 I think it's safe enough to start First of all, thank you very much. You spend your lunchtime with me lunch is a hard competitor Those days and that you were attracted by those buzzwords here Who am I? I'm Tony Yotsem. I'm a former member of the former management board of the company called leap and I learned to start a presentation entertaining to catch up attention But due to some structuring I have to start boring. Sorry about that. So first we learn a little bit about leap So you get the context leap is a web agency and We are just operating in Switzerland in five locations We do meanwhile the full service package with design Ux consulting development maintenance, but our roots are clearly in development namely PHP development and Meanwhile, we are a team of 160 leapers Amongst them are to Drupal teams. So Drupal is not our core business. Our core business is mostly a symphony related frameworks and But we are since 2009 member of the community I checked on Drupal.org yesterday. We have 23 issues fixed in the past three months and Drupal is Coming more and more important framework for us since Drupal 8 is now also linked with symphony. I Myself I'm Meanwhile a product owner in one of those Drupal teams. It's also why I'm on this stage one of our latest Drupal projects we released was this highly complex commerce-based store for Fry talk fry talk is a bag manufacturer They make back out of crop tarks, which makes every bag they sell unique which makes cashing a nightmare and This was a seven figures project and we are pretty proud of it But we released like 6 to 7 Drupal projects per year. I'd say So why I'm here today? Leap tries to be a self-organized system and We take that pretty seriously So this is the opportunity to not just read theory about it But also to hear about it in practice There are lately There's lately a lot of attention around this topic and I get asked by a lot of partners and friends Yes, can I come visit the office and see how self-organization works? And then I have to say yeah, you will see people sitting at the computer and having meetings and doing workshops So it visually it's nothing else Yeah, but there must be no boss office or something and Yes, if you have a company from the current century, you also have no boss office So visually self-organization doesn't tell anything so actually talk about it and talk together about it It's a good thing to do I Was at Drupalcon Barcelona a year ago This was the moment where we were not yet self-organized so Did any one of here in the room saw that wonderful one person two three great so it might be wise to Just give you a little summary about what I talked a year ago So also a year ago. We were not Hierarchic organization we were something like a team organization And we also had gills. It was spotify ish organized We had something that was not really team organized. We had some leapers with superpowers These are these yellow or orange Fields here superpowers because of you had still had some exceptions team could hire Another team members but firing was such an exception and this was done by people with superpowers Or handling exceptions and these people with superpowers were also forming the management board of the company There were no other Hierarchic layers, so no team leaders or something like that was just the six people and we were like around 130 people a year ago and in May last year before Drupalcon Barcelona something interesting happened We were in our weekly management board meeting and we decided let's drop that meeting. It's just too boring We do not have anything valuable to discuss because most of the things are now decided by the teams Let's drop it. So we dropped it and that went pretty well for weeks But it kind of made us thinking what is happening here? Why does the company work without a management board that does coordination amongst each other? Maybe everybody or one of those managers don't know Makes everything by their own no idea. So we started to investigate What is happening here? What is happening with our company and amongst our investigation? We crossed that book It's a reinventing organization from Frederick Lalu if you're not into book reading I put the YouTube link here for you So it's a two hours video which kind of gives you the whole idea And we discovered in this book this term teal organization Who in the room is familiar with teal organization that term? Yeah, like 20% I think I should click a little bit deeper. I also did that a year ago Because back then we already knew that so Frederick Lalu Analyzed organizational structures and he made an interesting discovery He made the discovery then whenever Mankind made a evolutionary step like from living in the cave to plant seeds to hunt animals to whatever Organization also made an evolutionary step and he started to compare these mankind Evolutions and organizational evolutions and he gave them organizational evolutions a color So I assumed that a little bit in For example a very early form of organization was in his world this red Organization which is organization purely by power. I'm stronger than you I beat you up So I'm your boss and some point in time I will get old and another one will beat me and he's then my boss Funnily we still have this form of organization in the world think of a street gang or something like that. It's still existing Then the next evolution was this amber thing This is a very strict hierarchically organization. You saw in military or in a church in the Catholic Church and This was the first form where not just physical power Was dominating organizations, but also other things then the next evolutionary step was around industrialization this orange Organization which lot of companies are still based on it's about competition about Shareholder value maximization Basically in an orange organization you look at the organization