An organization is a collection of people who work together to reach certain goals according to certain rules. For millennia, the primary model that we have had for organizing this kind of “social activity system” has been the hierarchy. Hierarchies are everywhere in society in all kinds of organization from the church to the government to the football club. The hierarchy has many advantages, can be very effective and it is what we are used to. However, it is prone to abuse and often leads to stress and dissatisfaction. 

In recent years, experiments such as Holacracy have been trying to break this mold and find new ways of working together. We support these experiments but we also see that such structures are too radical for the majority of companies at the moment. Nevertheless, many companies want to change the way they work and lead people. Although they do not want to completely dissolve the hierarchy, a culture should be established in which employees speak up, direct their own work, bring in creative ideas and feel part of a community with a sense of responsibility and purpose. 

There is no standard recipe for this “modern transformation of leadership”, the style of leadership and culture should be specific to values, company history and business and market requirements. We support companies on this journey of transforming their leadership and culture, making their companies great places to work and attractive to the best talents.