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Why we have changed the decision-making process

In an initial post on reinventing, my colleague already reported that we are undergoing an organizational change process as a company. The vision we are pursuing is to have independently organized teams. Because employees are given more decision-making power in self-organized teams and should/can de facto make more decisions, there is a lot to be said for letting them do so:

• Commitment and motivation of employees is increased
• better decisions are made (because more people are involved) or at least there is less chance of unpopular decisions being made
• know-how is distributed and there is more transparency in the company as a result (especially because we make decisions visible to all employees in Confluence)
• the managing director has more time for strategic considerations
• etc.

In the course of this, questions and concerns arose regarding the process of how decisions are made in our company. Since on the one hand it felt like everything was decided by Jürgen Egeling, the Managing Director, or there was no process for decision-making, one was introduced and is called: Individual decision with consultation.

Decisions are made with consultants

In order to achieve the effect that generally better and more decisions are made by the teams, we have decided to introduce a consultative decision-making process. Flat hierarchies in the company make it possible for anyone who wants to make a decision (e.g. because they have discovered a problem) to quickly call in advisors to discuss an issue. However, it is not absolutely necessary for them to follow the opinion of the advisors - they can also make a contrary decision. So why are we doing this? To get colleagues on board in advance and to uncover possible risks that you might not have thought of yourself. The decision made is then documented in Confluence for everyone to see. And so that you know who was involved in the decision (e.g. for queries) or what thoughts those involved have already had on the topic, the decisions are recorded as shown in the following screenshot:

Small and large decisions

We have been following the defined decision-making process since October 2015 and can say that it has worked very well so far. In addition to smaller decisions aimed at improving the feedback culture in the company (introduction of diaries for self-reflection or the commitment of employees to give more positive feedback), very team-specific decisions have already been made. For example, the teams can now decide for themselves whether to take part in conferences and trade fairs. The first company-changing decisions are also being made: These include the decision that our technology department should grow (see screenshot) or that CCOM-Inet should be rebranded as punkt.de Hosting, accompanied by new hosting products.

Jürgen Egeling also showed that we, the employees of punkt.de, are now more involved in the business and the future of punkt.de by including us in the distribution of profits to the employees. So instead of paying each employee an amount of
x euros, a decision-making team decided that commitment to the company should be rewarded. The team therefore developed an evaluation scheme with the help of which each employee could (anonymously) evaluate the commitment of their colleagues. The evaluation scheme also ensured that no one was left empty-handed and that the result could be used to determine the bonus. Thank you dear decision-making team and thank you punkt.de!