How HolacracyOne’s Partnership Manages Firing
by Brian Robertson
Published on Jul 9, 2020
for HolacracyOne
Note from Maxment:
Unless the Maxment Associate Partner (MAP) acted with gross negligence or bad faith, Maxment won’t fire the MAP.
As long as the MAP is following Maxment’s 3 core terms, we first try alternate measures.
Because we have so many job roles & groups, we first recommend our MAP to switch the job role if she is not happy with the job role. Or switch the group if she is not happy with the current group or team.
We even give the MAP two weeks to think about the switch. If all else fails, we then initiate the ‘Letting MAP Go’ or the ‘MAP Firing Process’ which is roughly based upon the process below which is being used by HolacracyOne.
It’s rarely easy to fire someone, but for a company to function it’s a decision that inevitably has to be made every once in a while. If a manager isn’t making that call individually, you have the opportunity to create a more fair and more effective process that does so instead, perhaps with input from multiple stakeholders of the person in question. And if you find a really good process, perhaps it can even help everyone involved feel a bit better about a tough situation.
At HolacracyOne, that’s exactly what we’ve done and what we’ve found, after many years of experimentation and iteration. Now, I can honestly tell you that I love how we fire people — and I don’t know many business leaders who can honestly say they love how their organization fires people. I find our process to be deeply human and respectful, yet also extremely effective for meeting the business needs. I’ll explain it in some detail here, since it serves as such a beautiful example of how different a firing process can be when you don’t rely on a sole manager to make the decision.
We created a “partnership review” process that we use to reflect on an individual’s relationship with the organization, and assess whether it makes sense for it to continue as it is or to change (we call our team members “partners,” because that’s what they are).
These reviews are automatically scheduled for new partners after three, six, and twelve months with the organization. Beyond that, any partner may call a partnership review for any other partner at any time.
The partnership review is conducted by a group of people filling our “Partnership Assessor” role. Initially, we filled that role with five folks who have been with the organization a long time and have a high level of commitment to the partnership. But we soon realized that we were sometimes lacking key perspectives from someone who worked closely with the person we were reviewing, so we adapted the process to allow any of those five to invite others, and to allow the person in question to invite someone.
In the review, we never actually ask the emotionally charged question, “Should we fire this person?” Rather, we use a question inspired by Jim Collins: “If this person did not already work for the company, and I knew everything about them that I know now, would I advocate for hiring them again?”
The specific process goes like this: The Partnership Assessors simultaneously reveal their answer to that question. They can answer, “Clear yes,” (thumbs-up), “Clear no,” (thumbs-down), or “Neutral/unsure,” (thumb sideways).
Once the answers are revealed, each person shares their reasoning one at a time, and then there’s time for discussion as desired. Once the discussion feels complete, we repeat the original question again in case the discussion influenced anyone. Again, our final answers are simultaneously revealed. At that point, the rule is simple: to remain in the company, the person being reviewed needs more thumbs-up than thumbs-down, with any neutral/unsure votes ignored. In other words, they need more people who would advocate for versus against hiring them if they didn’t already work here. On top of that, they must have at least one thumbs-up.
That last point has proven pretty important: it means that if everyone is neutral, the person in question cannot stay in the company. Before this process, we sometimes had partners come on board who were really good people, but just didn’t impress anyone with their results. They were drawing compensation without contributing substantially. This rule sets a higher standard: it says that we want people to work here who are thriving and contributing greatly — people we can wholeheartedly advocate for rather than just not feel strongly one way or another.
When we first started using this process, we would apply the result right away: if the partner in question didn’t get the required advocates, we would immediately set up a transition plan to have them exit the company.
But that resulted in some decisions we didn’t feel super confident about, and it had a really negative emotional impact that would often linger long after the departure. So we added another step: before applying the result of a negative review, we give the partner the option of taking a week or so to meet with any or all of the assessors involved in the review.
They can use that space to ask questions, to set new intentions or make new commitments that might influence an assessor, or to discuss anything they’d like. This allows a transparent adult-to-adult conversation about why we each advocated the way we did, what our concerns are, how the partner in question feels about their partnership, and what–if anything–they’d want to change.
Once that’s done, if the partner in question requests it, we’ll throw out the negative result and go through the whole partnership review process again — although the result of that do-over review is then final.
