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Help, we have no bosses!
We have been self-organized at Great Place To Work Switzerland for six years. But what exactly does that mean? Do chaos and anarchy now reign? How did this come about in the first place? And what exactly does cooperation look like here?
Our aim is to give you authentic insights into our organization, to talk openly about what works well for us - and where we still see potential. We show how we (self-)organize ourselves, how we initially implemented our agile setup, how it is lived in everyday life and what our guiding principles are for successful collaboration.
How did we get from a "classic hierarchical" setup to an agile form of organization in the first place?
From the "classic hierarchical" setup to agility - an overview of the why and the how
Great Place To Work Switzerland was founded on 04.06.2008. In the beginning, it was essentially a single person as managing director, who was supported by working students. The company quickly gained customers and the number of employees increased as a result. When we reached around 10 employees, we asked ourselves what the next growth step should be, and in particular discussed the future organizational structure. The logical step would probably have been additional hierarchical levels and team leads.
Frictional losses and the need for faster decision-making
At the same time, we had an increasing need for faster decision-making due to our rapid growth. More and more things that needed to be decided ended up on the desk of our CEO at the time, Michael Hermann. After all, as CEO, this is his area of responsibility, isn't it? "Playing around" with issues and "waiting" for a decision led to frictional losses and was not efficient in the long term, as Michael Hermann also recognized.
Increasing the sense of responsibility among all those involved
"An adapted team structure was necessary, in which certain decisions could be "handed over". On the one hand to relieve Michael, on the other hand to further empower the team. And we had some team members who also wanted to take on more responsibility in their area. But without necessarily having to take on personal leadership."
So how can we ensure that we can make decisions quickly, react flexibly to changes and further strengthen the sense of ownership in the team?
Agile structures and concepts offer exciting approaches for competence-based decision-making.
Holacracy, sociocracy, collegial leadership or our own model?
In our search for a suitable model for our transformation, we inevitably came across the well-known concepts of holacracy, sociocracy and collegial leadership, but we made a conscious decision not to simply copy existing models such as holacracy. Instead, we asked ourselves what needs we really have and what purpose we are pursuing with them.
Based on this, we analyzed the concepts and examined what could work for us. (In part 2 you will find out exactly what our set-up looks like and what this means for our collaboration.)This introspective approach led to the development of an individualized approach that focuses on flexibility and is perfectly tailored to our needs.
After numerous meetings, workshops and lessons learned sessions, we have now had a tailor-made, effective organizational model for six years that works for us - and this is how we did it.
Step by step: our path to agility
Organizations that work with us have probably heard it more than once: change doesn't happen overnight; change takes time. And so it was with our own transformation.
This phase included clarifying the objectives, a test phase and continuous adjustments based on the findings.
December 2017 - January 2018: Create and finalize concept
Conny, then one of the early employees and now co-owner of Great Place To Work, played a central role in this development. She studied the literature, brought her knowledge back to the team and introduced the Circle structure and a new decision-making process. Over the course of several months, we discussed various aspects and considered how we could best implement them in our company.
February 2018: Everyone agrees
After the final refinements, everyone was on board with the motto "safe enough to try". The shareholders saw the company as solid enough to take the plunge and at the same time flexible enough to return to the previous structure if it didn't work out. In this case, we stuck to the basic logic: If an issue is important to someone, that person will take responsibility, otherwise it is not essential to the organization.
Even the former CEO would have to face up to these tasks if they were important to him. With this in mind, Michael Hermann quickly recognized the benefits of this pragmatic approach and actively supported it: "Self-organization has helped us to really distribute responsibility among many people. Of course, at the beginning you wonder how it will work to come to decisions together quickly. But the commitment and involvement of all colleagues increases significantly when everyone can - and must - get involved to drive issues forward."
March 2018: The starting signal
In March 2018, we held our two-day "Going Agile" workshop with the entire team. Here, we once again set out all our goals and worked out together how the individual points should be achieved. Specifically, the following aspects were discussed and worked out:
- Communication: How do we ensure that everyone has the information they need?
- Collaboration: How do we structure meetings, what are roles and responsibilities and competencies?
- Decision Making: Who decides? Does anyone have the final say? What is the process?
During these two days, we defined which Circles ("teams") are needed, what the responsibilities and priorities of the respective Circles are, who is part of which Circle, and what the commitment of each individual person is in their respective role / Circle. Conny Schättle remembers:
"At the beginning, we took a lot of time to talk to each other and to reflect and try things out again and again. Finding the right form of collaboration for us was key to the success of the reorganization."
And then we just tried it out. And learned.
August 2018: End of the test phase and lessons learned
After five months, the entire team came together for a "Being Agile - Lessons Learned" workshop and asked themselves: What worked well and what do we need to revise?
The bottom line:
- We have been able to record smaller and larger successes: In this six-month period, we have successfully set ourselves up in Circles, defined Circle coordinators, introduced Microsoft Teams as a communication tool, adapted the seating arrangements and much more.
