Recruitment - how we grow

We are in absolutely no hurry to grow

There’s no economic incentive to grow so the main reasons we’re interested in adding Members is to work with people that complement our areas of competence in the coaching and agile product management space or because they’re simply amazing and share our values.

With happiness as our key metric, growth and revenue are a side effect, so recruiting for the sake of these latter metrics doesn’t rate.

Having said all of that, we’re still relatively new and don’t know what the right number is, and how often to do it. As we learn we’ll continue to update these pages.

Hire amazing people, or don’t hire at all

Worth repeating: hire amazing people, or don’t hire at all! That’s what makes our model work.

Who gets to join

Because we believe in freedom and autonomy and therefore, because everyone is responsible for themselves, our minimum bar with new people is:

1. At least one us has worked with the candidate before or they come highly recommended from one of our trusted mates. We want someone to say “Hey, I’ve worked with her before, she is bloody amazing and we’d be IDIOTS not to let her join!”
2. Someone at Organa is willing to be a “puller” for the candidate. That’s our internal term for the person “pulling” an initiative and making sure things move forward, and that the candidate is well-treated. Similar to the bun holder in our bun protocol.
3. No one has vetoed the candidate.

This considerably limits the number of applicants, but again that’s ok with us because we’re not interested in growth for growth’s sake.

Other things that we value and use to help us determine who to accept and reject:

• They complement us somehow, eg with new skills or perspectives that we lack. They will make us feel like newbies in some area!
• They have lots of energy and ideas, and aren’t shy in challenging the status quo.
• They have a strong reputation in the industry.
• They are totally OK with Organa being a “manager-less” organisation. We have peers, colleagues and team mates, there is no “boss”.
• They buy into the DNA we share here. Our model is unique and it doesn’t suit everyone.
• They share our values and the way we approach the business (this is non-negotiable).

Don’t steal people from clients

One golden rule as a Organa Member, we never ever hire a co-worker from a client. Our Clients don’t need that, they’ve got enough going on in their day. There is some possibility that after someone has long finished working at a client site and they come to us, well you can’t keep that door closed.

Again, we are in no hurry to grow. An amazing person is worth waiting for.

What kind of people don’t fit at Organa?

People who want stability. You won’t have stable working hours and a fixed desk. You won’t even get a fixed salary - in fact, it’s the other way around - you pay a fee (but keep most of what you earn). See the economic model. So when you don’t have a client, you bleed money every month. On the other hand, when you do have a client, because you choose what you bill, you can earn more than what any company would pay you in salary. But it is the Members responsibility to buffer cash and manage their own risk.

This kind of model obviously doesn’t fit everyone.

People won’t fit if they don’t share our values either.

What kind of people do fit at Organa?

Most people who end up at Organa were previously independent advisers (or were heading in that direction), or interestingly, are people who don’t like the way many organisations traditionally operate or were feeling they weren’t doing their best work. Typical personality traits:

• Self-confident - they know that they are highly skilled and in high demand.
• Adventurous - time without an assignment isn’t the end of the world, it’s an opportunity to play around, learn new stuff even stuff that’s not directly related to their craft.
• Curious - want to learn new things and are open to new ways of working.
• Generous and with heart - like to share what they learn, not primarily for profit but because it’s fun and rewarding in itself. And it’s the right thing to do.
• Responsible - they’re used to taking responsibility for their own goals and actions, and don’t wait for others to tell them what to do or solve their problems.
• Social - they like to maintain a strong network and collaborate with people,that includes people that might describe themselves as introverts.

Of course, not everyone at Organa has all these traits. But this is typically the type of person who is attracted to Organa.

What’s the recruitment process?

This is a work in progress so currently it’s as follows (we handle exceptions the same we make any other decisions at Organa):

1. X (a candidate) approaches us and asks to join Organa or we might even approach X.
2. One of our Members, Y, says she’d be happy to be X’s “puller”. All candidates must have a “puller” to proceed with the recruitment process. First requirement is met.
3. Y makes sure that the other minimum requirements are met:
   1. She finds out which Members have worked with X before and what they think of him. That takes care of the requirement that someone has worked with X before.
   2. If those who know X give a thumbs up, he’s now an official candidate. At this point Y sends an email to the Members, eg: “I think X should be a Member, because [reasons]. Anyone against?”. Y also adds X to the recruitment document.
   3. Then Y does what she deems necessary to make sure that people at Organa know about X and have a chance to get to know him. She might organise interviews, coffees, discussions. She makes sure that no one is against X becoming a Member. As long as no one is against hiring X we keep going forward with the process. Now all the minimum requirements have been met.
4. It’s now time for Y and all the “pullers” for other potential candidates (plus anyone else interested) to get together and compare the candidate based on our “nice to have” criteria, and our values. The “pullers” put together a list of candidates we should consider, all other candidates are rejected.

What happens if Y wants to recruit X? In that case Y starts at Step 3i, and once it’s clear there are no objections from the other Members, she contacts X and if he’s on board and would like to join, she then proceeds to step 3ii. The rest of the process is the same. This gives X a chance to get to know the rest of us, and we get a chance to get to know him.

Bottom line: If even one single Member is against hiring a candidate, we won’t do it. We’re not really fond of vetoes, but for recruiting it feels motivated. We prefer the risk of rejecting a good candidate, over the risk of accepting a bad candidate.

How does on-boarding work?

Welcome! You’ll need to sign our Member Agreement, and create your own personal company (if you don’t already have one). Formally you’ll be employed by your company, not Organa and we can help you get started.

Congrats, you are now your own manager! Be nice.

We will also go for dinner somewhere nice, setup your email account and other tools.

We will also spend quite a bit of time with you at the start immersing you in our culture and our ways of working. Finally we’ll proudly display you on our site :)