and we're going to spend the next hour talking about distributed leadership, what it is, what you can do and how you can actually start up. My name is Jacob, I'm an occupational psychologist and consultant at Implement. And by my side is Matthias and in a show of great diversity I am also an organizational psychologist and a consultant at Implement. And both of us, Jacob, have spent quite a deal of time trying to help organizations embed distributed leadership and more empowered organizational structures in their ways of working. So we're looking very much forward to talking about exactly that. Yes. So what we're going to point through or go through is basically some of these topics. So what are we, why would you, should you consider working with distributed leadership? What is the foundation? What is it, does it look like? What does it require? And how can you start locally to do that? And then at the end of this presentation, we're going to have a Q&A with a special guest. So as we go along, please put questions in the questions in the chat. We'll gather them and share them with our dear guests from one of the companies that we've been working with for a long time. So without further ado, let's dig into the content. So first and foremost, we are faced with living in a world that is referred to by some as VUCA. It's about, it's a way of describing a complex, volatile world where the types of transformations and changes and the inner dynamics is so complex and fast that it's very hard to predict much. That also gives a lot of insecurities and uncertainties about the lack of predictability when any organizations or company is actually faced with the reality and the market. So it's complex, it's uncertain, and it's also ambiguity because it's very hard to decipher. But also decode what is going on, which things should we pay attention to and which things should we actually ignore or just do nothing about. What has a significance in our place and what does not. This gives us a very, as organizations and also as individuals, a very limited predictability. Both in content of what can be predicted, you know, what is really happening out there for the next three to six months. How much of what can be predicted, what part of the world can be predicted and what cannot be, and how far into the future can things be predicted. And this gives us this kind of, you know, very fluid, but also very moving ways of working that requires a different type of both working, but also organizing to be able to adjust to this reality. Facing this reality of uncertainty, of ambiguity, of complexity, of volatility, a lot of the time, the task that is then facing our organizations are to have organizations where, our operations are actually directed at our customers' needs. That we don't get bogged down in our internal processes and let that take over our entire calendars, but that we actually work on things that are value-creating for our customers' needs. But also that we actually deliver those solutions a bit faster for our customers, especially when we don't have the ability to have that really long-term predictability. We need to have that knowledge that we need to have that knowledge that we need to have that knowledge that is being created out in the ends of our organization actually matter, which will require more influence over one's own work and more responsibility all throughout our business. And I would expect that quite a lot of us would actually very much like to have our operations directed at customers' needs and faster solutions to hit the market and allow our entire business to have more responsibility and influence over one's work. So when we are then faced with looking through our organization and saying, why is this not the case already? Part of what we are then faced with us today. Part of what we are trying to say and trying to convey in this webinar this morning is that maybe it is not your leaders, your people, your strategy, or your business model that is holding us back from achieving these goals. Maybe it is your, maybe it is our operating system. So maybe we shouldn't expect that if we just manage to train our leaders to be just 10% better people leaders, we will magically achieve these goals or if we achieve these goals. Or if we just manage to get the exact right capability analysis of new hires, we would get it done. If we could just imagine that we made the perfect tactic and strategy and business rollout plan of waterfall planning and all the like, then it would happen. If our operating system, if the very fabric of how we work together and make decisions is holding us back, we can just imagine our iOS, our Android, if it doesn't allow us to do something, we cannot really fight back by making great apps. So maybe we should have that focus on exactly our operating system, the very fundamental ways of how we do business collaboration and organization work. So looking at history, what we do know is that for the last 200 years, we spent a lot of time optimizing organizations in a hierarchical way, which has been really good because it can do one thing a lot. It can produce one little thing many times at a very, very strong optimized approach. So what we have here is a hierarchical system which has a centralized decision power and also a very much more rigid information structure because it actually improves performance when it comes to producing one stuff at one time. So that's one side of the continuum. On the other side of the continuum, what we see now is a distributed network organization who is much more working with decentralized decision power, open source and also empowered team structure because they are built for fast transformations. They're built for learning and adjusting. So the hierarchical system has a tendency to get clocked and get clocked in a way where the structures get in the way of new ideas, get in the way of actually adapting and adjusting and learning throughout the organization. It's not an either or situation for most companies. Everybody is like somewhere on this continuum. So you have like companies who are