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Comment by marssaxman | Hacker News Reader

Aside from the fact that this appears to be yet another cuckoo-pants management cult, I just cannot stand the name - it is obviously spelled wrong, and should either be "holocracy" or "hollacracy".

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I suppose it's technically correct, even though it's a little goofy. The first part is from the neuter form of the Greek adjective ὅλος (holos), meaning "whole". The neuter form (used as a noun here I assume) would be "holon" and the plural of that, "hola". So holacracy would be "rule by wholes". Better than rule by a-holes, I suppose...

Ah, interesting. It's been a very long time since I learned anything about Greek; I was imagining the root as "holos" as in "rule by the whole". Thanks for the clarification. I'll try to stop being annoyed by the word now that I know it's not actually wrong.

Being a native Greek speaker, I find "holacracy" (ολακρατία) at least weird; it sounds completely wrong. If I wanted to combine the two words I would automatically use "holocracy" (ολοκρατία). I can't think of any example where Greek uses the plural form of a word in combination with -kratia.

Speaking of the name, it's a registered trademark of HolacracyOne, Inc. There are "licensed providers" of Holacracy.

I wonder what the financial incentives were for this author.

Not to mention that the post manages to work in a plug for a software package, too. "It’s theoretically possible to run Holacracy without it, but it would be hard."

Holacracy is a US trademarked derivative of the more open concept of organizational 'sociocracy'. Search for 'dynamic governance' and 'sociocracy' if you want to get away from a trademarked version. Holacracy is to Sociocracy as SCRUM is to Agile.

I feel like most startups practice hollacracy; everyone's in an open plan office and if anyone needs anything from you, they just holla atchu!

I refer to it as "Hellacrazy" myself...

...or holacrazy

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