The Journey from Outsource Hierarchy to Product Holacracy

Context

4IRE Labs is a tech outsource and product company. Mobile (previous focus) was in decline, software development was becoming a commodity, average market rates decreased. We saw the opportunities in the blockchain space, but there was no clear pass to the switch, because of the lack of market knowledge and business domains expertise (e.g. supply chain).

Goals

• Switch to blockchain from mobile
• Switch to products from services
• Switch to holacracy from directive management

Results

Switch to blockchain from mobile

• On Jan 2018 blockchain revenue was 7.5% out of all
• On Jan 2019 blockchain revenue 52% out of all (despite crypto winter)
• Revenue x2 growth
• Revenue per employee x2.7 growth

Switch to products from services

• Over $100k invested in the product (ICONX)
• Costs were covered with a small profit
• Product archived for now due to decline of ICOs

Switch to holacracy from directive management

Some holacracy practices were introduced back in the end of 2017, but major events happened in 2018:

• Corporate insurance was purchased from the bottom up initiative
• Opened up budgets
• Open requests for purchases (hardware, office improvements)
• Did 4 strategic sessions with the team (2-4 hours each) and everybody had fun moving cards on Mural
• Improved lots of policies, resolved hundreds of tensions
• Went through several org structure redesigns and no-one died
• Established a ritual of biweekly coffee meeting for building interpersonal connections and sharing news
• Started monthly newsletter with reports on all circles written by leadlinks
• Team embraces the culture of change