very hierarchical, 100% and centralized responsibility and decentralized responsibility and decision power. And then you, on the other hand, also have very decentralized and distributed responsibility and decision power. Those we actually got inspired by, by some of these ways of working is startup areas and areas where also, you know, people have tried to work in a different way, where the internal processes, where the internal structure of the organization do not get in the way of learning, adjusting, experimenting, and trying new things out. That requires a different operating system and requires a different way of working. That is quite a big step moving forward. So let's look at a little bit of what that requires. So facing this continuum between what we could probably mostly imagine also maybe as established organizations versus the startup organizations. looking at the startup organizations that a lot of us are facing of these very big organizations and businesses, part of what we can also feel when we are part of these organizations, just as humans, is this social gap that happens with size. Is this idea of suddenly we are communicating with functions, with numbers and KPIs, and we're forgetting to actually get acquainted with the people that are delivering some of the things that are doing. We are trying to get acquainted with the solutions to our little corner of the solutions to our little corner of the business, which also means that we have to go through quite a lot of steps between getting things done and getting ideas. So we have this time gap where at the moment that we recognize something in one corner that needs to get done to the moment where it's actually done can be very, very large in especially established organizations. which also comes to the fact that when we actually learn something, when we recognize that maybe we've just found a little bit of this volatility in the market, we've recognized that something is changing. When that learning happens, it can take a really long time for it to move up the layers if it happens at all. Which means that suddenly we are facing a social gap where we cannot really connect to each other because we feel so far away. We're facing a functional gap where we are facing a functional gap where suddenly we are really imagining each other as only representatives from finance or wherever we come from. And we have this time gap of really a long lead time of things getting done for it to go through the decision processes. And this learning gap of once we recognize something in one corner for it to actually get up to where there's decision power to do something about it can take a really long time, if at all. And at the same time, we also know that it's not the case that startup organizations are just this utopia. And a lot of the time we have a really large time overspent because everyone might be working on the same thing. We can have a little bit of a role and functional confusion because we're so used to everyone doing everything or maybe there's just this legacy of a founder doing 60% of the important work. So we can get confused on who's actually supposed to do what and we end up just doing too much and overspending time that is not necessary. And at the same time, maybe we don't actually manage to do knowledge sharing even though it should be possible in a way smaller organization because we're also just so caught up in having to do everything on our own. And then also maybe we end up kind of having an in-crowd syndrome of having some difficulty really speaking up against our colleagues and our leader because we are so reliant on being stuck together in this little startup. So looking at this dimension and looking at these issues and dilemmas that really arise with the organizational models that we know from either the established side or the more startup-like side. The big question here and the question that we're inviting you to be part of is, is there maybe a better way of doing this operating system where we can harness some of the beauty and some of the potential of each of these sites without taking on too many of these problems? And part of doing that will also be to have a more holistic look on our organization and what needs to change. So we're trying to do this establishing of the metaphor of the operating system which really would include both to think about leadership, processes, structures, and our employees. So it's not the case of just having the one focus on the one side. If our processes are working against us, if we don't actually manage to do decisions when we collaborate in a way where we are all included, where we actually move forward. And if we don't have structures, if we don't have an ability to mandate, create that underlines what we're trying to do here, what we're trying to achieve if we want to have all the good things that are facing our volatile markets of having our operations. directed towards our customers, for example, of distributing knowledge, decisions, and action capability. And one way that I really like to think about this is if we imagine that we're out driving and we are facing these two different ways of organizing traffic. On the one hand, sometimes, and at least where I live most of the time, I'm facing these light switches and traffic lights to really decide when I go, and when I stop. And then sometimes, and then sometimes, and then sometimes, and then sometimes, I reach these ways of operating traffic where we're in the roundabout, where we're driving around, and where I have to look out my window and actually check my surroundings for when I can go in what direction. And when we're thinking about these two ways of organizing, controlling, and leading traffic, what I'd like for us to think about is who is in control in these two different scenarios. But also, what is the most efficient, actually? And what is the most difficult? So, in the case of the traffic lights, we have a really centralized control. There's some brilliant traffic engineers who've decided exactly how long the traffic light should go on, in what way, at what time. And