Among Denmark's best workplaces—now as a self-led organisation
From 2022 to 2023, we moved from the 11. to the 3. best workplace with 20-49 employees ranked by Great Place To Work®. We've made this happen, although our organisation transformed into self-led during the past year—or should we say, because of it?
The numbers speak for themselves:
100% of our employees think this is a really good place to work, all things considered.
100% of our employees feel encouraged to balance their work and private lives.
96% of our employees answer that the employees here are willing to make an extra effort to get the job done.
100% of our employees experience that they show care for each other.
Thanks to these 4 voices and all our employees who answered Great Place To Work®'s comprehensive survey of our workplace honestly, even though there are questions in the template that refer to 'the management'—a term that no longer exists in a self-led organisation like ours, where each of us takes leadership for our roles and responsibilities.
The story behind the numbers
In 2022, when changes were happening faster than we were used to, we had to admit that one director was too vulnerable. It didn't work that most of the organisation was looking to the director for answers on handling challenges—or for employees to look to their team managers for solutions.
We had to activate our collective knowledge, energy, and courage and find the way forward together. Everything else would be a loss of resources because no one has the correct answers or the complete overview, and better is something we become together.
Since 2019, we have, step by step, created a workplace where we show up as whole people, engage wholeheartedly, and embrace each other for who we are. It aligns with our purpose of supporting and inspiring people to embrace who they are and take brave steps and our core values of ease, love, and understanding.
Becoming a workplace with that culture gave us a safe and lovely sense of togetherness. At the same time, though, going from a classic hierarchical organisation to a familial community was challenging: Our tools, responsibilities, and organisational structure still worked as in 'the old world' and couldn't keep up.
In retrospect, some of the employees had tried to make me aware of the artificial harmony and that something wasn't working; although I had listened, I hadn't really understood how deep it went.—Inge Kindberg, Director and Co-owner
A brave decision
So, a decision was made. As an organisation, we should further transform and start practising self-leadership. Inspired by Frederic Laloux, the author of "Reinventing Organizations," and with vital guidance, support, and patience from Wildheart Leadership by Hanne Vibe Andreasen, we took the first steps in the autumn of 2022. We now know this:
Becoming a self-led organisation requires many steps, great patience, trust even when everything seems hazy, and the courage to take responsibility for one's contribution. Honestly, the transformation is very challenging and time-consuming when operations must be taken care of as usual—but isn't any reinvention for the better? We strongly believe that self-leading organisations are the future.
This reinvention of the organisation will secure relevance to the market, society, and employees though working in new ways, acting from wholeness and care, and unleashing the purpose of the organisation and individuals.—Hanne Vibe Andreasen
You can see it as nurturing a forest: Some are good at keeping the forest floor alive, some carry seeds from place to place, while others climb the treetops to see far. Some grow slowly and steadily like oak trees; some cover the ground; others sprout and constantly find new ways around things. The goal is not for everyone to be equally powerful but for everyone to unfold their full potential to keep the forest vital.
Another picture that has supported us during the transformation into a self-led organisation is the traffic rules; We need them to get along in the traffic, and as we know them and drive by them as the most natural thing in the world, the rules give us to freedom to go where ever we want.
Changing from a classical hierarchical to a self-led organisation is, in many ways, about learning new traffic rules—because there are still rules for handling roles, holding meetings, seeking advice, deciding daily, deciding on structural and organisational changes, etc. Just as learning to drive a car, self-leadership takes theoretical knowledge and many kilometres on the road.
We are now past the beginner difficulties and gaining experience with activating our collective knowledge, energy, and courage—finding the way forward together.
The transformation to a self-led organisation has so far taken us through these steps:
- Unlearning the traditional and learned form of organisation
- Organising ourselves into natural and intuitive working communities based on the value we contribute
- Identifying contributions for each team as well as contribution, roles, and responsibilities for each individual
- Working with self-leadership tools such as core qualities, conflict management, and feedback
- Creating a new constitution called 'The Law of Nature' which now democratises structural decisions making sure every voice can be heard
- Letting go of the leadership group and transitioning to 'Circle Councils' and 'Circle Forums'—communities that advise and decide, respectively, and where every voice can be heard
- Transitioning to a new state where everyone is a director within their area and where we collectively run Our Units
- Deliberately activating the strength of our purpose as a guide for our direction and our values as a guide for our behaviour
With the recognition as one of Denmark's three best workplaces in 2023, we hope to inspire more people to break free from the traditional hierarchy in which so many suffer and to set people free to live out their potential in a natural and healthy hierarchy.
We have found that there is no one recipe, and such a transformation only happens with many steps, sometimes also heavy and frustrating steps in a thick fog. But our experience is also now that when we nurture trust in the process and take self-leadership seriously, we figure it out and spread a more love-based way of working.
For the benefit of humans, businesses, and nature.
PS Read also Director (on the paper, now Heart of Growth) and Co-owner Inge Kindberg's reflections on the transformation from classical hierarchical to a love-based and self-led organisation (only available in Danish):
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