Scaling Up by using SF and Agile Frameworks

Nina Möhnig & Heike Ehmann

Introduced by Elvira Kalmár

A co-creative agency in Germany found itself in the turbulence of maintaining its identity while aspiring for more significant market shares. It was founded in 2002 and currently has around 40 employees. In 2020, the agency started using agile iterations for processes and structures, such as Holacratic Roles and Circles.

In 2023, the team started on a journey to work on the organisation’s strategy and break it down into goals and their measurement as part of developing the holocratic system further and adapting it to the needs of the organisation. They decided to face a dual challenge: staying true to their values while scaling up by using Solution Focus and Agile Frameworks.

Holacracy is an agile Purpose focused governance-model based approach, which aims to distribute authority and decision-making through a holarchy of self-organizing teams rather than being vested in a management hierarchy. The governance process is collective and integrative, each member filling a role has a lot of autonomy and authority to make decisions on how to best achieve his or her goals.

Roles instead of job descriptions: The building blocks of Holacracy’s organizational structure are roles. Roles are defined by each circle—or team—via a collective governance process, and are updated regularly in order to adapt to the ever-evolving needs of the organization. One person can fulfill different roles.

Circle structure: Circles are organized hierarchically, and each circle is assigned a clear purpose and accountabilities by its broader circle. Circles conduct their own governance meetings, assign members to fill roles, and take responsibility for carrying out work within their domain of authority. Circles are connected by two roles known as “lead link” and “rep link”, which sit in the meetings of both their circle and the broader circle to ensure alignment with the broader organization’s mission and strategy. Governance process: Each circle uses a defined governance process to create and regularly update its own roles and policies. Holacracy specifies a structured process known as “integrative decision making” for proposing changes in governance and amending or objecting to proposals.

Operational process: Holacracy specifies processes for aligning teams according to operational needs, and requires that each member of a circle fulfill certain duties in order to work efficiently and effectively together. There are also key roles to help organise the process and workflow of each circle including Facilitator, Secretary, Lead Link, and Rep Link.

Presenting in this video are Heike Ehmann and Nina Mönich. Heike is a solution-focused Certified Organisation Design Professional and practitioner with a background in HR. Since January 2022, she has worked with Nina Mönich, the Managing Director at the time, as a Coach in Organizational Design and Development. Nina is intensively involved with the question of how new forms of work and leadership can be designed in agile organisations and what it takes to really bring teams to their strengths.

Nina and Heike share how they established a balance between the essence of the foundational values and the inevitable pressures of scaling up while addressing the teams needs rather then just follow the steps of Holacracy implementation.

They share their experiences in two dimensions: They created the company’s strategy to connect the existing vision with down-to-earth goals. To provide orientation, they established an agile process that made informed decision-making and moving forward possible. Afterwards, they adopted the objectives process through retrospectives and involved the teams to enable them to set their own KPIs. Continuous communication ensured that everyone involved understood the evolving dynamics and could provide feedback.

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