the rest of us, we can really allow ourselves to just switch off our brain. And when we are in the roundabout, all of us are in control, and all of us have the responsibility to orient ourselves. And what is kind of the interesting fact here as well is that we do have some data from these brilliant traffic engineers who've made our light switches on what is the most efficient. And in a pretty huge and spectacular way, both for reducing injury and having traffic flow, roundabouts are way more efficient than we would expect. They are, in a lot of ways, both cheaper to maintain, and some studies would even say see almost 75, 89% reductions in injury. So there's some real efficiency potential and just value potential in doing the roundabout way. And kind of the kicker is that almost everyone I know prefer light switches when they're driving their car because it is just way more easy on the individual and it requires a little bit more of driving in the roundabout. So it's a little bit more difficult, but we also have to have this huge upside of achieving this huge upside of achieving this value that is facing us. And there's a little bit of that metaphor here that maybe we could apply to our organizations as well. Even though it might require a little bit more of us and it requires some more attention to live in the more distributed leadership-like organization, there is some huge value creation upside that we could get. And if we are trying to move down this direction, maybe there are three big ideas that we should look to one really big idea of just distributing the tasks that we normally concentrate with management between us. There is no God-given rule that one-to-one conversations can only be performed by the same person who is making our vacation plans. No golden rule to say that all these tasks have to be concentrated with a single person. And then also trying to say we should have dynamic governance in the way that both teams and roles in the way that both teams and roles need to be able to be established and dissolved throughout the organizations without management involvement. So when we have this learning in the corner of the organization that we need to organize a little bit differently to meet the market needs, we should be able to do so. And then we should have a governing principle of setting limits instead of needing to ask or give permission. A lot of our really slow decisions processes are because there is this big requirement of always asking explicit permission to go ahead and do something. And what we're trying to argue for here is our number one governing principle should instead be what do we need to limit? And once we've decided what we need to limit, we should limit that and let the rest be pretty free and able to be operated throughout the business. So those are some of the really three big ideas. But just as I said in the roundabout, this requires a little bit of some attention on each of our sides. Yes. And one of the things that we experience when we do this is that there is some things about, you know, it requires both something from the leader, but also from the employee. So if we look at the leaders, there is something about the personal narrative that needs to be just revisited and might be reconfigured. You know, what is the story of me being a leader? And what's the story of me? You know, what kind of capabilities and mindset and behaviors have I been cultivating becoming a leader? What has been cultivated in me? And what is the story? Why am I a leader? Why do I like to be a leader? It's also something about, you know, how do I lean in and learn and by doing and trying rather than just leaning back on my experience. In the VUCA world, the halftime of learning and experiences is very, very low. That means it is a big decay. What we think worked three or six months ago might not work looking into the future. So balancing that, you know, knowledge you have already and leaning in and doing something different. That means that you also have in you do this transformation is beginning to think about how can I minimize my own influence? How can I, you know, move away having this kind of eyes on but hands off approach? That means a lot of more facilitation. And one of our favorite questions that we do train leaders in when they begin to work with this is what do you need and do you have a proposal? Do you have a suggestion? So whenever people present a problem, do you have a suggestion? Do you have a proposal? Share knowledge in a new way. Make sure that the knowledge that most leaders have between their ears are shared throughout the organization so it's not only embedded in who they are, you know, in their minds and also that requires new communication skills. And there will be also overlaps with what we need from an employee. Some of those things are exactly the same thing. So there's also this narrative idea of really having to wrestle with what it means to be an employee of an organization that has to be kind of just adjusted to more so think that I'm a member of this organism, of this organization that all of us are part of, which requires something of us. And also to get a little bit more used to learning by doing and trying and of course being supported in not having too much of a whack over their heads when they don't succeed. And then they also have these new requirements of really managing their own time and energy, sharing information so that they don't just sit in a corner and work on something that benefits no one. So there is definitely a big requirement on leveling up the coordination ability throughout the business when you don't, when you're not allowed to really just rely on the coordination between different teams, different functions and maybe even outside the organization. And part of what I think is the most interesting here also in our experience is also just getting over the fact of how difficult it can be for just a lot of people, leaders and employees alike to say my best idea, my preference, my proposal would be that we go to this. And then of course, we go to this direction. And then