“Beware the Next Big Thing”

Where do new management practices come from? A few emerge fully formed from the minds of academics and consultants, but the vast majority come from corporate executives experimenting with new ideas in their own organizations.

A case in point is the online retailer Zappos, which is replacing its traditional hierarchy with a self-organizing “operating system” known as holacracy.

Zappos’s experiment is getting a lot of attention. Like many management innovations before it, holacracy has an exciting appeal.

At least a few exe.....