Seeing the world through different eyes and finding simple, effective solutions to the problems faced by our partners and customers—that has been part of our DNA since Netstream was founded Netstream 1998 by Alexis, Reto, and myself. I never would have thought that the answer to our biggest challenge—responding quickly to the needs of the market and our customers—would result in a complete restructuring of the management organization.
How it all began
But let's go back to Netstream early days. We were a company with a typical start-up mentality: short decision-making processes, customer focus, and a hands-on approach. As sales increased, Netstream began Netstream grow. Year after year, the number of our employees rose. Our technical solutions matured faster than our internal processes. As the company grew, it became increasingly challenging to maintain the original DNA and the associated "can-do mentality" within the organization.
Initially, every employee was directly involved in value creation. However, new structures with managers and support roles were soon created. In the past, revenue per employee had proven to be a good indicator of the company's efficiency. However, we soon realized that this began Netstream decline in proportion to Netstream growth.
Alarmed by this development, the three of us owners began searching for solutions. The question we sought to answer was: How can we get employees to think entrepreneurially and make efficiency measurable? Unfortunately, hiring external consultants and creating countless business canvases did not have the desired effect. The vague consensus was that there was no strategy.
As so often happens, chance led us to the small consulting firm me&me on Limmatplatz in Zurich. The duo is convinced that the solution can never be found in the system alone. Instead, a system must evolve together with people. Only through interaction between the system and people can sustainable change be achieved.
This marked the beginning of our journey of personal development as founders. After all, if you want to develop a system further, it is advisable to start with yourself. We soon noticed how our interactions with each other changed for the better. This enabled us to look at the original question of increasing efficiency while maintaining the organization's growth from a new perspective. We quickly saw that our market environment in particular had changed. And that we, as operational managers, were the bottleneck in this dynamic environment.
Inspired by me&me, we set out to find a system without bottlenecks. We educated ourselves in sociocracy, holacracy, and other organizational models until we finally found what we were looking for in 2018 with the agile learning company based on the principle of a collegially managed company. A decentralized, market-oriented organizational form that leads where leadership is needed and can therefore respond quickly to customer needs not only reminded us of the beginnings of Netstream, but also reflects the DNA of our company.
The advantages of a decentralized, agile learning organizational model for customers and the company are obvious: it offers maximum flexibility and responsiveness in response to market dynamics.
The path
We started at the bottom and formulated our values. We then built our vision on this foundation, derived our mission, and defined our strategy. We referred to these pillars as our orientation and began to inspire our employees to embrace them. We always kept the needs of our customers and partners firmly in mind.
In a decentralized organization, it is all the more important that the orientation is understood and supported by the employees. This is because, by definition, there are no leaders to set the direction. At the same time, we expanded the management team by six people and established the principles of an agile learning company in our meetings (for more details, see "Collegial Leadership" by Bernd Oestereich and Claudia Schröder). We are doing all this with the aim of transforming Netstream a company that impresses the market as a reliable partner with its innovative strength and agility.
Today, a good year and a half after expanding the management team, setting up an internal academy for training purposes, developing various tools to simplify processes, holding countless discussions with our partners and customers, and giving a lot of thought to what Netstream structure should look like, we Netstream the green light for the agile, learning Netstream at the beginning of August.
The meaning
As we know, the impact of decisions cannot be predicted. An empirical approach is needed to evaluate the decision retrospectively, thereby enabling further decisions to be made on that basis. Even though our experience is still very limited, I can already say that this decision was a bold but perfectly fitting one. With a company DNA that is designed to make complex systems understandable and accessible to the general public, we have chosen an organizational model that can be flexibly adapted to our requirements. This gives us exactly the freedom to act that we want to continue to live by for our partners and customers.
The best way to predict the future is to shape it. And that is exactly what we want Netstream and will Netstream with Netstream .