of course, relying on the team to tell you what their input is and whether they really think we should limit this idea, but just getting those words over our mouths of saying, I'd really prefer that we go this way, this is my best idea, this is my proposal, can be really difficult, especially for former employees. Yes. And one thing that is also really something that springs to mind when we talk about this is having this kind of when you are empowered, own your empowerment, take the accountability that is put to you. So one of the things that we want to talk about now is how does this look when we go into more concrete things? Because this has been, you know, a little bit of a high level. So what we're going to do is how does an organization with distributed leadership look like? What is it that is really important? So this is a kind of, you know, a vanilla version. This is the clearest or the purest kind of versions where you actually can see or show tell what is the organization looking at. Things get done in organizations that are distributed in the roles or the people who have the roles that they are assigned to. So this is a kind of people. So this is a kind of people. So this is a kind of moving towards an operating system that is based on roles and people are the ones who are doing the job. So we also work with this principle that if you have the problem, if you see the challenge, you also should have the mandate and the knowledge to act upon it. So as far out as possible. That's why we put up operational teams in the organization as the core of the team, because the core of the organization, because these are the ones who make things done. And the moment that you have a value stream that is connected that needs coordination across, because they have like different challenges that overlap each other or processes that intertwine, what we do is create a coordination team that only basically coordinates, plan and make decisions on things that is needed to do so. So we try to keep the minimal organization. that are the capabilities that are assigned to different people. It doesn't mean that those who are links between the different teams is kind of middle management. It's more like they're coordinating, they're planning, they have some decisional power, but they do not have decisional power over each other. So a distributed leadership organization is still a hierarchical organization, but it's a hierarchical not based on power, but more on tasks and accountabilities. So the consequence of creating an organization that looks like this is very much balancing the organization alignment with autonomy based on trust. So balancing, we believe that you're going to do the best. We also know what the purpose is of the organization. So how would you locally solve this task? Knowing that this is your task, this is the purpose, how can you resolve that? So how do you balance that? But we actually ask the individual team, but also the individual role, to make sure that they keep this balance at the at mind. Then you also have clear distributed accountabilities, meaning that it makes sure that everybody knows their place in the role. And everybody knows their role, and everybody knows which team they belong to. In lots of situations, leadership is a team responsibility done either by a process in a team, or we assign a role to take care of it. For instance, if we have a social gathering in a gathering in one team, then it would either be a process, then it'd either be a process, we agree that every third month we do a social gathering, or we have a role that is assigned to make sure that we do something socially every three months and plan it. That means that we have this clearly defined structure, we have a clearly defined process, but we also have a clearly defined process for how we do decision making through inclusive meetings, where we both make fast decisions in a shared room, So this is an organization who becomes a coordinated network of teams with both transparent accountabilities and deliverables working towards a shared purpose. This requires a different type of leadership. And exactly because we still want to maintain this action ability and some clarity of, well, we know that something gets done. We don't just want to let everything be free for all. We do still want to maintain some decision power with an individual who roles a specific role. We just do not want to have all the powerful decisions in the organization being created. We don't want to have all the people who are concentrated with a single person. So part of the way that you could think about this is that we would just distribute the regular leadership tasks between team members. So if we just look at what are the regular leadership tasks of a manager, of doing administrative management, of setting KBIs, of monitoring finance and cost, maybe we just establish a single role so one of us has that role of putting up to the team that suddenly we have this cost problem. Or I'm just monitoring and informing you, or I'm just monitoring and informing you if anything is important for you to know. And the same thing of recruitment, employee development, some of the team things that would also be required of maybe vacation and resource planning and setting and initiating strategy work. There is still no God-given rule that these five different select areas of tasks need to be concentrated with a single person. We could for sure distribute these in ways that make sense. And once we discover that it could be better to do it in a little bit of a different way, we can just change it if we have this dynamic governance of being able to just change our teams and roles. And also, I'd just like to caveat here that this would be one of the very regular starting off points we would have with a collaboration with someone. Also in trying to set out, are there maybe some things for now that we have to have some corner flags that we have to have some corner flags of not distributing? It could be an organization that really wants to maintain that recruitment needs to be still centralized and not