like it would be a machine You see something does not working. Okay, so you make a plan how to make it, okay? And you engineered organization. It's how I learned it in university what business management is Then the next evolutionary step also a lot of Organizations especially in our industry are in this form. It's the green organization It's more about stakeholder balance or a culture of a strategy empowerment of people It's not the pure shareholder value that's in the center and you listen more to people But in his research and he watched a lot of companies He found also some weird other form of organization He called it teal organization Where there was no hierarchy there were there were no bosses People were motivated by other terms It was not just like small companies also large organization this boots org organization He has as example here's a thousand people and they were organized completely different and It's a deal in his world a deal organization and he says or his Hypothesis is this might be the next step of organizational forms with all the robots coming and digitalization It could head in this direction And this hit us quite heavily this wholeness self-management and evolutionary purpose Because we had the feeling We are quite there and we ever wanted to be that so let's do this and We I also talked about why we started to do this a year ago and If you ask around in our company, why should we be a teal organization? Some said yeah, because it's just cool being a teal organization or that's the future or what I said before That's how we always wanted to be Some also said yes. No boss. That's awesome and the boss has said yeah, no painful decisions anymore. That's awesome so we started off in saying yes, we want to be teal and The good thing was we are very close to that but there is also a theory why is Could it be a good idea to head in this direction? This theory says it could improve efficiency in our nowadays structures You might be you might work at like an insurance company or work with an insurance company and You see like classical structures It's kind of losing efficiency when decisions have to go up and down and you are not empowered to do things So efficiency could potentially erase and if something is more efficient it reality often also wins Stability is also a big factor because you do not have a single point of failure and decisions are distributed among a lot of people it's also a good thing and In a teal organization there is also the satisfaction of the employee or of the Individual that's within this organization. That's potentially higher But the big question was okay, how are we going to do that? Let's see we want to have this wholeness the self-management and this evolutionary purpose Wholeness we already did a lot for that so you can fit your job perfectly in your life and Wholeness is achieved. I think that's something you cannot say. Okay. Now we do it It's something that evolves step by step We have since years paternity leaves for fathers and different stuff Evolutionary purpose is something very hard to catch. I mean we are not some organization that helps animals in Africa to survive or whatever We do projects for clients so To have there an evolutionary purpose. Yeah, let's see how that evolves But what's clearly the topic here is self-organization because we still have disguised with superpowers So we are not a 100% self-organization So we think thought let's start with that We have to get rid of those yellow things and we have to get in Self-organization so it's not teams anymore. It's individuals that interact with each other and And how to get self-organized a big question Common sense wise there are two ways we could slightly improve our current organization as it is now You have big question who improves it and how is it going? Or we could switch to a known standard and we looked at different standards and This term holocracy was one of the standards we evaluated So we had this question and that was the point where my talk in Barcelona ended Seem to be a good cliffhanger because I was invited again this year. Oh That's not what I wanted to do. Let me check So what happened after that Drupal con in Barcelona? we had to do to make this decision and How we did that is we sent 10% of our company to a holocracy training from different locations not all the management just three of the management and Developers and designers and scrum masters. So we have We get some knowledge of that holocracy world into us because we saw there are other forms of standard tools But they are not as evolved as holocracy is or was at that moment this resulted in a Bit of a weird Phase where we saw okay. That's like equal pros and cons if we compare it to just do it ourselves I think it's like this software thing. Do you want to do it customized or do you take a standard tool? so But we said this holocracy stuff. It seems safe enough to try so let's do that we can always switch back to our slightly chaotic form of organization we had before and This process took us roughly three months and in January first of January 2016 We said, okay. No, there is no management anymore. Holocracy is in place. Let's start Who is familiar with Holocracy? That's also not much. So I should also make some side notes about Holocracy So first of all where to put that Holocracy thing I usually try to explain it with a Comparison example Possibly all of you know the agile manifesto You know that agile development is a part of an agile manifesto and scrum is actually actual framework to Perform agile development. There are other frameworks, but scrum is one of them Same goes for Holocracy if you say, okay, there is a teal organization Self-organization is a part of teal organization Holocracy is an actual framework how you can be self-organized But there are lots of other frameworks to do that Where is it