Holocracy is a single manager’s delusion that everyone can report to him or her.  As far as I can tell Zappos still has a CEO.<p>I also think the divide people are commenting about between manager and creator is a red flag for a bad organization.  If you are managing programers you should still be writing code a few layers up (same for other creators or operators).  The “I’m a people person” argument doesn’t hold by itself.  The Commanding Officers of the fighter squadrons I served in flew a lot and also managed 300-700 people.  Certainly managers (or ‘leaders’) need to spend time on higher level issues and looking after the team, but they should still be able to operate &#x2F; create enough to understand what is going on and lead people in the execution of the job.  Sure, when the captain or admiral went flying it was more of a token gesture, but when you have a carrier and 5k people to look after or an entire battle group, well at that point keeping all the balls moving is challenging enough.<p>But a small to mid size team—if you can’t operate why should operators follow you?  While certain management skills are transferable, just because you lead a team of programmers doesn’t mean you can lead a team of SEALs or vice versa.  Operational experience and ability to execute are important and an MBA isn’t a substitute.   Presidents of sales are still involved in selling.  Why is it on the technical side where people seem to either stop executing and manage or just be a ‘creator’.  Like I said, now that I’m a programmer, this is a red flag for me.  Although, to be fair so is the other extreme, the super coding leader with 40 people reporting to him and no time to talk to anyone.   One-on-ones every other year!  Leadership by negligence.