distributed. You could for sure decide that some of these things should be kept close until maybe it doesn't make sense anymore. And then also, just as I was saying with the big idea, we want to try and move away from this permission decision culture, which is the one that most of us are used to, where before I do something, I should ask for explicit permission. And maybe I even want to ask for that explicit permission via email so I can cover whatever happens and it won't really be my responsibility. And what we want to move away from is exactly that need for asking for permission and maybe more so moving into setting limits. So once I've said that this is the best way that I can see for us to proceed, this is my best proposal for moving forward, what we should ask ourselves and what the organization should ask me is, is there a good reason to limit this? And once we decide that maybe this is something that is a good reason to limit, so there is particular reasons for why we should limit the recruitment responsibility to just a really select few people, then we've set that limit, no one else can recruit. But the things that we haven't limited, we should allow for most of us to just go out and use our best judgment to try and do so. Instead of asking for explicit permission, can I do this? We should we should also flip around the script and say what are the things that we need to limit and everything that isn't limited should be pretty available for all members of the organization to use their own best judgment. And part of the tool that we would encourage us to use is just this pretty simple mandate creation tool of creating some clarity on who does what. And one way to do that is to, once you establish a role, or maybe if you get started, started to just think about your existing role, what is the purpose of that role, what is the thing that I'm actually trying to achieve that would be missing if I wasn't here. And then also, what are the accountabilities that follow along? So what can everyone around me expect that I do? And maybe we even go pretty concrete here about specific tasks. So what can be expected that I will be doing for the organization and for the team, but still maybe something that everyone else could also do if they saw fit, if they had a really good idea, there wouldn't be something stopping them. And then here also saying, but is there something that we need to keep exclusive to this specific role? Something where it does make good sense to limit it. For example, this recruitment task. If maybe we decided that we would put that as an exclusive right so that has a specific limit. And then maybe we'd also like to just describe the dependencies of, is there a specific way that we have to do? So even though you can manage your time to meet your deadlines for this specific task, we do have a handbook guideline that we have to send out follow -up emails in this particular way within this particular deadline. We can still for sure decide that we need those dependencies, those guidelines. But this would be one way to distribute mandate and create it by doing these descriptions that we can also have completely transparent throughout the organization. And then also that once we can also have to do these meetings. And then also that once we then sit in our meetings with our team and we have to decide something together, because this is actually something that goes beyond any role that we've done, we do need to not slip into our more usual ways of doing meetings. So there are some good tools and ideas for doing that, which is also to make sure that the invitation is our fundamental way of doing decision meetings. So we talk in rounds. As a default, as a default, we always, before we say whether we like an idea, we do questions first. So we make sure everyone understand what is really on the table. And then we try to move forward and make a decision without necessarily agreeing, but just being in a place where we don't see a good reason to limit it. So we'll let reality be our teacher, our learning master, and tell us whether our decision is good or it needs to be changed. So this is something about how it looks like. And now we're just going to spend some time talking about how do I take off and start transforming? What is it that we need? And what we can see when we look at this is there are some enablers for distributed leadership. And some of them is that some people think when they hear about this, you know, distributed leadership-based organization, it's much more about, you know, setting people free and making doing their own things. And it's less leadership. And it means, you know, that people are not doing X, Y, or Z. But actually, it requires much more and much clearer both structure but also leadership. So because it's distributed on different people doing different stuff. So clearer structure to ensure transparency. Clearer well-defined processes to ensure that empowerment to each role and team know how to respond. Clearer accountabilities everybody knows. So having this kind of movement and slowly learning and adjusting as we go along. So how do we start out? When we have a project where we support an organization transforming, there is like some guiding principles that we do for the transformation. First and foremost, we approach this from a holistic point of view. That means that we try to integrate and start with whatever culture, whatever behavior, whatever structures, and whatever mindset is already present in the organization. And then we say, let's move it one step towards empowerment. How do we distribute leadership in a different way? If our guiding star is creating a distributed leadership-based organization, then what kind of leverage do we have? And this is because we want actually this to be a real change. For us, that's extremely important. Secondly, we do it iteratively. The transformative journey is planned according to action learning. It's a plan to like some of the agile understandings where we do like this dynamic work where we try out small experiments. For instance, we do pilots in a unit or we try