from? The inventor of Holocracy was Brian J. Robertson a former developer and he developed that framework during The time he was CEO of a rapidly growing software company. He wrote a book about it I also put you a link there of a TED talk. He held about his book and How does it work this Holocracy? So going back to this self-organization, we have a lot of individuals that are supposed to organize themselves The big question is how do they? Interact with each other Do they cooperate and that's the main question Holocracy tries to answer So what Holocracy says is every individual has every right to do whatever It's needed to create value or to be here in general But there is some rule set and This rule set is a structure of roles The picture you see above you will see later in that talk. These are roles and Now you say okay roles that's something I know from hierarchies There are also roles, but there is a big difference in a classical hierarchy. You have an individual You have a role that's a one-to-one match Holocracy the first difference is The individual can hold any role on any layer of this role structure So you can be in a very top role position or a very low Generally, you have not reporting stuff between roles But the other big difference is every individual has an influence on the structure Every individual can change the role structure and that's also meant to be this way So If you see that something has to be done you first do it if you do it on a regular basis You put it into that role structure. So other see how or who is responsible and how is it done? This is the big trick of Holocracy So all these rules and processes how this role structure is built and how to interact with it are written in a book It's like the FIFA regulations of football This is a picture of the book. It's called the Constitution If you want to learn more about Holocracy, I do not recommend to read the Constitution It would actually be the same if you want to learn something about football and read the FIFA regulations It doesn't make sense, but When you practice it you start if you if it gets in the details you need that book sometime So I was talking about roles explain a little bit more that you can catch what a role is Each role needs to have a purpose and Accountabilities what this role is accountable accountable for and The roles that do a lot of work together. They can also be grouped into circles roles can assign actions and projects to each other and And this is the tactical level of Holocracy tactical. That's a Holocracy work But roles can also raise tension if they sense some problems And provide proposal to change the structure. That's the governance level of Holocracy. So you distinguish between tactical and governance and strict tactical and governance meeting protocols Enable individuals to change in governance and tactical level things Yeah, that's a very brief thing I will later on show something about our Holocracy then you might get a bit deeper If you want to understand more feel free to ask me also after the session So Now we said okay, it's first of January we do Holocracy But yeah in the first moment nothing happens. So you somehow need to take off and I said 10% were already educated and some joined also an advanced training in Holocracy and We decided to since our current Structure was a little bit hard to capture to just lay out the green field and say okay now It's Holocracy you are individuals you can create roles go ahead and And We decided to do that this way because Yeah, what can you do? It's I mean there is no Bosses anymore. There's no management anymore. So just a question who is implementing Holocracy is Very difficult But the thing is that didn't work out so we landed hard again on the ground a couple of weeks later because nothing happened so we made that we called the consultant and Had a workshop something we don't like to do usually But that helped big time because what we did together with this consultant is copy the current structure in a Holocracy structure That's something that is just done once but it makes perfectly sense because if you do not have a role You cannot raise tensions and you cannot take influence on the structure So first of all people's need to have roles and if you have a green field there are no roles so it makes sense first copy your structure and It was not a perfect copy because nobody knew exactly what our structure is, but at least it was something and This helped big time because and it changed also quite fast weeks weeks per weeks the structure began to change what we also did is a lot of internal trainings not just the external trainings and Somebody proposed a Holocracy implementation circle so a group of roles around Holocracy with the goal with purpose to implement Holocracy in our company So That's how we took off Some things went well some things not but meanwhile, I would like to show you some of our Holarchy That's how your structure look with Holocracy. It's a Holarchy How it looks today You now see screenshot out of a tool. It's called hola spirit. You can like you use Chyra or Redline to manage projects. It's a tool to manage your organization With a Holocracy. There's also a more well-known tool. It's glass frock. It's a tool of Brian Robertson himself but this one is open source which is the reason we prefer it anyway and And What you see here is the most top circle. It's the so-called January come channel general company circle Every company doing Holocracy has a general company circle. So the most top layer of the role structure and The green dots are actual roles the white dots are actual circles in the view of the general company circle It's all the same also circles have purpose and accountabilities Here for example is this Holocracy implementation circle. I was already talking about it's something on this general level A role on this general