Zappos has quietly backed away from holacracy

Six years ago, Amazon-owned Zappos began upending its traditional management structure. CEO Tony Hsieh was originally inspired by the idea of creating a city-like environment without central planning. “The whole system just works, and it’s really resilient and flexible—whereas companies see productivity per capita fall as they grow.” He saw holacracy, a new kind of management structure predicated on decision-making authority being distributed throughout the organization, as the tool to access that kind of resilience and hyper-productivity.