[11][12] In contrast to the governance process, which is collective and integrative, each member filling a role has a lot of autonomy and authority to make decisions on how to best achieve his or her goals.
Some have described the authority paradigm in Holacracy as completely opposite to the one of the traditional management hierarchy; instead of needing permission to act or innovate, Holacracy gives blanket authority to take any action needed to perform the work of the roles, unless it is restricted via policies in governance or it involves spending some assets of the organization (money, intellectual property, etc.
A particular feature of this last phase, known as "triage", is to focus discussions on the concrete next steps needed by the individual who added the agenda item to address his or her issue.
[16] Its developer was described by The New York Times as "a computer programmer with no training in human resources, let alone occupational psychology" and The Wall Street Journal identified the requirement for "every decision must be unanimous" as detrimental.
[17][6] They also reported that "Fifteen percent of an organization’s time is spent in" ($27 billion of them "unproductive") meetings and made mention of Robertson's book.
[2][7][4] The New York Times wrote in 2015 that "The goal of Holacracy is to create a dynamic workplace where everyone has a voice and bureaucracy doesn’t stifle innovation.
It is said to increase agility, efficiency, transparency, innovation and accountability within an organization,[23] and to encourage individual team members to take initiative and gives them a process in which their concerns or ideas can be addressed.
[4] In moving away from Holacracy, Andy Doyle of Medium noted that "for larger initiatives, which require coordination across functions, it can be time-consuming and divisive to gain alignment" and that Medium believed that "the act of codifying responsibilities in explicit detail hindered a proactive attitude and sense of communal ownership".