level is For example the agile coach So a role a lot of people mostly former scrum master also have amongst their roles to do agile Coaching internally externally Yeah, maybe If I didn't say that yet, we use Holocracy to organize the company to organize project We are still using scrum because it's actually organizing a project in a company is not the same It's a different story and that works out pretty well If there is also a circle called leap Syric it's It's still something from our old world, which is maybe not too bad since we have five offices These offices are quite independent So it also came to the point that offices have their own circles If we go into that leap Syric circle We again see some roles and some sub circles And here we could have a closer look at two different roles A communication supporter or a hiring coordinator This is the detail view on that roles. So in the communication supporter you see has a purpose Has some accountability so everybody knows what this role is accountable for Very important to know this stuff can also be done by anyone else that wants to do this stuff But if it has to be done this role is accountable for Another example is the hiring coordinator and you see here just the empty space and such stuff happens often because I think this role was created. I do not know it exactly, but it's a perfect example Somebody tried to hire someone else and it was a huge mess because it was not clear which CV is where so he said my tension is I Cannot work as hiring something because it's a mess my proposal is we create a role hiring coordinator With that purpose and then my tension is solved So that's how such a role can come up and Everybody is open if it sees this role is not doing Very precise stuff to add accountability's or to delete that role if it's not necessary anymore Going back to this Zurich circle we have this Bazinga circle where we also could have a look at It's the actual Drupal delivery Circle in Zurich. We have two Drupal teams one in Zurich one in Freiburg and These are circles they came from former teams And if we look at that delivery circle, we have also roles Here is a Drupal developer for example, but we also have Yeah financial health guardian of that circle since you do projects. It's good to have a view on financials and I would like to talk first a bit about The achievements we got through implementing self-organization and holocracy First what I can say it Basically works We do it now for nine months. We're still existing We had better numbers in the past, but our numbers at the moment are not bad There was just one person of one of these 160 that left the company and Named as one of the reasons holocracy So which is also not bad. I personally expected more to leave the company What I already talked about scrum for projects holocracy for organization works very well side-by-side What for us was a completely new thing is having a transparent role structure You actually know who is accountable for what? Yeah, or which role is accountable for what because before if you want to hire somebody There was no way to look up somewhere who is responsible for that It's just had to ask. Okay, this guy has experience. Oh, let's talk with him so this is a huge step forward in a speed when it comes to clarify stuff Then what also is an achievement nasty stuff gets tackled also by others than former managers We were this exception group that had to Yeah deal with the nasty stuff and It's not too much, but I see examples of people Coming that also say, okay, I have the ability and the tools to care about that. I care about that Also the responsibility increase Luckily, we are a company with lots of responsible persons but you always have a group of people that waits and commands of someone else and There were people that with this holocracy Started to take on responsibility for their stuff, which is great Because a lot of see through the strict processes. It really saves the space So if you make a proposal others can object against this proposal, but to have a valid objection It's very hard. You need to have you need to have a role that is Affected by the proposal if you don't have a role You are not allowed to make an objection, for example, or you need to prove that it harms the company Before you have a valid objection. So that gives space and Certainty that it's okay to improve something and to take responsibility for something a Thing I was very feared of is the agility The big advantage of our former system of having no structure or basically no structure was we were very agile So if something happened You change it and nobody Has any issues with it and holocracy on the first glance it looks like oh my god This is what I showed you before. This is a very complex and hierarchic thing But since it follows reality and everybody can influence it It's finally pretty accurate what's happening here and I was surprised about that And there is another topic I didn't talk about before its domains and policies Roles can also have domains and domains can have policies It's a concept. I would say a bit from the old world, but it's also part of the holocracy so if you say there is a thing which By default everybody can change but it's not good if somebody changed that and my role is accountable for that You can say this is a domain So it's gonna be my property and with policy policies I can grant access to it or not Classical example is website. So you have the role website manager But everybody is allowed to do everything so everybody can put stuff on the website as they want And then you say okay, this is messing up the design. They have no clue what they do so I do a domain around the website and the policy is either you are Experienced guy with websites or you ask me first if you want to do something with the website and For us since we never had such stuff before it's kind