Hi Reader,

It was one of those simmering hot days in July 2023 in Seville, Spain. But the sweat pouring out of our pores wasn’t only due to the oven-like temperatures.

It was a big day for us.

We were about to sign the contract to acquire our first company, Indaero, an aerospace manufacturing and engineering company—through our impact fund, Krisos.

And this wasn’t just any acquisition.

We were about to completely transform the way this company operated.

Dunia, our transformation lead, put it bluntly later in her journal:

“This is the easy part. The hard part starts tomorrow.”

When we acquired Indaero it was a traditional one riddled with bottlenecks. Decisions crawled up and down the hierarchy, employees felt disconnected, and innovation was stifled by red tape and cumbersome approval processes.

It was a good business on paper, but we knew it could be extraordinary.

The main challenge?

We had to rethink how the company was managed—entirely.

In today’s newsletter, a slightly longer than usual one, I’m sharing the timeline of how our radical transformation approach was implemented at Indaero (thanks Maria Lorenzo for the extensive research support and for pulling this all together).

Phase 0: Securing employee buy-in – October 2022

Our transformation process is unconventional, and that starts from the very beginning.

Before we sign any deal, we ensure employees want this transformation as much as we do.

That’s why we start every acquisition with a vote.

In October 2022, we stood in front of Indaero’s 40 employees and shared our vision: to turn their company into a thriving self-managed organization.

We explained our process in detail and gave them the chance to vote.

Some employees were hesitant. One engineer told us, “I like the idea, but I just don’t see how it will work. Who’s going to take responsibility?”

It wasn’t that they were opposed to self-management—they just didn’t believe it could work in practice.

Luckily, 87% voted in favor of the transformation.

Phase 1: Diagnosing the challenges – July 2023

By July 2023, on that scorching day in Seville, the acquisition was finalized, and the real work began.

Before changing anything, we conducted extensive 1:1 interviews with all employees to understand their challenges, frustrations, and aspirations.

This gave us a complete picture of what needed to change.

Dunia later reflected:

“It was clear from these conversations that people felt stuck. They wanted more autonomy and ownership, but they had no idea how to achieve it.”

This diagnosis phase gave us the insights we needed to co-create a structure that worked for everyone.

Phase 2: Transforming the structure – August to December 2023

From August to December 2023, we tackled the most visible and disruptive part of the transformation: the complete removal of hierarchy.

Through a collaborative process, the team designed and implemented a new structure in just two months.

• Five layers of hierarchy were replaced with seven self-managing teams.
• Manager positions were eliminated, and former managers returned to the teams as equals.
• Employees elected representatives to handle governance, operations, and workplace culture.

People often assume self-managing organizations are created by simply removing hierarchy.

They’re not.

The hierarchical structures that are removed need to be replaced with peer-to-peer structures.

Without them, you’re opening the door to pure chaos.

To keep chaos at bay (as much as possible), we:

• Ensured employees elected representatives to handle governance, operations, and workplace culture.
• Established a clear meeting rhythm for these representatives to ensure coordination and alignment between teams.
• Created conflict resolution processes to guide tensions into productive outcomes.
• Clarified and trained decision-making processes to avoid leadership vacuums and endless consensus-seeking.

Then came the next big change—radical transparency.

Not just some, all finances were laid bare. Every budget, every expense, every financial decision—open for everyone to see.

Why? Because in a self-managed organization, secrecy is a poison. People can’t make smart decisions if they’re left in the dark.

Even salaries were put on the table—literally.

Before flipping the transparent salary switch, we worked alongside employees to co-create a fair, transparent salary structure.

And with no more bosses to hand out raises, a peer-driven performance system stepped in.

Gone were the days of secret salary negotiations. Now, pay was calibrated in the open, with real input from the people who actually worked together.

The result? A game-changing 24% salary boost—transforming wages from below the national average to 20% above.

Add a newly introduced 25% profit share to that, and you start to see the real shift—ownership isn't just a concept here, it's something employees can feel in their wallets.

In just six months, we had torn down the old rulebook and built a self-managed organization from the ground up.

Mind you: this process now sounds much easier than it was.

Employees called this phase "the jungle"—and for good reason.

