"The road to self-directive passes through green meadows, includes climbs to mountain peaks of hight you in a middle think you never reach, drive you to new acquitances and relationships, gets you sweat and swear, but once you see the end of the rainbow you know that the road you took has teached you a lot and that its not about the destination - its all about the journey."
The new norm emerges
Big Data Solutions and Bynfo merged beginning of 2019 and BDS Bynfo was created. BDS Bynfo as an almost 50 employee consulting company struck its first customer win just a day after the merger. Seure Henkilöstöpalvelut had selected BDS Bynfo instead of one of our fierce competitors. This was a definite sign that the reasoning behind the merger made sense, not only from our perspective but also from our customers' perspective.
Through the first win and few more we sifted to planning a winning strategy for BDS Bynfo during summer 2019. How to build a modern data and analytics company with following characteristics:
- Thought leader in data and analytics
- Low hierarchy and high seniority
- industry benchmark, known to be a self-driven, fair and well-managed organization
- Over 100 consultants with revenue of 12 million euros
- A new brand to embrace the change
It's all about the people at Kaito
With high ambition we started to sketch the transformation. After a close look at the competitive landscape, engaging with the personnel through value workshops and listening to our target customers, we decided to drive the organisation towards the turmoil of self-directive approach. Sociocrazy 3.0 was taken as one of the building blocks, though we wanted to let our own people to create an unique DNA for the business. While the operations took a step towards circles and guilds, also the management ideology was reformed. With support from our Board of Directors, we started to implement Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) as the new management philosophy. The first round of company level OKRs were created in spring 2020 while the COVID-19 laid its first haze over the globe.
Climbing the steep slopes
Reforming the operative model, organisational structure and management philosophy while waking to a new day of having no visibility to the world of COVID-19, was a bittersweet thing to do. The expectations for self-directive approach were high, while the existence of solid cashflows were jeopardized. Therefore one of the company level OKRs focused on survival.
"Stay afloat during Corona" was one of our first company level OKR objectives.
With less hierarchy and no team lead layer anymore, our new coaches started their own journey of becoming the second corner stone for the self-directive approach. For a consultant who is accustomed to giving answers and guidance for customers and who now should base the coach-coachee relationship on asking questions instead of giving answers, must be a tricky change to manage.
"Whole new relationships were born through coaching process and various circles"
Occasionally there has been a feeling in the organisation of drifting without control and urge to go back to the old habits. They say patience is a virtue and perseverance enable great things to happen. While you want something new, you usually also need to let go some of the old. In our narrative, this means prioritizing the things that enable us to double our business and letting go of the things that restrict the speed of growth. Hence, the focus is strongly around growing our offering and expertise in data and analytics and focusing on strategic customers with their current and future needs.
The journey continues
The Kaito journey is only taking its first steps to the unknown, but we are more than ready for gigantic leaps as we are the essential platform for data driven growth and there is a definite vacuum to be filled.
22.04.2024