There have been many cases now where these conversations led to a different end result from the initial review and the person stayed with the company. Often when that happened it was because of a new plan or new commitments the partner made and communicated to address concerns — ones driven entirely by the partner, not by some parental disciplinary or “improvement” process driven by a manager. Sometimes, the partner in question doesn’t actually request the do-over review — they have some conversations with the assessors, and then choose to leave rather than request another review. When that’s happened, it’s usually felt more like we arrived at a mutual understanding that the relationship simply wasn’t a good fit, rather than an autocratic firing.
One thing I really appreciate about this process is how it honors the humanity of those involved and preserves relationships. We’ve had multiple people leave the company through this process and remain close with the assessors who were involved in the decision to have them leave. Some have even become our customers and continued to promote our work. One even stayed in my guest room over the holidays last year; when was the last time someone you fired stayed in your guest room for the holidays? I think that’s largely because the process treats them like respected adults and invites them to be part of the decision.
Any self-managing organization can create a process like this and the others in these posts, or just copy our processes — you don’t have to be practicing Holacracy to innovate in your core processes. What Holacracy offers is a framework that allows you to more easily customize processes to meet your organization’s unique needs. Its governance meetings give each team a “meta-process” to design and evolve its many core business processes iteratively over time, with everyone on the team involved in the effort. I hope these examples will help inspire you to find or evolve your own suite of peer-to-peer processes, perfectly customized for your unique organization and culture.
PolicyPartnership Review Process
(HolacracyOne Copy)
Created 01/05/2016•Last Updated 01/19/2024•For General Company
No role may terminate the Partner Relationship of a Partner except after a review requested by any Partner (a “Partnership Review”) indicates (a) knowing what they know now, no @Partnership Assessor ‘s would advocate for inviting the Partner into the partnership again now with their current relationship terms, if that Partner weren’t already in the partnership, or (b) the total number of @Partnership Assessor ‘s who would advocate against that is greater than or equal to the total number who would advocate for it, with neutral votes ignored.
Alternatively, any role may terminate the Partner Relationship of a Partner if the sum total of time/energy desired from the Partner in all Roles filled is less than 100% of such Partner’s time/energy available to the Organization, but only after publishing the intent to do so and allowing a reasonable period for such Partner to find new Role assignments. The time/energy desired for a role assignment may be judged by whoever controls assignments into that Role, unless another system exists to quantify target focus allocations for the role.
Anyone facilitating a Partnership Review must follow this process:
- Check-in: Anyone present shares one at a time to call out distractions and transition into the process.
- Framing: Anyone involved may share information or context about the Partnership Review, such as why it was scheduled.
- Preliminary Answer: Participants simultaneously indicate whether they would advocate for, neutral, or against inviting the reviewed partner into the partnership again now with their current relationship terms, knowing what they know now, if that partner weren’t already in the partnership.
- Explanation Round: In a round, each participant shares the reasoning behind their stance and any relevant perspectives they have about the Partner in question.
- Discussion: Open space for clarifying questions, reactions, and discussion.
- Final Answer: Participants again simultaneously answer the same question as in the Preliminary Answer step.
- Closing Round: Reflect on the process or anything to transition out of the meeting.
If the outcome from the Final Answer indicates continued partnership, it becomes the official Partnership Review result. If it does not, the result is tentative and may not be used to remove the Partner until the following process is complete:
a) The result of the review is shared with the reviewed Partner.
b) The reviewed Partner has three days after learning of the result to decide if they’d like time to discuss the review and their partnership with the @Partnership Assessor ‘s, and to notify @Back Office Ops if so.
c) If the Partner opts to take that time for dialogs, they then have until two weeks after the review result was communicated to have whatever dialogs they wish and decide if they’d like to request a do-over of the review; this request must be made to @Back Office Ops within that two week window, however the actual do-over may happen whenever scheduled by @Back Office Ops.
If the reviewed Partner requests a do-over within that process, then another Partnership Review is required before anyone may remove the partner, however the result of that do-over is immediately official. However, if a majority of the @Partnership Assessor ‘s believe the Partner in question acted with gross negligence or bad faith, the initial review is immediately official and final, and the delays otherwise required may be skipped.
Any @Partnership Assessor may invite any other Partner to participate in steps 1-5 and 7 of this process, provided no other @Partnership Assessor raises an Objection to their participation and the invited Partner agrees to keep any answers or perspectives of others confidential.