Today’s interview is with Tom van der Lubbe, the Co-Founder of Viisi NV, a Dutch financial services company that offers customized mortgage advice and solutions. Tom joins me today to talk about holocracy, decentralized decision-making, culture, radical transparency, only having one rule, rotating leadership and the impact of all of this on their clients experience.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Understanding friction and reward in customer experience – Interview with Richard Hammond and Rocky Howard of Uncrowd – and is number 321 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Here’s the highlights of my chat with Tom:

• Viisi have implemented holocracy.
• It’s a kind of style of self-management and decentralised decision making structure.
• They have adopted a people first, then customers, then shareholders approach because they believe that’s the right way to do it.
• Their only rule: Treat others like you wanted to be treated yourself.
• When you consider history, a multi-stakeholder model is a normal way of working.
• They’ve also embraced radical transparency so nothing is secret.
• In order to transition into a bit more of a self organised, transparent way of working, you have to unlearn a lot of stuff about how organisations traditionally work.
• Viisi have adopted a rotating leadership model that is inspired by how the Swiss government manages itself (Primus Inter Pares – First Among Equals).
• The most sustainable and high-performing organisations tend to adopt a decentralised network structure.
• The business scores 4.9 out of 5 on Trustpilot.
• Their customers tell them that they appreciate their people first, customers second approach as that is the sort of company they would like to work for.
• They have grown over the last 7 years through recommendations from clients and people that know their staff.
• Tom’s punk CX words: Think as an artist.
• Tom’s company or brand that epitomises a punk approach to CX: Patagonia.

About Tom