Seeing the world through different eyes and finding simple, effective solutions to the existing problems of our partners and customers – that has been part of our DNA ever since Alexis, Reto, and I founded Netstream at the end of 1998. I never would have thought that the answer to the biggest challenge – "agquickly to the needs of the market and our customers" – would end in a complete restructuring of the management organization.
How it all began
But let's go back to the early days of Netstream. We were a company with a typical startup mentality: short decision-making processes, customer focus, and a hands-on approach. As revenue increased, Netstream began to grow. Year after year, the number of our employees grew. 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" attitude within the organization.
Initially, every employee was directly involved in value creation. However, new structures with management and support roles were soon established. In the past, revenue per employee had proven to be a good indicator of the company's efficiency. We soon realized, however, that this metric began to decline proportionally to Netstream 's growth.
Alarmed by this development, the three of us owners began searching for solutions. Ourag, for which we sought answers, was: How can we foster entrepreneurial thinking in our employees and make efficiency measurable? Unfortunately,agexternal consultants and creating countless Business canvases did not produce the desired effect. Theagconsensus was that a strategy was lacking.
As so often happens, chance led us to the small consulting firm me&me at Limmatplatz in Zurich. The duo is convinced that the solution is never found solely within the system. Instead, a system must evolve together with the people involved. Only through the interplay between system and people can sustainable change occur.
Thus began our journey of personal development as founders. Because if you want to develop a system, it's advisable to start with yourself. We soon noticed how our interactions with each other changed for the better. This allowed us to look at the initialagof increasing efficiency while the organization continued to grow from a new perspective. We quickly saw that our market environment, in particular, had changed. And that we, as operational management, represented the bottleneck in this dynamic environment.
Inspired by me&me, we set out to find a system without bottlenecks. We furthered our education in sociocracy, holacracy, and other organizational models until, in 2018, we finally aglearning company based on the principle of collegially led business. A decentralized, market-oriented organizational form that provides leadership where it is needed and can therefore react quickly to customer needsag's beginnings Netstreambut also reflects the DNA of our company.
The advantages of a decentralized, aglearning organizational model for the customer and the company are obvious: it offers maximum flexibility and responsiveness in response to the dynamics of the market.
The way
We started at the foundation and formulated our values. Building upon these, we developed our vision, derived our mission, and defined our strategy. We henceforth referred to these pillars as our strategic direction and began inspiring our employees to embrace them. Throughout this process, we kept the needs of our customers and partners firmly in mind.
In a decentralized organization, it is all the more crucial that the strategic direction is understood and embraced by the employeesagBy definition, this structure lacks leaders who serve as pioneers and set the course. Simultaneously, we expanded the management team by six members and established the principles of an agile, learning organization in our meetings agfor more details, see "Collegial Leadership" by Bernd Oestereich and Claudia Schröder). All of this is done with the goal Netstream of transforming Ag, establishing itself as a reliable partner in the market.
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, countless discussions with our partners and customers, and numerous considerations about what the structure of Netstream should look like in the future, we gave the starting signal for the aglearning Netstream at the beginning of August.
The meaning
As is well known, the impact of decisions cannot beag. An empirical approach is needed, one that evaluates the decision afterward and thus enables further decisions based on it. Even though our experience is still very recent, I can alreadyagthat this decision was a bold but perfectly fitting one. With a company DNA 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 allows us precisely the freedom of action that we want to continue to offer our partners and customers.
The best way toagthe future is to create it. And that's exactly what we want to and will do with Netstream .