of a good feeling to not have too many domains and policies But even with policies we gain some achievements. There is a domain that's kind of a standard domain that applies to all the roles and In April a policy was created We just have seven policies so far But this is a spending money policy because it was somehow unclear how to spend money before there were these Exceptions guys. They could say yeah You better do not spend that money that company money, but today there are no exceptions guys anymore So we had to kind of say okay or like we somebody had to say how to spend money somebody had to bring a proposal and Proposal had to survive objections to get that through what that policy basically says is Everybody can spend all the money he wants of the company There's just some basic rules like quality is more important than costs or fiat right and organic is more important than costs There is no kind of process sign-off anything so Everybody can buy themselves a Tesla if they want with company money and The funny thing is since April nobody bought the Tesla first of all and second The decisions to spend money are way more economical than before Because you yeah, you are now responsible if you spend company money So this was also a great achievement in my point of view But let's look at the challenging sides of trying to be a self-organization One of the bigger challenges is Change management You know think yeah obviously but for us we never work this way We had a lot of changes in the organizations, but we usually realized that the changes are here after they happened So some office did something else in organization other copied that and suddenly realize whoa Okay, we have a new form of organization. So basically change management is done. You don't have to care about it This is the first time where we say, okay We are in a and there is B and we want to go there and there was a lot of stuff We kind of missed like having everybody on board Educating people Really thinking theoretically What will happen if we do that? For us, it's new that's why it was or still is a challenge for us another challenge Even holocracy is well documented and in meanwhile lots of companies doing it and we have great exchange It still leaves a big room for interpretation This challenge got a little bit down, but in the beginning It's very hard. One says yeah, according to the Constitution. This and this is okay And the other says no according to the Constitution. This and this is totally not okay. Yeah, what are you doing now? So? Ask consultants, but that costs money But this was also or still is a channel challenge another challenge challenge is the cultural change Brian Robertson says Culture follows organization so When you change the organization, it will also change the culture and when I heard that I thought yeah, no way because our organization is basically the culture and Yeah, that's not gonna happen but what I feel now it is gonna happen because as an example we are very we were a very Consensus driven company. So if there was a big decision you get everybody affected in a room and you discussed As long as nobody then could say no With a self-organization, it's the individual that decides not the team It's the role that every decision has to have a role behind it that made that decision You still can go and search for consensus but in the end it's you or it's the role that made the decision and that change or is changing our culture a bit and Another big topic it's rising up the past month We came from this team to the circle structure and A team is a group of people that work together But it's also a group of people that share social activities. They go to lunch together. They do barbecue in the evening and A circle is not the same like a team a circle is a bunch of roles Not a bunch of individuals and the individuals having that roles in that circle. They also have roles in other circles and Still as I presented you the circle Basinga the Drupal delivery team This transition of being a team of individuals to being a team of Roles raises many questions Like if you look at your financial before we just measure the performance of the individuals, which today's Makes no sense because as individual you do not just Add value to your circle or to that circle you also have assignments and other roles and other circles and Also the social thing If you are a team always together, it's socially very good because if you join a company and you join a team That's your home base and there we kind of need to find other solutions than the team Another thing is also the economical understanding of the individual since the individual is doing all the decisions a Lot of decisions need to have some economical understanding and even if you can read books about economics It's something you need to have experience and it takes time What we'd some would be for example, what you saw is we were 130 last year now we are 160. It's quite the growth within 12 months And this is due to the fact that now everybody can hire somebody and if a team or a circle Has too much work. They say yeah, obviously too much work. We need some more people. We hire people But before if you were in the business like I am seven years in some management position You know the fact that you have too much work right now is no indication If you should hire someone or not because hiring someone takes like six to nine months in Switzerland Having a good sustainable project takes also three to nine months So what you actually need to do is develop a gut feeling what's happening in nine months to decide if you should hire someone or not So at the moment there are one or two guys That are out of work, which is not too good for agency, but it's luckily not in a Way it really harms us By the way, the Drupal team in Zurich is actually looking for a position and in my point of view