Adventurous Org-Design: From Service to Product with unFIX
Authors: Mavi Landerreche (& Juan Felipe)
ADVENTUROUS (adjective): “willing to take risks or to try out new methods, ideas, or experiences”.
This is what Juan Felipe looked like to me when we first met to discuss how his company, Spot Technologies, had used unFIX model to design their Organization. “It was quite an adventure”, he would say, and wasn't he right!
Spot Technologies is a Chilean company that, according to its Vision Statement, “leads the innovation of artificial intelligence to drive the future of Retail Industries around the world”. They claim to be braineers (a mix of brain + engineers) and from such a background it's no surprise they wouldn´t go with a traditional approach for their organisational design but experiment with unFIX instead.
Juan Felipe, the Head of Product and Change Manager, sounds excited when he describes the journey, that began a year ago: “We wanted to move from a Service Company to a Product Company, so we needed the organisation to be modelled at its best to get us there. And we also wanted our model not only to focus on our product, but also to boost the Customer Experience. unFIX looked like the obvious choice.”
Being a company of around 30 employees, they started grouping their teams in Crews (from two products), then added Governance and an Operations and Support Platform Crews, as well as a Capability Crew. To top it all off, they wanted to make sure their customer experience was top-notch, so they added a dedicated Customer Experience Crew, and voilá! Their first version was launched:
Image: First Version of SPOT “unFIXed”
Pretty cool, right?
Juan Felipe shares his insights as they moved along: this model indeed helped them move from service to product, people liked it, it brought a whole new angle to the customer experience, and certainly allowed them reach new heights, but as time went by (and we know, nothing lasts forever), new challenges would come up: as operations changed, what was the new role for leaders? What it really meant to move from leaders of “services” to product leaders? This included the focus of Governance as well: what was the cultural turnaround required to cope with the empowerment of the Crews, the decentralisation of decision making, and the new expected employee experience focus? Not easy questions, but the team was up for the challenge!
As the above eventually looked too simplistic, Juan Felipe managed to come up with a new version (and again, a new adventure):
Image: Second Version of SPOT “unFIXed“
WOW. Game changer. Now, Facilitation and Experience Crews maintain a comprehensive angle that focuses on everybody, including employees. Leaders are specialists that provide their unique expertise and they are more clearly defined now, Value Stream Crews are focused on core products and innovation, and there’s a new defined administrative team as a Platform Crew that support shared services and ensure Value Stream Crews alignment and proper prioritisation for decision making.
This helped indeed! Everyone seems more focused, aligned, and supported. Is it perfect? Is it for good? No. It's organic, it will change, it will adapt. It will improve. The adventure continues!
Looking at the future, there’s a long way to go, as we all know. Hopefully governance and leadership will keep evolving to enable new mindsets bloom, cultural differences let a unique own culture emerge, and Spot Technologies keeps boosting value streams and Crews to reach their highest potential. Evolution is constant. The adventure never ends! So hold on tight, because the future looks brighter than ever before for Spot Technologies!