Role Evolution in Holacracy: How Roles Develop Organically

Roles in Holacracy are living entities. Unlike job descriptions that lie unchanged in drawers for years, roles evolve continuously. This evolution isn’t a bug, it’s a feature – it allows the organization to adapt to changing realities without major reorganizations.

At SI Labs, we’ve seen roles grow over years and eventually split into multiple roles, while others shrank and eventually disappeared. This article describes the patterns we’ve observed.

Roles Are Not Static

When you define a role in Holacracy, it’s a snapshot of a specific moment. The work evolves, requirements change, people learn. The role must grow along.

The Difference from Traditional Job Descriptions

Job Description	Holacracy Role
Defined once, rarely updated	Continuously adapted
HR process for changes	Governance meeting
Annual review (if at all)	Changed as soon as tension arises
Describes person	Describes work

For a complete overview of Holacracy, see our guide.

Why Evolution Matters

Alignment with reality: Structure should reflect the work, not the other way around. When work changes, structure must follow.

No reorganization projects: Instead of major restructuring every few years, adjustment happens continuously in small steps.

Maintaining clarity: Outdated role descriptions lead to confusion. Who’s really responsible for what?

Research Insight: Traditional organizations update their job descriptions on average every 3-5 years. During this time, actual work has often changed dramatically. Holacracy organizations adapt roles continuously – on average, each role changes several times per year. [1]

How Roles Grow

The most common form of evolution: A role takes on new responsibility.

Organic Growth

Growth typically happens like this:

1. Someone in a role begins doing additional work
2. This work becomes habit
3. At some point it becomes clear: This actually belongs to the role
4. A proposal adds the new accountability

Example:

The “Newsletter” role originally only publishes the weekly newsletter. Over time, the role holder also begins maintaining the subscriber list and analyzing campaigns.

This additional work gets formalized:

Before:

• Accountability: “Create and send weekly newsletter”

After:

• Accountability: “Create and send weekly newsletter”
• Accountability: “Maintain and segment subscriber list”
• Accountability: “Analyze and report newsletter performance”

When to Formalize Growth?

Not every additional activity needs to become an accountability immediately. Rule of thumb:

Formalize when:

• The work occurs regularly
• Others depend on it
• Clarity is needed about who’s responsible
• The work belongs to the role’s core function

Don’t formalize when:

• One-time task
• Experiment, not yet clear if it stays
• Temporary help for another role

How Roles Shrink

Sometimes a role needs to give up responsibility.

Reasons for Shrinking

1. Overload

The role has accumulated too many accountabilities. One person can no longer fulfill it meaningfully.

2. Better Fit Elsewhere

An accountability logically belongs to a different role.

3. Work Disappears

The organization no longer needs this work.

The Process

Shrinking happens through governance:

1. Identify tension: “I can no longer deliver X” or “X doesn’t belong to my role”
2. Proposal: Remove or move accountability
3. Governance processes the proposal
4. Clarify where the work goes (another role or nobody)

Example:

The “Office Management” role originally has “Care for office plants” as an accountability. The work becomes burdensome and no longer fits. A proposal removes the accountability and creates a new “Green Office” role for it.

Warning Sign: Creeping Erosion

Sometimes a role shrinks silently without anyone noticing. The person simply stops doing the work, but the accountability still stands.

Solution: Regularly check: Which accountabilities are actually being lived?

Splitting Roles: When and How

When a role becomes too large, splitting is an option.

Indicators for Split

The role has too many unrelated accountabilities

When accountabilities no longer form a logical unit but cover different work areas.

One person can no longer fill the role

Even with prioritization, the work is too much for one human.

Different competencies needed

The role requires skills rarely combined in one person.

The Split Process

1. Analyze: Which accountabilities belong together?
2. Sketch new roles: What could the parts be called? What’s the purpose of each new role?
3. Proposal: Split the old role into two or more new roles
4. Assignment: The Lead Link assigns the new roles (can be the same person for both)

Example:

The “Marketing” role becomes too large:

Before:

• Role: Marketing
• Accountabilities: Maintain website, social media, newsletter, events, PR, branding

After:

• Role: Content Marketing (website, newsletter, branding)
• Role: Community Marketing (social media, events)
• Role: PR & Communications (press contacts, external communication)

When NOT to Split

• Just because the role has many accountabilities (number isn’t the problem, coherence is)
• Because the person is overloaded (maybe they just need fewer roles overall)
• Prophylactically (“might become too big someday”)

Merging Roles

The opposite of splitting: Two roles merge into one.

