Liip

About Liip

Founded in 2007, Liip is a Swiss digital agency specializing in the production of websites and mobile applications. The company currently employs 220 people, spread across 6 offices in Switzerland.

Several key principles are embedded in its DNA, including agility, sustainability and self-management. These are also reflected in the company's purpose: "creating long-lasting  social, environmental and economic value, by striving for digital and human progress."

Context

Since its creation in 2007, Liip has cultivated a bold approach to work. Rejecting traditional hierarchical schemes, this Swiss digital agency quickly embraced agility, transparency and individual empowerment. The company tested various agile methods to structure its design and development teams, including the Scrum methodology in 2009, and the Spotify model in 2012. These experiments laid the foundations for a more flexible organization.

However, as the teams grew, these models began to show their limitations. The leadership wanted to go further and offer teams a clear framework where everyone could make decisions, propose ideas, and contribute to the company’s strategy. The turning point came when the Liip team discovered the book Reinventing Organizations by Frédéric Laloux, which inspired them to take the next step. 

In 2016, they decided to adopt self-management by implementing Holacracy: a governance model that distributes authority across autonomous teams (also called "circles"). This visionary decision made Liip one of the very first Swiss companies to implement Holacracy.

To support its self-management practices, Liip chose to rely on Talkspirit's agile governance solution, a platform designed specifically for agile organizations that place purpose at the heart of everything they do. 

Challenges

• Understanding and adopting a new model: The majority of employees had never heard of Holacracy before it was implemented at the company. Therefore, it took time, discussions, and internal training for everyone to familiarize themselves with the new rules.
• Changing the decision-making culture: In Switzerland, the culture of consensus is deeply rooted. Holacracy, on the other hand, favors consent, meaning decisions can be made as long as no major objections are raised. Transitioning from one model to the other required a real shift in mindset within the teams.
• Clarifying roles: The Lead Link role, often misunderstood at first, raised many questions. Some saw it as a form of disguised management. It was important to re-explain, clarify, and change the way this key role was perceived within the company structure.
  
• Adapting cross-functional processes: Departments such as HR and Finance had to rethink their working methods to fully embrace this new self-organizing approach. 

Why Talkspirit

• A tool perfectly suited to Holacracy: Talkspirit quickly established itself as the ideal solution for Liip, thanks to its features designed for self-organizing organizations, particularly those practicing Holacracy.
• A comprehensive functional scope: Essential governance functions like role mapping, meeting management and governance evolutions are all available in one place.
• A true partner, not just a service provider: Beyond the features, it was the quality of the relationship that made the difference. The Talkspirit team was responsive, attentive, and available throughout the project, providing support that strengthened trust and facilitated deployment. This trust is also what led Liip to offer its digital design expertise to Talkspirit to help tackle the challenges posed by the platform's new features and practices.

Implementation Process

• Strong support from management: The leadership team played a key role in driving the project forward and actively supported the implementation of Holacracy, which helped foster team buy-in from day one.
• Gradual and voluntary deployment: Liip started the implementation with a six-month pilot phase. During this period, several volunteer teams tested Holacracy and Talkspirit in real-world conditions.
• A tailored adoption period: After six months, feedback was collected. Instead of rushing the process, the trial was extended by another three months to give teams the time they needed to fully embrace the model at their own pace.
• Widespread implementation based on majority buy-in: After nine months of testing and the agreement of the majority of employees, Holacracy and Talkspirit were officially implemented across the entire company. Since then, they have become an integral part of Liip’s daily operations.
• In-house training: About ten employees and managers attended external training before the deployment. They then used the knowledge gained to create internal Holacracy training sessions.

Key Features Used 

• Dynamic organizational chart: It allows each employee to quickly visualize the organization’s structure, who is responsible for what, which circle they belong to, and their responsibilities. 
• Meetings: This module helps Liip structure its tactical and governance meetings and centralize the tracking of decisions made in real time. Each circle can adapt the rhythm of its meetings according to its needs (weekly, bi-weekly, or on demand). 
• Projects: Each circle has its own project board to organize tasks, track progress, and facilitate collaboration on internal projects.
• Proposals: Liip records around fifteen role or circle changes each month. Any team member can suggest changes through the Proposals app. Once submitted, proposals are open for a set period, during which members can approve or reject them through an asynchronous vote.
• Library: Publications serve as a central hub for all the resources linked to each role and circle.

Benefits

• A clearer and more transparent organization : Thanks to the organizational chart created on Talkspirit, everyone can easily identify their roles, responsibilities, and objectives, as well as those of their colleagues. This visualization enhances information transparency and helps align everyone with Liip’s purpose.
• Increased agility: Nothing is set in stone: roles, responsibilities and organizational processes are constantly evolving. This flexibility has enabled Liip to reorganize its production team by target market.

• More autonomous employees: Self-management encourages initiative-taking. Employees identify areas for improvement and propose solutions without waiting for leadership to do so.
• Efficient meetings: With Talkspirit, meetings are better structured, more productive, and decisions are easily documented and tracked.
  
• Faster decision-making: Liip has moved from a consensus-based decision-making process to one based on consent. The result: fewer bottlenecks, and greater responsiveness. 

Thanks to the implementation of Holacracy and Talkspirit, Liip has created a clearer, more agile, and more empowering work environment where every employee can actively contribute to the company’s collective success. 

Read the full article (in French) to learn more about the implementation of Talkspirit at Liip.