in a very economical form So if you want to join us Just ask me after the session And there is this role and soul separation, which is also a difficult. It's not a one-to-one between individual and role If your role get offended or deleted or whatever it shouldn't affect you It's no big deal, but in our classic world This is a big deal if I have a role and I give my whole emotion into that role and it's deleted What is happening? So this is also we have something we have to learn speaking of roles For this talk, I tried to catch all the roles I have at the moment last Tuesday And as you can see how keynote is shrinking that stuff down. It's it's way It's it's a lot. It's 15 roles actually. It's not the black stuff. That's roles. That's the circles It's the it's a not bold things that are roles and I Have to admit it's too much I was not aware that I have so many roles to be honest But when I look at it, lots of them are like very smallish roles But that's something that helps you separate your individual or your soul from the roles But I would like to talk about the biggest challenge and this challenge I realized lately Never talked about this challenge on stage. It's the first time so maybe I'm totally wrong with this thinking But it's something it really hit me like a month ago It's responsibility for rough decisions Some of you say yeah, that's totally obvious that this is a challenge. I'll just say what is this guy talking about I Tried to give you an example what I actually mean A drastic example a very rough decision. I had to do in the past My roughest decisions I had to do was always firing people. I hate that. It's very hard So it's very rough So if you look at the classical hierarchy Who fires what so it's the layer? Above that fires the layer below pretty easy. That's how we know the world In the team. It's already a little bit Complicated the responsibility is on the team. So the team fires a team member We had this work around of the superpower guys to kind of not yeah Have that very directly but now the question in a self-organization where the power is on the individual Who fires the individual? And I thought about that and if you go there in naked theory It's the individual that fires itself So I fire myself There is no other entity that has any responsibility over me. I fire myself and and Then I started thinking okay, whoa This is kind of weird because this leads to a very interesting question What do I actually need to come to the conclusion? It would be good to fire myself and then actually do it and if you Can get over this question and find solutions for that you also can tackle the rough decision issue And I try to start thinking about that Obviously you need self-esteem. So yes, I can fire myself no big deal I can go out there and catch a new job no problem But you also need the culture in the company that this fail acceptance culture It's not too bad in our company, but it can be better. We are Swiss companies with people hate failures. So But it needs to be no big deal if you say I drop out of the company and the other says yeah Cool this this this guy Really thought ahead and knows that at the moment. He's not fitting into the system, but he can join half a year later Yeah, and the third one the thing that's maybe easier to do but also very hard You need kind of a painful economical and social transparency about your own doing in the company You need to have the information. Okay I'm here since nine months and I didn't add any value to this organization or The social transparency I have so many people that hate me and based on this information With self-esteem and fail acceptance culture. I think that would be the point where you are then okay to fire yourself What was weird for me? I always saw another spirit behind self-organization. It's good for the human It's it's very satisfying to work there But this is kind of a very cold and Capitalistic way of looking at the set of organization. It boils really down to the individual To the evil that has to do with these drastic decisions these rough decisions I'm pretty sure I was talking about hiring before we will find a way around it. So That not the individual really has to fire himself There are work runs like having processes for that and whatever but For me that was really a point noting to share That's a slide I wanted to skip but I can go into that In June we made yeah because of time but in June we made a survey in the company about a log-recy if you should continue or not and 64% said continues 26 don't know 10 drop it and Yes, these are the next actions. It's basically the challenge that I said that's why I wanted to skip that Yeah, but I want to share a final thought with you. I was Some minutes ago a little bit critic about this thing I don't want to you to leave the room with the wrong impression because for me self-organization really is the thing of the future and Why do I think that? When you think of the future human skill set like past human skill set was if you were good in hunting You were good off having a job because you could bring the food The today skill set is reading and writing you basically need that everywhere So what is actually the future skill set if you think think ahead? Obviously one of the skill set is coding Because with code you can generate more value than just with read and write and I know a lot of you are well off regarding this future skill set But I think another future skill set is also to live and organize without the boss because My prediction is if in the future Something is commandable by a boss to someone else It's most likely also a robot around that follows it was likely a software robot not a hardware robot But like having the calendar prepared my friends working at the big bank. They have an assistant. They manage the calendar I do not see the point in having an assistant to manage the