trust & transparency – foundations for europe’s best workplace
DESCRIPTION
In 2008, Futurice was at a crossroads – the company was growing and it was apparent that the structure of the organization needed to adapt to greater size. The culture within the company had been very open and empowering, so adopting traditional manager-led hierarchies didn’t feel the right choice. The management decided to go path less traveled – to build the organization on trust and transparency. In 2012, Futurice was ranked #1 in European Great Places to Work in small to medium sized companies. Inspiration to this path came from small companies which naturally have the same characteristics: trust is naturally high, everybody knows the situation (transparency), and thus know what to do and performance is high. Together, trust and transparency build motivation and bring performance. To build trust, the management must trust the employees first. It means dismantling practices that are founded on mistrust and suspicion. It also means establishing practices that exhibit trust explicitly, so that employees feel it. Transparency in operation and decision-making is an important part of that. Transparency also enables autonomy as everybody has the needed information at hand. And it builds trust and positive accountability since everything is visible. And this is just the start! The talk includes many examples from real life at Futurice. They also look at current challenges as the company is rapidly growing beyond 150 and to multiple sites.TRANSCRIPT
Foundations of Europe’s Best Workplace Tuomas Syrjänen, CEO Petri Heiramo, Organisational ScrumMaster
11/17/2012
Trust & Transparency
1
HELSINKI
TAMPERE
BERLIN
LONDON
150 Established
2000
1
Futurice in Brief
DÜSSELDORF
Digital delivery book
The Story Behind
11/17/2012
4
Fact: Change is mandatory
Professionally managed
Baltic Development Forum @ Flickr
Start-up
60 employees - Control, rules, restrictions and processes (Because everybody says that’s what you got to do )
“Have people really changed in 6 months from really smart to really stupid?”
Enlightment
11/17/2012
8
Trust Transparency We Believe in…
With more trust…
… transaction costs go down
… more trust is given back
… more vulnerable to abuse
… speed of decisions can go up
“Rules” of thinking
Credit Cards and Expenses
Liewcf @flickr
Patrick h lauke @flickr
Agile Teams » We drive responsibility of customer solution to team members
› Engage with customers, deliver collaboratively
» Autonomy, responsibility
» Everybody gets to see the customer, customers sees everybody
» Direct communication
Free Agents » These people have no traditional line manager
» Fully self-responsible for finding valuable work within the company
» Peer-to-peer responsibilities, instead of hierarchical
» Currently in pilot, agents like it
Kantrinket @ flickr
Trusting Customers
» Trust the customer
» Build trust via small steps
» ~50% of maintenance work done without contracts
» Discuss also our own challenges in projects
› E.g. customers participating in retros
Open windows keeps your
apartment clean Flickr @basheem
Transparency » Enables empowerment
» Responsible decisions
› Accuracy, buy-in, …
» Promotes trust
› Nothing to hide
› Reveals misuse
» Feedback & reinforcement
» Focus & Results
» Credits, identity
» …
Empirical
Control
Transparency
Inspection
Adaption
Open Meetings Listening
Lateral comms
» Anyone can participate in management meetings
» FutuFriday
» Yammer
» Frequent updates of financial figures, sales pipeline and projects, management decisions, job opportunities, etc
» Speed dates & Ask-the-CEO
David paul ohmer @ flickr
Weekly :)
1 minute / person How was last week? (honest smile) What will I do this week. How does my workload look.
Numbers everywhere: Financial info, …
Jobfair
» Current availabilities
» Currently staffed cases
» Sales pipeline
» Transparency
» Autonomy
(work in progress)
Outcomes: 3x2!
1. #1 in Great Place to Work 2012
2. High customer satisfaction numbers
3. Profitable company growth for 8 years
0
5
10
15
04 06 08 10 12
Turnover M€, 2004-2012 1 2
3
We are all leaders!
We’re on a journey!
causalien@flickr
If You Are Interested
» Leave your business card, and we’ll send you
› This presentation
› Information on upcoming “Organisation 3.0” seminar day in Helsinki in Spring 2013
» Come talk with us
Thanks! Tuomas Syrjänen, [email protected] +358 50 5470386 Petri Heiramo, [email protected] +358 40 7092526 www.futurice.com @futurice