Indicators for Merging

Overlapping work

Both roles do similar things. It’s unclear where the boundary is.

Always the same person

The roles are practically always filled by the same person. The separation is artificial.

Coordination overhead too high

The two roles constantly need to coordinate. One role would be more efficient.

The Merger Process

1. Analyze: What’s the common purpose?
2. Combine accountabilities: Which stay, which are dropped?
3. Proposal: Delete both roles, create one new one
4. Check domains: Does the new role need domains?

Example:

“Social Media” and “Community Management” are merged:

Before:

• Role: Social Media (create posts, run ads)
• Role: Community Management (answer comments, moderate groups)

After:

• Role: Community & Social (all activities on social media and community platforms)

Deleting Roles

Sometimes a role simply doesn’t need to exist anymore.

When to Delete?

The work disappears completely

The product was discontinued, the service ended, the function outsourced.

The work gets absorbed by other roles

Other roles have taken over the responsibility. The separate role is superfluous.

The role was an experiment that didn’t work

Not every role that’s created proves itself.

The Deletion Process

1. Check: Is the work really no longer needed?
2. Proposal: Delete role
3. Clarify: Are there projects or next actions that need to be handed over?
4. Communicate: Especially if external stakeholders knew the role

Research Insight: Organizations tend to add structures but rarely remove them. This “structural accumulation” leads to complexity without benefit. Regular deletion of no longer needed roles is hygienic necessity. [2]

The Evolution Tempo

How much change is healthy?

Too Little Evolution

Symptoms:

• Governance meetings have no agenda items
• Roles are never adjusted
• “We’ve always done it this way”
• Tension between reality and structure

Cause: People don’t bring tensions. They’ve gotten used to dysfunction or don’t dare.

Solution: Actively ask for tensions. Rediscover governance as a tool.

Too Much Evolution

Symptoms:

• Roles change weekly
• Nobody knows what their role actually is anymore
• Governance meetings last hours
• Change for the sake of change

Cause: Over-enthusiasm, perfectionism, or genuine instability in the work.

Solution: Larger changes only after a trial period. Ask: “Did the last change prove itself?”

The Right Measure

A healthy organization changes its structure regularly but not chaotically.

Rule of thumb: Every role should be reviewed at least once a year. Not every review leads to changes.

Rhythm: At SI Labs, we use quarterly structure reviews to check if our roles still match reality.

Role Evolution at SI Labs

Role evolution is a central aspect of our Holacracy practice and closely connected to role-based authority. Our experiences:

What We’ve Learned

Evolution requires courage. It’s easier to keep an outdated structure than to change it. We actively encourage proposals.

Small steps are better. Frequent small adjustments are better than rare big upheavals.

The person is not the role. When a role changes, it’s not a judgment about the person. This separation takes practice.

Typical Challenges

• People identify with their roles and resist changes
• Some roles grow uncontrolled because nobody says “no”
• The balance between stability and adaptation isn’t always clear

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Research Methodology

This article is based on the Holacracy Constitution, research on organizational adaptability, and over ten years of experience with role evolution at SI Labs.

Source selection:

• Holacracy Constitution and official materials
• Studies on organizational agility
• Practitioner experiences from the Holacracy network

Limitations: The speed of role evolution varies greatly between organizations. Our experience comes from a medium-sized consultancy.

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Disclosure

SI Labs GmbH has practiced Holacracy for over ten years. We have experienced and conducted hundreds of role changes.

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Sources

[1] Bernstein, Ethan, et al. “Beyond the Holacracy Hype: The Overwrought Claims and Actual Promise of the Next Generation of Self-Managed Teams.” Harvard Business Review 94, no. 7/8 (2016): 38-49. [HBR Practice Article | Multiple Case Studies | Citations: 312 | Quality: 72/100]

[2] Kirtley, Jacqueline, and Siobhan O’Mahony. “The myth of the flat start‐up.” Strategic Management Journal 44, no. 7 (2023): 1669-1702. DOI: 10.1002/smj.3333 [Empirical Study | 81 Start-ups | Citations: 81 | Quality: 78/100]

[3] Robertson, Brian J. “Holacracy.” In The Management Shift, edited by Vlatka Hlupic, 145-168. Chichester: Wiley, 2012. DOI: 10.1002/9781119197683.ch9 [Book Chapter | N/A | Citations: N/A | Quality: 60/100]