Case studies

Hike One

Hike One is a digital product design agency in the Netherlands. They design user interfaces, apps and websites. They have a team of 60 UX design specialists with love for the profession. Hike One is independent, flexible and helps clients to design new digital products or improve existing ones with UX Research. When companies team up with them, people get digital products that they love to use.

Methodology

Hike One works with the official Holacracy method as developed by Brian Robertson.

The teams adds: "It's a customizable self-management practice that fits the organization's way of working and thinking - organically evolving, people fulfilling different roles at different times, while practicing a proven method."

Challenge overview

Hike One started to grow and soon realized they needed an organizational tool to keep the organic flexibility but also document it and make it easy for people to find their way around.

The team was looking for a better visual experience of the tool, one that would offer more options, more customization, and support the integrations they liked to use. Usability, flexibility, and cost were also important.

Why Holaspirit?

We liked that Holaspirit was open to feedback and we had a close contact with support - they would receive our feedback and integrate it really quickly. We also liked that it allowed us to transfer all of our existing data automatically from the previous tool we used.

Growth with Holaspirit

When Hike One started, they had to restructure circles several times. After six months they were able to create more than 25 circles and 240 roles. Nowadays, the organization claims to have less.

When it comes to metrics, for us it’s not better to have more roles or more circles. It’s about if this tool gives Hikers what they need to energise their roles. It’s about transparency and empowerment. And it’s about making it easy to execute stuff.

An important metric for the team is how easily Hikers can find the roles or circles they need to get something done. That's what they aim for, and that usually comes with less roles and circles.

Most used features

We love the project board, the set up is what we have been using long before with other tools like Trello (creating kanbans). That way priorities are clear for everyone. The integration for actions and tensions between the Holaspirit tool and the Hiker's individual to-do tools is something we also value a lot.

Whatever goes out of holaspirit can go immediately in their own to-do list as well. 

Another integration we love is the one with slack, where proposals and changes are recorded and immediately visible in each circle. That way people always know the latest changes in roles and circles.

Implementation journey

The tool plays a big role within the team's onboarding process for new colleagues. It helps them to introduce people to Holacracy and visualizing the organization and relation between roles and circles. Hike One counts with internal chapters, these are circles where everyone in the organization has a role and is represented.

That way, Hikers can quickly learn what their role means, and how it fits in the whole organization. For the team it's more important that people are energizing the roles and making an impact for the company, more than simply having many roles.

"We actually tell them to take it easy at first and just focus on their core role (usually designer role). We show them how the proposals work and how they can add one themselves. It's important that everyone feels enabled to change things and take initiative. The projects' overview and actions are also closely tied to our way of working. That fits very well with our culture and mindset. We started with Holacracy 4 years ago. First we used Glassfrog as a tool, but started to look for alternatives in November 2019. We migrated to Holaspirit January 3rd 2021."

Testimonial

"We love the project board, the set up is what we have been using long before with other tools like Trello (creating kanbans). That way priorities are clear for everyone. The integration for actions and tensions between the Holaspirit tool and the Hiker's individual to-do tools is something we also value a lot. Whatever goes out of Holaspirit can go immediately in their own to-do list as well."

– Team Hike One

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