It was messy, chaotic, and at times, downright frustrating. People struggled, felt lost, and questioned where this wild experiment would lead.

Some days, it felt like we were hacking through thick brush with no clear path forward.

Clearly, it was time for phase 3 to begin.

Phase 3: Personal and team development – November 2023 to May 2024

Changing the structure is one thing—helping people thrive in it is another. From November 2023 to May 2024, we focused on the most challenging part of the transformation: the mindset shift.

A boatload of training programs were set up to support the teams:

• Sociocracy 3.0 training – Teaching teams how to make decisions without managers
• Tension workshops – Handling conflicts in a non-hierarchical way
• Visits to NER Group – Learning from pioneers in self-management
• Leadership & conflict resolution training – Preparing employees to thrive in a decentralized system
• Emotional intelligence training – Strengthening communication and collaboration across the board

Most at Indaero will tell you—this stuff is hard.

But when you see people stepping up, owning their work, and thriving in a way they never imagined? That’s when you know—it's worth it.

One employee summed it up:

“At first, I hated it. I was used to being told what to do. But now, I feel more ownership and personal growth than ever before.”

Phase 4: Continuous refinement, growth, and development (May 2024 – …)

A self-managed organization is a work in progress. It always will be. People who think they’ll one day reach the ideal state will come out disappointed.

Yes, self-management is great. It brings out the best in people and therefore it brings out the best in an organization.

But it will always require work—tweaking, adjusting, and refining.

That’s the phase Indaero has entered as of May 2024. It’s growing fast, and with that growth comes new challenges.

And that’s a good thing.

As workplace pioneer Ari Weinzweig once taught us: “Success means you just get better problems.”

Results so far?

18 months in, Indaero is unrecognizable. Revenues have grown, salaries have increased, and engagement has soared.

But numbers don’t tell the full story.

Four months into the transformation, a big order landed—too much for their single shift to handle. In the old days, this would have triggered endless management meetings, overtime calculations, and frustration.

Instead, something different happened. The team went to Dunia, asking what to do.

Her response?

"It's your decision. Gather the right people and figure it out."

Two days later, they had a solution: add an extra shift. No managers dictating. No overtime negotiations.

Just a self-managed team making the call to keep customers happy, grow the business, and increase their profit share.

Obviously, it wasn’t all smooth sailing.

There were “what the hell are we doing?” moments:

• Former managers struggled to let go of control.
• Teams learned (sometimes painfully) how to resolve conflicts without hierarchy.
• Old structures disappeared before new ones were fully in place, leading to moments of chaos.

But through it all, something bigger emerged—people don’t just work at Indaero anymore. They own it.

Building a self-managed company is messy, hard, and full of unexpected challenges.

We knew this from researching 200+ self-managed companies.

Now we know it from practice too.

But when it clicks, it changes everything.

Indaero isn’t an outlier; it has joined the hundreds of self-managed companies proving that this works.

If you want to dive deeper, Dunia—who led Indaero’s transformation—will be breaking it all down in our March masterclass, alongside pioneers from self-managing organizations Buurtzorg, Haier, Viisi, and NER Group.

Expect real stories, practical frameworks, and hard-won lessons.

No fluff, just the raw realities of making self-management work.

7 seats left. Enroll here.

Updates from Corporate Rebels HQ

Here's a quick overview of everything happening at Corporate Rebels:

• After movie: My highlight of 2024 was the global meetup for all member organizations in our network. Watch the after movie of the #1 event for self-managing organizations here.
• Big news coming: We’re working on something big. February is about continuing to build, March is about launching. Stay tuned.

New article

A new article has been published on our website earlier this week:

• Promotion: Enroll in Our Masterclass and Get Lifelong Membership For Free​
  Earlier this week, I announced the ‘lifetime access promotion’ for our Masterclass. If you enroll now, you get a complementary lifetime membership. All the good stuff we offer in our community without ever having to pay a dime for the membership again. Check out the full article here.

What inspired us

Here's something noteworthy we discovered this past week that you’re going to love:

• The Algorithm and the Org Chart: How Algorithms Can Conflict with Organizational Structures
  ​I couldn’t send this newsletter without mentioning AI, so here you go. An interesting article on AI and organizational structures published recently. Read it here.

Cheers,

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