Nils van den Broek: “Holacracy helps us to become the best possible version of ourselves”

In many workplaces you don’t really get to bring your whole self to work, or even express or develop your talents. For Nils van den Broek, one of the founders of the Dutch ‘user experience’ company Valsplat, that is simply unthinkable. “I like to combine work and fun and it is very important to me to be yourself and to be genuine. I appreciate honesty and always strive to stay honest in everything I do. I relate honestly to my co-workers, my clients and to myself.”

Nils is excited and full of energy as he talks about Valsplat being like his ‘second family’. Eight months ago, the company decided to adopt the Holacracy. In this post he shares his experiences

Skills and Interests

“In my own work, Holacracy has provided me with tools that help me focus. Before we adopted Holacracy, I had my finger in so many pies. It was frustrating to have to spend hours on things that were not part of my skill-set or that I was not necessarily interested in. I have always been aware that the business component is where I thrive; it is what I am naturally attracted to. My role now is to be part of a ‘pitch circle’, which is all about growing our business, figuring out metrics, and so on. Holacracy and GTD have helped me to shift from being all over the place to having the opportunity to focus my time and energy on areas that really matter to me personally.”

Valsplat aims high: they strive to create a digital experience that users will fall in love with. They do this by helping product and design teams to better understand who their customers are and what their needs are. The company was founded fifteen years ago by several colleagues, including Nils and Joris Leker, who met in high school and soon realized they shared a passion for business.

“It’s interesting that, although I’ve always been kind of scared of implementing any structure, I have now just implemented two of the most structured things I could possibly imagine.”

Strong Team

“I had hoped that Holacracy would be a tool that can really help empower people. For years we’ve been telling people to ‘just figure it out,’ and ‘make your own decisions’, but we now realize that it’s not easy to do that without some sort of system in place. Now I am seeing people step up and take initiatives. It is so amazing to see this happening in a company. We are now able to use the collective power of individual talents and initiatives.”

“We already had a strong team before, but now, with Holacracy, everyone is empowered to make changes; to do things that they consider important for the company and because of this, our team has grown even stronger.”

“We are able to use the collective power of individual talents and initiatives.”

Clarity

“If I really want to check on something or get an overview, there are some basic principles in Holacracy that make it easy for me to do so without seeming to stick my nose into everything and disempowering people. The whole system brings in so much clarity. Now, when I think of Valsplat, I realize that the introduction of Holacracy has actually made it easier for us to keep track of where we are and what is getting done.”

Evolving Roles

“Some of the roles are still left-over from before we used Holacracy. The various roles at Valsplat have been going through a process of change. In terms of my own roles, I am constantly learning more about what they entail, and I often find myself thinking, ‘What kind of change would I like to accelerate, based on the roles I have right now?’ For me this is an indicator of an individual maturing process within Holacracy: you learn how to evolve your own roles to better fulfil our organization’s goals.”

Changing Fast

“Just before we got into Holacracy, we had already divided our employees into several teams. At that time, we had four senior consultants, so, we decided to have four teams. That was the whole basis for making such an important decision. In retrospect, I can see that this was not necessarily the best course of action.”

“One of our people started to question the whole idea. He said, ‘Why do we have four teams? Is this the best way to divide the work at Valsplat?’ His queries prompted questioning, rethinking, and redesigning, internally and organically. Thanks to the structure that Holacracy installs, changes can be implemented organically and yet really fast, even without the involvement of us founders.”

“Thanks to the structure that Holacracy installs, changes may take place organically and yet really fast, even without us founders being involved.”

Productivity

“Productiveness is a hard topic. It took us a while to figure out how to implement Holacracy and start to work within its principles. I can’t actually say we’ve improved our productivity yet, but I am quite sure that we will see a productivity boost in the near future, once Holacracy has become second nature to us. I am certain about its positive influence on Valsplat in the long run, because I feel that implementing Holacracy is helping us to become the best version of ourselves.”

A Great Place To Be

“Before Holacracy, this was a great place to work and now it has gotten even better. We used to allow people to do things that are expected of them; now people are empowered to make decisions about what they feel is in the best interest of Valsplat as well as of themselves and how to integrate the two. To me it is an absolutely crucial difference: having the ability to change the environment you’re in, not by yourself, but with your entire team.”

“I really hope we’ll meet again some day for another conversation and we’ll be able to show you how we’ll have grown our company with Holacracy by that time.”