QoQa

About QoQa

QoQa is a community e-commerce platform based in Switzerland. The company offers a daily selection of personalized products at attractive prices. Since its creation in 2005, QoQa has maintained a close relationship with its community (or "Qommunauté"), actively involving them in various projects.

Key figures:

• 1 million users
• 230 employees, also known as "otters"
• €160 million in revenue in 2023

Context

From the outset, QoQa was determined to adopt an organizational structure that gave its employees total freedom. Each employee could act as he or she saw fit, in a self-entrepreneurial spirit. But this freedom, while attractive on paper, lacked a framework. In the absence of explicit rules, it sometimes resulted in tensions or micro-management practices, limiting team autonomy and fulfillment. 

Faced with these challenges, QoQa decided to explore a governance model that would bring greater clarity and transparency to the organization. The aim? To maximize employee autonomy, while laying a solid foundation for smooth team collaboration.

With this in mind, the company first implemented the Scrum methodology within the IT team. The positive results, supported by regular sprints, retrospectives and reviews, convinced them to extend this approach to all the company's departments. However, this model was not without its flaws: although it gave better structure to projects, it unintentionally reinforced silos, hampering communication and information sharing.

Then came the COVID-19 crisis, which - as for many companies - marked a turning point for QoQa, forcing the company to switch entirely to telecommuting. This sudden change highlighted the fragilities already present, accentuating the compartmentalization between teams and weakening links between employees. The informal interactions that had been the hallmark of small-committee project management were no longer taking place. Not to mention the significant increase in the workforce, with dozens of new "otters" unable to form a clear idea of the company's DNA from a distance. 

These difficulties prompted QoQa to look for an alternative, a model capable of combining freedom and autonomy, and putting an end to inter-team information silos. One answer stood out: Holacracy.

Challenges

• Give employees as much freedom as possible without adding complexity and losing efficiency.
• Limit micromanagement practices, which hinder team autonomy.
• Break down information silos to improve inter-departmental communication and collaboration.

Why Talkspirit

To implement Holacracy, QoQa needed a suitable tool. The company chose Talkspirit for several reasons: 

• Rich functionality: no need to search for multiple solutions, everything is centralized in the same tool!
• The ergonomic interface, which facilitated adoption by the teams
• Agile operation, i.e. the ability to adapt continuously to organizational needs 

Implementation Process

• External support: QoQa worked with Holacracy-certified coaches (Nova Consul, Ivolve and Semawé) to guide deployment and ensure smooth adoption by teams.
• Team training: Training sessions were organized to allow employees to familiarize themselves with the principles of Holacracy and the associated new working methods.
• Gradual deployment of Talkspirit: The platform was introduced gradually, to support the encoding of roles, structure circles, and simplify the tracking of tensions and projects.
• Documenting roles: The first step was to create the QoQa circle and its sub-circles (Supply, Operations, Marketing, etc.), designating a leader for each circle. The teams then worked together to define the roles for each circle, as well as the responsibilities of each role. 

Key Features Used

QoQa leverages Talkspirit's core governance features, including :

• The dynamic organization chart, which is used to document roles and responsibilities.
• OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), which enable clear, ambitious and measurable objectives to be set at company and team level.
• Projects,which allow them to track the progress of tasks contributing to the achievement of set objectives.
• Tactical and and governance meetings, which foster intra- and inter-team communication and resolve potential tensions.
• The proposals, which encourage employees to take initiatives.

Benefits

Since deploying Talkspirit, QoQa has observed several benefits:

• Greater organizational clarity: every employee knows exactly what is expected of him or her, and how to identify who is responsible for what within the organization.
• Greater autonomy: teams take more initiative, present their tensions at meetings and propose concrete solutions.
• Rapid problem solving: tensions are addressed collectively and resolved more quickly.
• Team commitment: employees feel more involved and listened to in decision-making processes.

By adopting Talkspirit, QoQa has not only succeeded in structuring its organization, but also in creating a more collaborative and agile working environment.

Read more about QoQa's implementation of Talkspirit in this article.