Why we made it lighter: A case study of how to adopt self-organizing frameworks like holacracy, sociocray and enrich it with agile & lean principles as well as the integral theory. Real life examples from Blinkist and Zalando Technology

1. Beyond Holacracy
2 Case Studies of Self-Organization
Tobias Leonhardt & Sebastian Klein

2. Agenda
Introduction: Holacracy
Case Study: Blinkist
Case Study: Zalando
Connect
1
2
3
4

3. Introduction:
Self-organization
& Holacracy

4. Two books you should read:

5. Green
Value-driven, Relationships over Outcomes
Community, Culture, Fulfillment
Empowerment, Participation
Stakeholder Perspective
Orange
Predict & Control, Management by
Objectives
Individualism, Performance, Competition
Profit & Growth Orientation
Shareholder Perspective
Red
Command & Control
Formal Top-Down Hierarchies
Rigorous processes
Stability & Continuity as core values

7. Holacracy can seem quite complex

9. … which is why we made it
lighter

10. Case Study:
Blinkist

11. About me

12. So many books, so little time …

14. Blinkist – some facts
• Founded July 2012 in Berlin by team of 4
• Today, 25 employees plus about 70 freelancers
• More than 300,000 users in >140 countries
• Target users: busy professionals (like you!)
• Funded by several VCs and business angels

15. What we wanted work to look
like …

18. What we clearly didn’t want:

20. What we clearly didn’t want:

21. What happened next?

22. Exactly that!

23. After 2 years, we were facing …
1. An ineffective silo-structure
2. Massive leadership issues
3. Implicit expectations and politics
4. No shared sense of “we“
…
=> Everything we had run away from in the corporate
world!

24. How we fixed it:

25. Blinkracy’s key elements:
1. Purpose first – on all levels
2. Distributed Authority and decentralized decision-making
3. Flexible Roles & Circles instead of job descriptions &
departments
4. Differentiation of Governance and Tactical / GTD
5. Tensions as base for constant development

26. What happened to those
problems?
Ineffective silo-structure
Implicit expectations and politics
Leadership issues
No shared sense of “we“
Overlapping Circles
Clear Roles
Governance process
Purpose orientation

27. And what happened
next?

28. Our team loves it …
Getting
Things
Done
Work is
Fun

29. … but our investors love it, too!

30. Case study: Blinkist’s audio feature

31. Key take-aways
1. Read the books
2. Find your own light approach
3. Learn from each other

32. Case Study:
Zalando

33. Tobias Leonhardt
Facilitating transformational change
Co-creating self-organizational frameworks
Pioneering Teal
google.com/+TobiasLeonhardtBerlin
xing.com/profile/Tobias_Leonhardt5

34. 16 countries
3 fulfillment centers
16+ million active customers
2.2+ billion € revenue 2014
135+ million visits per month
9.000+ employees

35. Motivators
cropping complexity
addapt to fast changing environments
live innovation every day
attract high skilled talents
use collective intelligence

36. How about you?

37. Zalando
Technology

40. Principles

41. 1. Just do it [consent decision making]
2. Be free to do it [role autonomy]
3. Everybody is a leader [distributed leadership]

42. History

43. personal organisational
Integral Theory
myself
we
Holacracy®
Sociocracy
Agile & Lean

44. Practice

45. “Valley of Tears”
Kickoff
Workshop
Purpose &
Vision Distributed Leadership Framework
PURPOSE
AUTONOMY
MASTERY
RADICAL
AGILITY
Roles 1.0
OKRs
Roles 2.0
Workgroups
CHANGECURVE
TEAM DEVELOPMENT

46. Facilitator Transparency
Governance
Meeting
Operational
Sync
Meeting
Special
Topic
Meeting
Purpose
Autonomous Roles Tension
What?
How?Proposal
DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP FRAMEWORK
for Self-Organisation

48. Facilitator
Transparency Representative
KPI Manager
OKR Expert
Docu Expert
Team Work Organizer
Team Ambassador
Acquisition Manager
Backlog Manager
Portfolio Manager
Communication Expert
Onboarding Support
Process Management Coach
Process Model Designer
Process Monitoring Designer
PMT Admin
ZMON Admin
Analyst
Project Coordinator Monitoring Continuity
Project Coordinator App Monitoring
Project Coordinator Monitoring Summary
Project Coordinator Modular Monitoring
Project Coordinator Same Day Delivery
Roles of a Circle

49. A“Role” is an organizational construct with a descriptive name and one or
more of the following:
● (a) a “Purpose”, which is a capacity, potential, or unrealizable goal
that the Role will pursue or express on behalf of the Organization
● (c) one or more “Accountabilities”, which are ongoing activities
of the Organization that the Role will enact.

50. Helper / Governance Meeting - Visualisation

51. Key take-aways

52. ★ Holacracy® is not enough
★ Holacracy® is too much -
start with a subset
★ “Leads first” works best
★ Align your environment carefully
★ Stick to the framework

53. Needs

54. 1. someone with 1st hand experience
2. a strategic investment
3. the will to make it

55. 4. connect

56. Connect
Practice 1

57. Which reaction could you observe
within you after this talk? (2 min.)
i.e. surprise, scepticism, excitement, denial,
confusion, aha-effect, ...

58. Sharing

59. Connect
Practice 2

60. Which chances do you see in self-
organization? (3 min.)

61. Sharing

62. Connect
Practice 3

63. Which risks do you see in self-
organization? (3 min.)

64. Sharing

65. Connect
Practice 4

66. Imagine you would want to start
self-organization in you company!
What would you need first? (4 min.)

67. Let’s be in touch!
21th Century Organisations
http://www.meetup.com/de/Self-Orga-Berlin/
tl@tobiasleonhardt.de
s@blinkist.com

68. Credits
Mental Model, slide no. 5
from https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterjgreen,
https://vimeo.com/121517508 [watch this - it’s,a realy cool video]