calendar because it's faster to just do it yourself Then ring the assistant up because meanwhile, there is a good calendar robot Google calendar. So I think more and more If you can command something you will also have a robot. So it's not a skill anymore To just wait on commands. You need to have the skill To organize yourself to command yourself to to get economical realities to be creative and Skills needed in a self-organization today are skills that might be needed in your future life So my recommendation clearly is start today to think about self-organization or perform it if you have the chance to Thank you very much questions, yes Yes, my opinion about that changed. Yes, I can repeat the question How does this look in a small company or is it wise to do a lot to see or self-organization in a small company? for self-organization, I can say yes, it is worth to do it and Unless you have a very strong owner or boss in most small companies This is also happening or it's not too hard to do the hard fact is the guy that founded the company and holds all the Power for him to step back But then you are pretty well of being self-organized because you get more you can empower people around you more What I wouldn't do is apply holocracy to a small organization because in my point of view up to 50 people It's very at the same place. Let's say. It's very easy to kind of catch what everybody else is doing To find ways to solve problems. It's a lot of common sense all that stuff We do with hierarchy and blah blah blah. I learned that in university. It's really over engineered shit With 50 people it's and we've been we were 50 people It's no issue at all having absolutely no hierarchy or structure in my point of view after 50 people it gets hard and then I think it makes perfectly sense to apply something like holocracy But self-organization in general I think even the smallest company or like think of the smallest company three Persons working together found the company. This is self-organization already Yes, thank you. Yeah, I do not say it's a complete insane to do it It actually helps you a lot holocracy gives you structure, which is always good But it's not necessary to do it to have a self-organization The company leap the question was did we compare holocracy to sociocracy? We did that but I was not involved in it so I sadly cannot tell too much about it, but we did that and I think the reason why Holocracy was because it's in our point of view was better documented and you could Take actual courses and we have some other companies in Switzerland. We know that also started doing it So you have somebody to share You had a question I Think yeah first a Little bit self-study helps But what convinces most people is go to such a training of Brian Robertson He's a convincing guy and the first training section There he talks a lot about Why why should we do that and it was in fact also the part where I got convinced about it because I Would be more on the side of developing the stuff myself That's also what I all do in technology. I always try to do it myself. I know it's completely wrong But in this case I was also more on the other side, but joining that first training The thing I got is it is safe. It's safe enough to try you can try it It will not hurt the company and it's also worth trying it because there is a probability In my point of view it was not like 80% but less that is really helping our organization to perform and that's what we actually convinced me to try it and I Do not regret regret this decision. It really we achieved a lot together with Hologracie Other questions. Yes in the bank The question was how gets the circle started up A Circle is usually first a role like sales the sales role and The role has issues because the workload is more Or it needs to kind of be a little bit more specific the income Coordinated role it gets added and some other roles and when you see there are some roles that Are working very closely with each other you start to say, okay? Let's make this a circle because then it's easier from the outside view to catch what's going on there Your example of new client projects our delivery circles like this Drupal delivery circles They have another purpose. It's not just doing one project the purpose for them is to have Long-term sustainable inflow of projects and delivery of projects So such a delivery circle does normally one to three projects in parallel clients stick to this circle and They also Do the proposals by themselves? So it's another concept. It's a concept. We had before we just took over and Also there a new circle usually gets built if Somebody has a new idea for a long-term business and then they start create a role and you circle around it Yes Yes Yeah Question was if I can tell something about ownership things and that's a very interesting question because There are some surroundings you can do that help Increase self-organize or make a self-organization easier to do Profits in the end of the year We were in the lucky situation that also before we had a very easy model how to deal with that So if we have profits in the end of the year Everybody gets additional salaries according to their profit. We put something back on our stash for bad times But usually profits are handed out in form of additional salaries and not for shareholders Regarding shareholders If you want to have a share of leap you need to have a working contract with leap So and everybody that has a working contract with leap can buy shares So the shares are distributed amongst all employees Obviously founders of leap and former managers like I am we have a bigger portion of that shares But everybody is open to buy shares and participate at the success of the company More questions. Yes salary that your minor Yep, now we're going into details, but that's perfectly okay. It's a good example because you