- The efficiency gains are not yet what we had imagined: It takes a long time for a decision to be made, we lose a lot of time in meetings. How can we further improve the meeting structure and internal communication?
- Important information does not reach the right people: How do we ensure that important information, processes, etc. are documented and easy to find? How do we ensure that the important stakeholders are informed? In what form do the Circles inform each other?
- Responsibilities are not yet defined clearly enough: Who exactly takes responsibility for what? Who decides? Do we need an escalation process?
Over the coming months, we continued to work on these aspects and experiment with approaches.
Spoiler: We don't have a solution for everything yet and are constantly developing these topics further.
April 2019: It's still fun
After a year in this experiment, we have seen that the company is still functioning, projects are being implemented and there is no chaos. (thumbsup)
We still had certain frictional losses because processes had to be re-established, responsibilities had to be redistributed and new people joined the team.
But overall, it's still fun and so in April 2019 the decision was made to keep (and further develop) the self-organized set-up.
In recent years, we have tweaked details here and there, but we have retained our agile setup at its core.
While certain processes have now been implemented almost to perfection, other aspects were still a major construction site until recently. As time goes on and we grow, new issues naturally arise. For example: How can we ensure that new employees have a good onboarding experience? How do we give ourselves positive feedback and show appreciation, in what form do we give ourselves constructive feedback?
Before we go into these points, we will show you what our agile set-up looks like today.
Our agile setup - Circles, CCC, task forces and committees
Great Place To Work lives by the principle of self-organization. Responsibilities and decision-making powers are distributed among self-organizing teams, so-called "Circles".
As you will soon realize, we have a large number of names for certain structures. This is not because we have highly complex structures like those in large multinational corporations. At some point, we just had some fun and looked at what funny names we could use to name new project groups or teams 😀
Organization in Circles
Our organizational structure consists of circles with defined roles, responsibilities and decision-making powers. In this way, we promote transparency and accountability within the teams.
As primus/prima inter pares, Circle Heads are responsible for the organization of their Circle and also represent the perspective of the Circle to other Circles. For example at the Cross-Circle-Council. (The Circle Head changes every 12 months. This is to prevent one person from being given too much responsibility and "power". This is also a learning experience for us: we still find the basic idea behind it sensible, but in practice this still works poorly and frequent changes are also inefficient).
The main Circles represent our operational core business. In addition to the main Circles, there are other important Circles with specific missions that are directly linked to our core business. We also have tasks that do not belong in a separate Circle, but which also need to be filled and are important. We have other vessels and roles for this. The latter are of great importance to us, as we work very much on a role basis. The respective roles are based on individual strengths and preferences and are not tailored to an organizational chart. Some examples of such "individual roles" are Finance, HR or Data Protection.
Cross Circle Council (CCC)
We ensure cross-circle communication with the Cross-Circle Council.
Once a month, all Circle Heads meet and discuss what is happening in the respective Circles that could influence one of the other Circles. Sometimes, however, it is simply a matter of sounding out an idea and obtaining feedback that includes the perspectives of all the Circles. That way, we know quickly if we have possibly not taken a perspective into account.
Dedicated committees and task forces
In addition to the Circles, temporary task forces or topic-specific committees are important forms of collaboration. The "purpose" and/or the time period is defined in advance. The idea is that anyone who is interested in a particular topic can get in touch.
Example task force
Almost three years ago, Great Place To Work launched the specially developed SaaS survey tool Emprising™ introduced. There were very different issues to discuss: Functionalities of the tool, the changeover from the existing tool to the new tool, questions relating to project management, positioning, communication with customers, internal processes that would be affected and much more. To this end, we put together a temporary task force that included all key stakeholders and was disbanded once the project was completed or the scope had been reached.
Committee example
Our Salary Pitch takes place once a year (more on this in a separate video - coming soon). A committee is drawn by lot, which changes every year. While the members of the committee change every year, the tasks remain the same: our Comp&Ben Committee is responsible for checking the inflation adjustment. As part of our salary pitch, it also ensures that salary fairness within the team and externally is fair. (You can also find out what our salary pitch and in- and between-circle fairness are all about in this video).
You will also get to know other committees, such as our Culture Hub, over the next few weeks 😀
Projects & strategic initiatives:
Sometimes a meeting/workshop results in projects or initiatives. Here, too, interested people come together and work on the topic. The important thing is that it is voluntary. This ensures a high level of motivation and personal responsibility on the part of the members.
These are just a few examples of how people in a team can take on additional responsibility and work on a topic.
With this article, we would like to give you a first glimpse behind the scenes at Great Place To Work Switzerland and show you how we have moved from a "classic hierarchical" set-up to self-organization. Our aim here is not to provide you with a step-by-step guide to the leap into agility, but to share our development, our successes and also our learnings with you.
But this is just the beginning of our story. Would you like to find out more about how the whole exactly what our daily cooperation looks like? What are the guiding principles of our collaboration? What is going well? And what are we currently working on?
