Case study background

Promoting an inspiring and motivating employee behaviour in all employees was the goal of Keepler, a Spanish company started four years ago (March 2018) and specialised in the design, management and development of data products. Its mission is to develop data products in the cloud, using agile methodology. Keepler currently employs 100 people in Spain and Germany and has short-term plans to expand to other European countries such as Portugal. 

They decided from the very beginning that they wanted to create a company with a different corporate culture. Four years ago there was only a team of 10 people, some of whom had attended Management 3.0 workshops in Spain. They found them so inspiring that they incorporated some Management 3.0 practices into the way the company operates, creating a flat, self-organising organisation with a small hierarchy.

Motivation with Agile - Moving Motivators 

This was the first technique used at Keepler and it had a big influence on the later attitudes, as it led to a lot of habits that were in line with the mindset of the staff. When there were 10 of them in the organisation they had to decide what kind of culture they wanted to develop at Keepler, so they used a modified version of the Moving Motivators Technique. Rather than prioritising intrinsic motivators, values were prioritised and as a result they created the 'Keepler Values' and the 'Keepler Manifesto'.

Value list 

The list of values for Management 3.0 was very useful in deciding which values would be included in the "Keepler Values". As a result, four values were chosen: transparency, solidarity, leadership and continuous improvement. 

Motivation with agile - Kudo cards - Praise cards  

They truly believe in transparent and honest feedback, so they introduced an internal tool to give praise to each other. The process is simple: just fill in a questionnaire that tells you who is receiving a Praise Card and why. Once the questionnaire has been completed, the system automatically sends the compliment card to the recipient.

Niko-Niko calendar  

Every Friday, a chatbot asks everyone how they feel about Keepler, what changes (if any) they would like to see and why. This is their way of integrating the Niko-Niko calendar into the organisation. They use the calendar to constantly monitor the general mood and if they spot any errors, they try to correct them as soon as possible.

Open payment formula 

Perhaps the most important Management 3.0 practice in use. Keepler has a publicly available mathematical formula that calculates the salary of all employees. This can be used both within the organisation, for example if someone wants to calculate their salary as they progress in their career, and outside the organisation, for example if a prospective employee wants to calculate what their salary would be at Keepler. There are several versions of the formula, depending on the country of residence of the employee (Spain or Germany). This technique has been used since the beginning.  

In our previous post we introduced the Merit Money concept, which is the creation of a system where colleagues can reward each other openly with virtual points, hearts, coins.

Self-organising teams

They believe that building self-organising teams is the best way to work with happy and motivated people. That's why they decided to implement the Holacracy concept. As a result, there is no hierarchical organisational culture with traditional bosses.  There is only one hierarchy: the CEO and the rest of the organisation. That's all. Each self-organising team decides for itself what tasks to perform and how to perform them. 

But it doesn't end there. In the future they will have to adapt to certain situations and probably change some things. But the good news is that they have managed to create an adaptable organisational base that will be very useful when they have to face the necessary changes. And, as you can see, this is largely thanks to Management 3.0.