Think that we wanted to do first in first of January, okay Let's switch old system off turn new system on didn't work out as I told and we have a lot of stuff That's kind of legacy stuff from the past organization And the past organization regarding salary was every leaper was assigned to one of those managers like as senior body or anything We had talks four times a year with those people And we also determined the salary of our bodies so to say Going to a democracy there was one of the first system that was then about to change and attacked and There was a circle formed about it. I think it's people development circle or something and They started to figure out new ways how to set salaries for people and At the moment we are in some in-between phase So what they first did is make the salary system completely tad transparent so clear points and most of people know the salary of Others that's already done and what they as Intermediate solution had in place they defined the system how to set salary But there are people with experience actually setting the salary That's why I have this salary that to my role because I did it in my earlier life But the goal of this group is clearly to Get away from that system and to find another system, but it's not a very easy task you do But but I think I'm pretty positive that within the next 12 months Maybe at Barcelona and a triple con in one year. I can talk about the salary system I hope so but at the moment, it's kind of intermediate solutions like separated powers One of the back. Yes Not sure I catched it right which agreements do you mean at these agreements? It's not something that is the question was how do you sort out these agreements between Persons What a democracy helps is how to sort out these agreements between roles and this is this meeting process where When you have disagreements, so when you have a valid objection against a proposal, there is also integration process that defines In different escalation steps, how does this agreements get to each other and solved? But you also have to underlying individuals and also individuals can have a disagreement This guy is not showering enough or whatever So this is obviously not solved in a lot to see but you also need to develop ways or a culture to deal with that disagreements and Luckily, there are not so many disagreements the past nine months. So I think of examples Yeah The thing is Concerning the companies disagreements concerning the company structure. They're really handled well between roles through holocracy And I had to learn a lot because in these meetings you have a very tiny spot to speak Usually you just have to sit there and for me that was very special because I like to speak and I Really had to get used to it. Okay. Now. It's the time to ask clarifying questions It's not the time to give an opinion So just shut up and I also realized when I'm sitting in a client meeting I often fell in this holocracy mode to sit there and wait until it's your turn They think no when my client meeting I should give it a great show here Yeah Yes I see what you mean And the thing is we do not have a DevOps circle because DevOps is something that has to be done within the delivery circles but if I'd say in most of the cases It's okay But we have a role. It's called platform gardener It's also a role on on a GCC level general company circle level and this role was created because mostly the use of internal tools So we do not have like a wild variety of different internal tools and this role got the powers to Have a final world a word on decisions what internal tool to use And I think this role was also created by attention that We have too many internal tools So it just needs somebody that has attention with that and that brings a proposal So it's not really some boss or anything that has to do that. So that's a good example how the structure evolves and Works itself More questions Yes in the back Good question. That's precisely defined in that constitution and it works like this Every circle has some mandatory roles that you need to have if you create a circle around roles One is for example a facilitator. That's the guy moderating that meetings or the secretary That's the guy tracking the stuff in the tool and one of that roles is also the so-called lead link The lead link is the person that gets every new role Default assigned so when the circle creates a new role the default assigned is the lead link And the lead link has the accountability to find someone To perform in this role if he finds no one he has to do it himself or Try to get rid of the role by in the next governance meeting kill it with a good proposal and the thing is you as individual you get approached by different lead links with roles and You don't have to take them. You can say no, I don't want to have this role And in reality if you see are this is a sales role. I like to do sales So usually you go then to the lead link that has of the sales circle and ask him I would be interested. Do you have a sales role for me? This is actually a thing where We are now starting to collect more data around it because the assignment that this assignment works pretty well But as agency you need to have some control How many time do you spend for chargeable work and how many time do you not spend for chargeable work? And since we are a self-organization each individual need to have that information That's that painful information. I was talking about so each individual needs to know Is it okay to spend time for that role which is not chargeable or not? And that's a big thing we are or at least I'm working right now on how to get this transparency on their individual basis Okay, so thank you very much. I will be here the whole afternoon and at the party Don't forget to fill out that. Whoa, that's wrong Survey and tomorrow is some sprint thing. So thank you very much