1. Habit #1: Name the Role that feels the Tension

Last time, you got a message about starting your Holacracy Habits program. Now, you’re starting your first habit: name the role that feels the tension. Each habit will have a shorthand description like this, but it’s just a label to make it easier to remember. So, more precisely, this habit means clarifying which role you are speaking FROM and, when relevant, which role you are speaking TO. Now, every Tactical Meeting includes a “triage issues” phase, where you have the opportunity to process your tensions. When you build an agenda to triage issues, you are really building an agenda of tensions to process with your colleagues.

Remember a tension is “a gap between the current reality and a potential you sense.” That could be a sense of frustration, but it could also be a new opportunity you want to explore.

Sensing and processing tensions will be fundamental to your Holacracy practice. So, try naming the role that feels the tension in your next Tactical meeting.

It will look something like this:

Facilitator: Whose item is this?

You: That's mine

Facilitator: What do you need?

You: In my Communications role, I'm gathering content for the newsletter. Does anyone have an update I can include?(Facilitator faints because you just made their job so much easier...)

The challenge is to get into the habit of using role names in addition to the names of the people. If you don't know which role feels a tension, you can always take a moment and refer to your roles in GlassFrog.

Core Concept: Tactical Meeting

Tactical meetings are a great chance to sync-up about work, but you should never wait for a tactical meeting to get work done. Instead, use the current governance to help you figure out where to route information and requests. You can learn a lot about the tactical meeting process here, as well as find a printable PDF of the tactical meeting process card.