One organisation that would fit right alongside the other cases cited in Laloux’ book is NPM portfolio company FocusCura. Specialised in developing healthcare innovations, the company has been valuedriven from the get-go and has a network structure in place in which teams develop solutions independently, according to Raoul Zaal and Joris Janssen, the COO and CTO of the Driebergen-based company.
Zaal: ‘Finding yourself in a situation and thinking: “How can this be possible?” or “Surely this could be improved!” can be a very strong motivator for starting a company. That’s basically what happened to our CEO and founder, Daan Dohmen, when he had a summer job in a care home. So FocusCura has been a value-driven organisation from day one: a company with a purpose, or a social mission if you will. Our business model is not based on the question of how many units we can shift, but whether our products have a real impact on healthcare services and the lives of the people using those services. We remain convinced that there is vast room for improvement – and that is a conviction shared by everyone in our organisation.’
Janssen: ‘We regard the healthcare industry as our main partner – we are on a shared journey of discovery to learn how we can use technology to improve the healthcare process. Our people visit healthcare organisations and make home visits to clients on a daily basis. This is true for everyone in the organisation, including our programmers. It’s important that we all really make an effort to understand users’ true needs. This is an ongoing process – you create something, monitor how people use it and what problems they might encounter, and then it’s time for the next stage of improvements. Lather, rinse, repeat every week or two weeks. You can’t manage this type of process on a traditional top-down basis, since it is no longer just the manager who has the knowhow, but it’s spread throughout the organisation. My official job title may be Chief Technology Officer (CTO), but I also make a lot of home visits to clients and prefer to spend five days a week coding side by side with my team. That means everything is running smoothly and there’s no need for me to intervene at any point.’
Zaal: ‘It’s exactly the way Joris says: we are a partner to the healthcare sector. But rather than telling people to do things a certain way – which we’re very cautious not to do – our products are an invitation to the industry to explore alternative ways of organising and managing healthcare processes. We support care organisations in coming up with more scalable solutions or to become self-organising. A company like Buurtzorg has been able to use the approach it does because they use smart solutions.’
Janssen: ‘You can see many of Laloux’ ideas reflected in FocusCura’s organisational structure. Our business model is not a pyramid but rather a network of teams that work independently and are each responsible for a specific product. There is no hierarchy within those teams – we are all each other’s peers. However, in line with the Scrum methodology (a software development standard – Ed.), we all have different roles. Some are responsible for actual development, some for the process itself and others for setting priorities. We then determine together what avenue to pursue. An often-heard criticism of self-directed teams is that they are less efficient: their end solutions tend to be better and smarter, but it’s harder to predict how they will get there. That’s why some traditional managers might have qualms about this model – you never quite know where your ideas might take you. I think that if people’s work is highly predictable, it’s more efficient to manage it on a hierarchical basis. But if your work is impacted by all sorts of unknown quantities, it’s best to go with our type of approach. In fact, a growing number of companies have taken to adopting this approach, since virtually all industries are undergoing such rapid change right now and everything is increasingly becoming connected.’
Zaal: ‘I believe it’s important for organisations, most of all, to keep their eye on their purpose and mission. You need to focus on that point in the horizon, set out on your journey and discover where the road might lead you. Although this approach makes a greater demand on employees, it’s also a lot more rewarding in the end. I think it’s remarkable how FocusCura’s mission has remained unchanged throughout the years and that so many people have embraced it in the meantime. As long as we’ve got soughtafter IT workers sending in their CVs to us because they’re inspired by our mission, I know we’re doing something right.’