How to build a teal organization in a year and create a committed, a self-managing team - PerfectCircle®
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Casestudy

How to build a teal organization in a year and create a committed, a self-managing team

Bees & Honey is an advertising agency with over a dozen years of history, working for global brands, which was looking for a way to define how it wants to act and what it wants to be. Maciek and Karolina Żybula, founders and CEO of the agency, worked for a long time on the vision of operation and organizational strategy and its implementation independently, but their actions did not bring satisfactory results. After the difficult situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the founders of Bees & Honey decided to use the help of external experts. Looking for specialists with extensive experience and documented results, they found PerfectCircle.

OBJECTIVES AND EFFECTS OF BUSINESS COACHING

Maciek and Karolina, supported by Marek Wzorka from PerfectCircle, set themselves the goal of building a turquoise organization based on cooperation. So that the business results soar like crazy. Marek guided the company through the proprietary process From Hierarchy to Turquoise™, the goal of which is self-management as well as smarter and more effective work, which in turn translates into business results.

OBJECTIVE 1:

Specifying and developing an organizational culture based on cooperation and dynamic self-management

EFFECTS:

  • In the first quarter, instead of spending long hours talking, Bees & Honey leadership team meetings were shortened by 50% and the number of decisions made during meetings increased by 100%.
  • The transparency of the company has increased and the atmosphere in the teams has improved significantly.
  • Bees & Honey employees got to know their strengths thanks to Gallup’s talents, which translated into a better flow and greater joy of cooperation. The creativity of people and teams has increased, as has the number of new ideas.

OBJECTIVE 2:

Improving business performance

EFFECTS:

  • After starting the From Hierarchy to Turquoise process, after the first quarter of cooperation, the Bees & Honey team achieved a 100% return on investment in the process.

Searching for a name for my natural path in business and management, as well as what I think about the world and work, I came across Mark’s book: “From Hierarchy to Turquoise, or how to manage in the 21st century”. I got to know Mark and his beliefs in depth on the basis of this book and I can say that I agree with him 100%. And also that they made a huge impression on me.

We have managed to start cooperation and initiate the process of development of the company From Hierarchy to Turquoise ™ in Bees & Honey. I highly recommend working with Mark and PerfectCircle to all modern leaders as well as those looking to transform their businesses into self-managed teal organizations.

Maciej Leonard Żybula, founder of the Bees & Honey agency

HOW DID BEES & HONEY CHANGE INTO A TEAL ORGANIZATION?

The process of transforming the structure of the organization (From Hierarchy to Turquoise ™) began with an analysis of the current situation and the needs of employees. Each employee learned their strengths through the Gallup Talents study, and tasks and roles began to be allocated according to them. The company has implemented tools and practices such as the OKR method, dynamic self-management, and the turquoise culture of the organization. Responsibility for the organization, business, and finances was divided among several leaders, which lifted a huge burden from the shoulders of Maciek Żybula, who finally had time to deal with the development of the company and leaders in the organization.

At the beginning of the process, the agency had an unclear and unspecified organizational structure. As she created the most creative marketing concepts for the biggest global brands, she had a natural spirit of creativity and warmth, but also stressed situations. Sometimes stress and high expectations of customers caused chaos, unnecessary misunderstandings, and rotation in key positions. Thanks to the implementation of Dynamic Self-Management and the introduction of a customer-centric organizational structure – Solar System – the agency maintained very high creativity, and the cordiality and trust within the company improved even more. Business processes have been improved, the responsibility of the entire team for results has increased many times, and the recruitment and onboarding processes have been systematized. Staff turnover has decreased significantly.

Along with the implementation of Dynamic Self-Management, teams experienced an intensive development of soft skills, including listening to each other and providing constructive feedback. Thanks to the interactive business game, gamification, and demo of self-management meetings, the entire team had the opportunity to play the role of an entrepreneur and make business decisions. Having fun and developing competencies of the future, such as creativity, processing, and interpretation of complex information, entrepreneurship, taking the initiative, dexterity and accelerated learning.

Dynamically changing roles have replaced traditional, hierarchical positions. The company introduced and developed agile practices and an approach to clients in the Lean StartUp model. Complicated and unclear internal processes have been simplified, and the initial resistance to change in the team has been replaced by the approach: “We like changes and we initiate them ourselves.”

By assigning roles according to interests and predispositions, team relationships improved. Employees learned about the sources of internal motivation, and methods of caring for their own happiness and well-being, and were given tools for professional coping in the VUCA world – complex, changeable, uncertain, and ambiguous. Transparency in decision-making and finances has increased. Now the entire team knows the financial situation of the company and has an impact on the development of its own, projects and the entire agency.

SUMMARY

Thanks to regular classes conducted by Marek Wzorek, the entire company was included in the change process and was inspired by the idea of ​​the turquoise organization. Self-management has become a natural practice in the organization, employees have become more involved and their turnover has decreased significantly.

Bees & Honey has successfully become the only turquoise advertising agency on the Polish market. Transparency in activities and finances as well as the implementation of the OKR method translated into its development and the achievement of business goals. And at the end of 2021, the company acquired the largest client in its entire history.

The innovative turquoise organizational culture and the changes that have taken place at Bees & Honey over the course of 12 months have prepared the agency for the next 10 years of rapid growth.