out with different behaviors or different meeting formats locally in different areas. So this whole transformation is a continuously kind of adjust, try out, experiment, learn, prototype, do something new. And based on real experiences, real challenges and real problems, that is based in the organization. Thirdly, what is also important is that we think of this as both a vertical and a horizontal transformation. So in the vertical transformation, we work with units with different layers of the organizations together, like taking a carve out of the organization, saying this department of three managerial levels or a department or an area, and say, let's try with this one first. Everywhere we've been, one of the experiments that we had is start small. We've had is start small rather than big because it actually can help do something differently. On the horizontal development, it's much more about training people in capabilities, both leaders and employees at a full scale, learning these ways of working slowly, but at the same time, when you learn this, then use it in everyday life. If you just go to a course and not instigate practical this way of working instantly, what it will do, what it will do, it will decay slowly. Then also, last but not least, is the network approach. We think of change as a movement. Start small, spread the story, start with the pilots, start somewhere, beginning to do something, which also means in our book, in our understanding, you can do this locally and actually try out new stuff locally and it will slowly spread and get the way. So, when we do this, it looks a bit like this. We do, we have a foundation. This is where we start out. We create the mindset, building an understanding, how it looks like. Then we do an initiation, piloting, doing new things, what works, what doesn't work, and then an integration, where we integrate this way of working throughout this. This means that we also move very fast. This means that we also move very fast away from workshopping and much more into everyday work with supervision and coaching and supporting you in that transformation is much more important. So, let's just talk about some of those we've talked with or worked with already. Now, we're just showing you a select number of logos. As you can see, these are organizations of pretty wildly different sizes. And that's also kind of the point here is that you can do this along this dimension and move in a different amount towards the one side. Some of the things that we would also maybe just brag about having had happened is some of those things that you see here of both having reports of shorter and more effective meetings, of having better psychological well-being and safety, of having improved talent and training, and having less traction and more traction and having less people leave our organization and also that better financial transparency and more responsibility would also actually lead to less expenditure with decentralized budgetary accountability and all the other bullets that we have here. So, pretty wide suite of different things that is possible to get if we move just a few steps toward this more roundabout-like organization of distribution. And you don't want to contribute leadership. And you don't want to hear only the consultants tell you about how great this can be and what the things are that you would have to do to take these steps. And you don't have to. And that's also why we have our great guest that we told you about, which is the CEO of Danske Konferenzen Center, which means Danish Conference Centers in Danish, Melene Sylvester, who is joining us here in the studio. And that also means that we would very much encourage and we would very much encourage and love for you to write your questions that you might have from someone who's been on part of this journey that you'd like to ask. And you can go as wild and bold as you want to. So please write your questions in the chat and we'll go to an interview with Melene. Hello and welcome and thank you for spending your time. Would you just shortly introduce yourself? Of course. My name is Melene Sylvester-Vid and I'm from Danske Konferenzen Center. In English it would be like Danish Conference Venues and we are a small company with 10 employees. And we work primarily with the venue finder service. Cool. So let's just start out in the beginning and just, you know, what gave you the idea or the first like kind of I want to go in this direction with my company? Yes. I was right after Corona. People were shifting jobs, jobs, jobs all the time. But I thought that our turnover in employees was way too high. It was like that year when we contacted you, we had like four people leaving us. And that was a lot within 12 people. Yeah. So I said, I tried a lot of stuff. I said, well, we have to do something dramatically different. Cool. Yes. And just on that KPI, so to speak, how does it look now when it comes to turnover since we started this journey? Yes. I mean, like I said, we had like five people quitting that one year. And if I look back since we started this journey, like two and a half years ago, we had like three people in all. And two of them is because of private reasons. So I would say like we're only one real. Yes. That's good. Leaving us. Yes. Cool. So looking at this, what do you think has been the highs of this transformation? And then what has been the lows if you look at that? So what has been the best things that have come out of this? And what has been something that doesn't really, you know, fit yet or is there? Yes. Well, another thing that was a purpose for me to go into this was I like to be people to be more encouraged that proactivity. Yeah. Yes. And also, you know, like share problems together. So I could definitely see that. That's working a lot better now. That people know. That people know. They have, you know, they cannot just pass on the problem. Yeah. So that's a big thing for me. So yes, I would like to know, talk for you about if they have a problem. But the thing in the hierarchy, I think, is like I have a problem. I pass it on to