A Flat Organization

Pingala is an IT consulting and development firm with considerable expertise and experience in process optimization and consulting on ERP and Microsoft Dynamics AX. The company only hires consultants with more than 10 years of experience and has the declared goal of being an oasis for the industry's most skilled professionals and building lifelong relationships – both internally among employees and externally with clients.

Leadership insights

Kent Højlund comes from the IT world and has many years of experience as a leader in a traditional corporate structure, where a leader's success was measured by the number of employees under them. There was also an emphasis on rationalization and efficiency, which resulted in a single employee having multiple different managers across the organization. For example, an HR manager could be responsible for up to 150 employees. This experience of a culture characterized by indirect leadership and a lack of closeness to both employees and tasks inspired Kent to explore alternative leadership methods.

Pingala's founders had similar experiences and frustrations with the traditional structure. They felt limited in their ability to serve and support customers in the way they wanted, and they experienced a lack of recognition in the existing leadership structure. Therefore, they decided to create their own company and shape it to be exactly what they had dreamed of working in and growing with.

When Kent Højlund joined the company, it had five employees and the ambition to create an oasis for the most skilled and experienced employees in ERP. Today, Pingala has over 120 employees distributed across locations in Denmark, Norway, and Dubai, and the ambition is still to avoid reverting to a traditional hierarchical structure – even as the company grows further and expands into new markets.

View of people

Relationships are crucial in Pingala's view of people. Only experienced consultants are hired in the company, which effectively means that applicants must have at least ten years of experience. The company's mission to be an oasis in the IT industry makes it easy to recruit, and employee turnover is very low. This is primarily due to the fact that employees have the opportunity to work on what they find most interesting and educational, and they have the responsibility and freedom to plan and adjust their work lives in collaboration with clients and colleagues.

Common to the employee profile in Pingala is that they have extensive education, are self-directed and self-motivated, are passionate about their work, and are motivated by internal development. This means that it is easy to obtain manpower for internal development projects and product development aimed at improving the oasis as a credible and competent provider of IT services and as an attractive workplace.

Processes and structures

Pingala is a consulting company, which means that employees' daily work is out with clients. To ensure coherence and development of the company, there are a number of fixed structures that support the free and outgoing work life.

Friday meetings

At the Friday meetings, the week's events are discussed. Employees located geographically distant participate digitally. It is important for Pingala to have these weekly touchpoints, so equipment has been invested in to make it easy to participate – no matter where one is located. New tasks are also discussed here and are filled based on three criteria: There must be time for the task, the right skills to complete the task, and a desire to take on the task. If all three criteria are not met, the task does not enter the portfolio.

All-hands meetings

Every other month, an all-hands meeting – a full-day seminar – is held, focusing on the internal organizational development of the company. Here, work is continuously done on culture and strategy. In addition, annual team-building meetings and kick-off meetings are held with the aim of discussing professional challenges and future-proofing the company and its services. One of the topics continually discussed is how the concept of 'disruption' affects Pingala and its services.

Network analysis

As collaboration and relationships are central in Pingala, an annual network analysis is conducted to assess cohesion within the organization. A series of simple questions are used to uncover whether there are employees working very independently and therefore in need of being brought into the fold of the community. The goal is to have a “round” organization where everyone is maximally connected, so knowledge and skills are optimally shared and contribute to the organization's development.

Mentorboards – from PDPs to KNUS

In Pingala, traditional performance development discussions have been replaced by collegial mentoring discussions, known as KNUS. The idea behind this shift is that the professional and personal relationships between employees help maintain the culture and strengthen the company. The perception is that it is through interaction with colleagues that one achieves the greatest benefit from mentoring discussions.

A mentee is always assigned two mentors: one primarily providing professional support and one contributing mental energy. The pairs are formed based on the results of the network analysis, where employees are asked about their preferred colleagues for professional and mental mentoring. Interestingly, feedback on the mentoring program shows that mentors are at least as happy with it as mentees. Many mentors even experience – for the first time in their careers – a structured opportunity to contribute to their colleagues' development.

The conversations follow a fixed template that can be used as needed, but it is not required. However, a certain degree of freedom is needed since the space between mentor and mentee is confidential to ensure that all topics can be discussed openly, ranging from professional challenges to personal matters. Only agreements and requests involving costs need to be presented to the CEO, who insists that conversations be held at least once a year. However, most have several conversations

over a year, and both mentor and mentee can initiate a conversation.

Pingala CV

All employees have a Pingala CV, known to their colleagues. Transparency and knowledge of each other's skills are crucial for trusting relationships and task allocation. These pieces of information are supported by the company's regular meeting structures.

Culture and values

The culture at Pingala is characterized by a shared commitment to creating value. With an organizational structure where reception and accounting are outsourced, there is only one employee not directly involved in invoicing – namely, the CEO. Instead, it is his responsibility to nurture the company's culture and facilitate the structures and processes that ensure the company's coherence.

The culture is that when employees are together, time is spent developing the oasis. The culture is the product, so to speak. There is always energy present in participating in internal projects, which are managed through a scrum board with follow-up at the Friday meetings to ensure maximum transparency.

There is a great emphasis on strengthening the appreciative culture. In addition to KNUS discussions, heart-shaped post-its are always available. If a colleague achieves something positive, he or she receives a post-it. It is a small gesture but one with great value to the community. The method is used both daily and especially at the weekly and all-hands meetings.

The special culture is supported by decisions in the company being made collectively. As much as 80% of all decisions are made at weekly and all-hands meetings. This also means that decisions can be made with which the CEO may not necessarily agree.

Finally, there is complete freedom to plan working hours. In line with the vision of being a lifelong community for employees of all ages – from their 30s to their 50s and beyond – Pingala strives to accommodate different life situations.

Management

There is very little actual management in the company and no specific quality assurance mechanisms. The focus is on two key figures, which are shared at a Friday meeting every month – invoicing rate and average hourly rate. Transparency and shared responsibility are central principles in this approach. Review of the key figures primarily focuses on identifying if some employees are overloaded with tasks and who has the opportunity to assist.

However, there is an established practice for what it takes to say yes to a task. Presence of a consultant or a team that can meet the requirements on time and with the right skills and motivation for the task is required. Employee freedom is emphasized by their ability to choose to accept or reject tasks, and they are directly responsible to both the client and each other. It is a highly responsibility-engaging way of working, where one is always involved in the decisions that affect one's work life.

The free choices and dialogue with the customer are supported by a range of common tools, but particularly by a collectively formulated "Good Practice" for consultants and developers, ensuring that the company delivers its best and avoids legal or financial conflicts with customers and authorities. In reality, the written procedures for good practice act as a kind of quality assurance mechanism and are actively used, as all employees in the company have been involved in developing and approving them.

The role of the leader

The CEO is a facilitator more than anything else. It is his task to structure and facilitate meetings and processes so that employees can make collective strategic decisions. This also means that leadership becomes very much about development – of the company and of the people within it – and very little about control and micromanagement.

The leader must make himself available as a sparring partner and actively refrain from delegating tasks to employees. However, he can also use the right to reject tasks from employees and the organization and push them back to the community. The community's priority means that the leader must be able to accept that decisions are made at the level below him. By the community. By those for whom a decision has a direct effect.