We’re all familiar with the traditional hierarchy of a school district, but what if this structure is inadvertently holding back motivated, capable people with great ideas? Alexis Gonzales-Black, co-author of The NEW School Rules: 6 Vital Practices for Thriving and Responsive Schools, describes her experience adopting a distributed management system at Zappos and provides tips for getting started at your own school or district.

At Education Elements, we’re a rambunctious band of former educators. As we built our own team, we realized that we were creating hierarchies, processes, and roles that mirror those of our experiences in the K-12 environment. We asked ourselves, “Are there were ways to improve meetings?” “How can we free up managers time so they spend more time supporting & creating rather than managing?” and even “How can we empower all employees, not just executives, to be agents of change?” We used our own office to test the theory of distributed management by adopting holacratic structures.

Interested in maximizing the capacity of each member on your school or district team, bolstering culture and employee satisfaction, and minimizing wasted work hours? This Elements of Change episode is for you.