you as a leader. Yeah. Yeah. We almost stopped that. Yes. Yes. Still, still working on it. But I think that's a big transformation with us. Yes. Yes. And that's that that is probably, I would say, would you also experience that as a kind of mental transformation? It is because this is, you have to think about this is a change process. And as a leader, you know, changes takes a lot of time. So it's a big change. So yes, it's definitely mental. Cool. So, so what has been, you know, what do you think when you look upon this, what has been the biggest bumps on the road? I think the thing is like the communication. So if you have to succeed in this, people should start learning, you know, to feedback, give each other feedback. They have to tell you, well, this is great, Jacob. But also when you can see someone needs support because the results are not good. This is a very, you know, heavy task for people to get into. Yeah. Yeah. And even we are small team and we talk about this a lot. Just recently, you, we had you, you know, to start this feedback process. We haven't been ready before now. No, no. So it also takes time. It also takes times because it, it is, you're still running the business as you do the transformation. Of course it is. Yeah. Yes. Yes. It takes a lot of time. Yeah. Because you cannot just force people into it. You need, you know, to motivate them to go there. Yeah. So yes. And you know, people move differently. Some can be in the start box for a very long time. Someone is running ahead. Yeah. You know, and suddenly, they stop up and then others start moving. Yeah. But we're not moving at the same pace. No. So that's, that's the hard thing about it. That's hard. And maybe people do not agree to do it like this. Yeah. From a leadership point of view, you know, what has changed in your, you know, the activity, if I took a day on your desk, what, what would you see would be different? So what is different now from three years ago? Uh, I mean, personally, I have a lot of inner freedom. It's so nice for me because I feel so relieved kind of. So I, uh, I enjoy my job even more because I'm not so much into problem solving, uh, anymore. Yeah. So it motivates me a lot. But the thing is, it also motivates the team. Yeah. Because they have more responsibility. Yeah. And I thought, but I have always gave you the opportunity to take it. Yeah. But I thought you never took it. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that's the mental thing. Um, how we see things differently. Yeah. Yes. On a personal level in this journey and this transformation, what have challenged you the most? Uh, people will, I think will say that I have to not be that much in control, but actually I don't think it's that, uh, thing. The thing is when the times go tough. Yeah. And you need to take the tough decisions. Mm. Not to go in back to the hierarchy and say, okay, now I take it because no one else wants to take it. I think that that's, uh, that's difficult. Yeah. And still a bit, but much better now. Cool. Yeah. Good. We have questions. We do have questions and we have at least one question here that I'd like to ask also is, Melina, how would you imagine the scalability of, doing this way of organizing? So now you're at this number? What if you were twice the size? Can you imagine that it would still work? Yes. Yes. I think twice the size would be easy also. Uh, I wonder, uh, because I was motivated by Cliver. So I wonder if we were like an organization and 200 people, but I think, uh, it seems like demand is very good. I guess it's all about structure. Yeah. And maybe the question for you then also, Jakob, you can give it a chance. Do you think that there is, uh, a certain size where it's not possible anymore? We have the quoted number here in the chat of, is it possible to use this way of operating a company of a hundred thousand people? Uh, there is nothing that says it can be done, um, in my book, which means that for me, this has been tried out in lots of this ways of working with distributed leadership, uh, is, is also inviting, people to find out their own local way of doing this. So you also empower people to build the processes and structures based on empowerment that they think is fitted into their organization, to their unit, to their team. Uh, so I don't think it's, uh, it's a situation. And for instance, if we take an example as Clever, who, when we started out working with Clever, it was consisted around 150 people and now it's 350 people. And they are working with the same system. Uh, they are working with that. So, so that way of doing that, but it's a continuous evolving process. And I think that you have to, most of the companies that I've worked with is, um, is, is where you say, let's carve out an area of the organization. Let's start with an area, experiment, see what works, what doesn't work, and then scale it up from there. And we've done this in other companies who are quite big, uh, also in municipalities who are quite big. Start small, start the pilot, get onboard people, and start it as a viral movement. And if I can comment on that, start very slowly. Again, think about this, a change process, very slowly, seek professional help, because you cannot do it on your own. No. No. And you start, you know, guessing how to do it, and you know, and you, yes. So, it's very important to just, and don't set the expectations as a leader too high the first year. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And now we talked about this idea of all the different, the suite and the different tasks of the leader and distributing those. If I could just ask you, is there one specific task that you're the most proud of managing to distribute? And is there one that is in particularly difficult to really distribute? Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. I would say I was proud and surprised. Rather quick, we went to have a workshop. Jacob helped us, that every year you have, you know, to talk people about salaries. Most of them want the salary raise. And I'm out of that now, because the team has two, three people to manage who should have the salary distributed. I mean, so how much do I want you to, to have a raise? Yeah. So, they do that now. I'm totally out of that. Yeah. How did it feel the first time that salary commission had to have a meeting? That's great. I mean, I was so relieved. Yeah. So, I just, we have the budget we do together, and they have this certain amount of money, and then they just have to find out who are supposed to have this money. Yeah. So, I think they were so brave to take on this task. Yeah. And everybody accepted. I mean, I'm still surprised about it. Because it's very vulnerable. It is vulnerable. But you're also saying that the process is about, you know, this, you know, saying that, okay, this is the framework. Within that framework, managing that kind of, so there are some corner flags saying, okay, we cannot, like, give you a raise of, like, you know, some kind of fantasy, you know. But this is the framework. Yes. But when you have that framework clear and transparent. Yes. And people say, okay, we consent to this framework. We know this is the budgetary constraints. Then, within that framework, they can do basically whatever they want to do. Yes. But that's a key point, I think, in this. We had all to be aware of that. When you do this, I like to call it shared leadership. It's a lot of rule and structure. Yeah. Yeah. Because we ran into these kind of problems, I think, in the start that you had this. But then, suddenly, people thought they could do their own rules. Yeah. But not, you cannot have your own rules. It's not, I mean, you still have the structure. Yeah. Yes. And the boundaries. Yes. You have to work within. Yeah. And it takes some time for people to get that. Yeah. It's like learning a new game. Yeah. And a new game board. Yeah. There are rules and set rules. Yes. But you can also negotiate the rules. You can also create some rules. As we go along. Yeah. And knowing that some rules, they're just for now. But we can make change them as we go along. Yes. Together. Yes. Together. Yeah. And that is the thing, I think. The rules are more clear in this leadership than in the hierarchy. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I think that's a very important point. I think so, too. Yeah. Cool. Do we have another question? We have one question, which is a difficult one. And maybe that means you can give it a try. I can give it a try. Yes. I'll try. I'll try with that. So I'll just read it aloud. How do you see the adaptive leadership model versus the circular model, especially in large-scale organizations? The adaptive leadership and the circular model in that way. It depends a little bit on how that is defined. But I think it's not an either-or situation. I think it goes together. Both that you have this kind of, you know, because the team has the accountability of, you know, you have this kind of, you know, adaptive leadership profile. So that if you're the best at one thing, I would like you to take on the leadership of that role. We accept, we consent that you have that leadership role on that one. So we don't necessarily all the time have individual persons. The challenge with the hierarchical system is that we put everything in one box. Everything points to the leader. You have to be the leader. You have to be the leader. You have to be the oracle of Delphi and, you know, come up with a solution of all kinds of problems that you don't necessarily do. So this kind of, you know, working with the adaptivity and circularity in the leadership, because basically we can create any roles that we think is fit to solve a task or problem. As long as it doesn't violate the rules that we've set up and agreed upon or consented upon. So basically you can do, you know, you have the permission to do what you see fit. We believe that you support the purpose and the idea of the organization that what you're trying to achieve is the best. And we should not get in the way of you doing that. Menlin, what did you believe when you got started on this? You was inspired by Clever who had done something similar, but what caught your eye or what did you think when you decided that this was possible to try and do in your own organization? I was, like I said, I was so frustrated because people were leaving us. And I knew also some of it had to do with me. I love figures, KPIs. They do not always. So if I have to move me away from that, I have to do something dramatically different. And I do that now because now I just can't, they say they don't want this measurement. I say, okay. So they want to do it in another way. Okay. So they move ahead on that one. So it's, so, but it helped. I mean, people are staying now. So it's a bit personal development for me too. Yes. So this kind of, you know, where you actually delegate the capability, the ability, all the accountability of designing their own KPIs. So you're saying I need some kind of KPIs. This is the ones that I came up with. But if you need other, if you think that other KPIs works for you better, then that's, go do it. Just figure out how it works for you. But I still have to remind myself to stop using them against them. And that's been a hard part for me. And maybe if we could just ask you a final question. So all the people who are with us online that we cannot see, if you were to just give them your best piece of advice, if they were inspired like you were. Yes. And when you truly have to decide you want to do this and you have to put a lot of energy into it as a leader and you have to, you definitely need to, you want to do it. Otherwise it will not work because it's been me forcing it all the time, you know, so we have to talk about it. We have to, you know, invite Jacob in again. So if you as a leader distribute this task, I don't think it will happen. You will not succeed. So you have to go in the front to do this change. Cool. Thank you so very much. Yeah. An enormous thank you. Yes. It was so interesting. Fantastic for having you join us. Thank you. Cool. Thank you. Very nice. And some final words before we leave. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.