What was new to you? How did the features come across?
I could clearly see that Magile is an integrated solution covering multiple aspects—from organizational structure and project management to meeting documentation. However, the application is quite demanding. You need a solid understanding of agility and Scrum to fully leverage all of its features or to set up projects and teams correctly. How much an organization benefits from such a prerequisite-heavy solution depends on its level of maturity. One possible improvement could be to guide users more strongly within the software—for example through widgets or similar elements.
How do you assess Magile from a user perspective?
Since Magile enables everything from order intake to invoicing within a single solution, the efficiency potential is obvious. One challenge, however, is that people—for good reasons—are not always primarily interested in efficiency. They want room for individuality, which often conflicts with efficiency from a business perspective. In some cases, people may even fear for their jobs, perceiving efficiency gains as a threat. In that sense, software that intervenes deeply in work processes can have a disruptive effect.
As a researcher, you focus among other things on modern leadership. rising systems sees itself as a holacratic organization. How do you view holacracy?
I see holacracy as a response to a sclerosis that has spread across the working world over decades. Hierarchy, bureaucracy, processes, instructions, rules—many organizations have become rigid. They often revolve around themselves. This is also reflected in the fact that employees are spending increasing amounts of time on non-value-adding activities.
Holacracy, as a form of self-organization, is an interesting alternative. Leadership is shifted away from individuals and toward systems. However, this also comes with a drawback: it can become difficult to identify who is responsible for a decision. Without a traditional manager, accountability becomes less clear.
I see holacracy as an approach with real potential, but one that places high demands on organizations and comes with significant prerequisites.
How can teams self-organize without traditional leadership roles? When do such models succeed—and when do they fail?
When we organize work, it is ultimately always about people, alongside many other important factors—even though holacracy initially tried to remove the human element from the equation.
Efficiency can only be one aspect. Productivity must be understood more broadly. It is not just an add-on. In addition to economic productivity, social productivity is highly significant.
Questions such as:
• How do I feel within my team?
• What role and status do I have?
• Am I supported and can I support others, both professionally and in everyday challenges?
• Can I develop personally?
These are just some of the key considerations.
Models of non-hierarchical governance of social systems have been known for a long time. We understand quite well how they function. However, in contexts where economic efficiency has traditionally taken precedence, they were long considered impractical. This has a lot to do with prevailing economic assumptions, but also with the fact that hierarchical models have been deeply ingrained—among employees as well—and remain highly functional in many situations. We should not deceive ourselves: social systems cannot function without some form of leadership. Even in self-organizing models, leadership still exists—it is simply exercised differently.
Teams whose members have a relatively high level of ego stability are more likely to succeed with self-organization. The same applies to teams whose members can recognize and contribute their specific role to overall value creation—and not just economic value. I find holacracy appealing because it offers a way to relate work and people differently. Its advantage lies in the fact that it comes as a comprehensive system and is relatively easy to learn. Organizations do not have to reinvent work processes and cultures from scratch. However, this can also be a disadvantage. That is why I believe it is crucial for organizations to carefully examine what they actually want to achieve with holacracy. This would be an excellent starting point for organizational development.
Ultimately, what matters to me is that organizations do not simply copy trends or adopt holacracy uncritically just because it is fashionable.
Thank you for this nuanced perspective. Would you like to learn more about New Work and how Michael assesses it? HERE you can read his latest expert article on the topic and download it as a PDF.