Apple trees as a driver of engagement?

Three lessons learned about engagement at Kessels & Smit

Kessels & Smit, the Learning Company (K&S) is a unique organization in many ways. This company is not primarily driven by financial growth, and was founded with the idea of “doing fun work while learning something with each other”. The organization does not have any bosses or managers, meaning that consultants have the freedom to pick their own hours, contribute to organizational decisions, and can choose the projects they would like to do. One thing that fascinated me is how this structure enabled the members of K&S to thrive and become extremely engaging in the work they do.

A unique strategy

One of the things that fascinated me is the strategy K&S has. It is not top-down, and not even bottom-up. In a bottom-up strategy, the first question would be: “Which direction do you think the organization should take?” And then the second question would be: “How can you contribute to that?”. At K&S, these questions are reversed:

1. What do you would like to achieve? What are your personal goals?

2. How could you do that together with the rest of the organization?

The strategy is truly individually centered. It is to note that K&S is a consultancy agency, meaning that individuals and small teams can work relatively autonomously. Yet, to put the individual’s goals and wants at the heart of the strategy of an organization is something daring yet makes every member extremely engaged. People can thrive because they can choose what they want to do.

Appreciative towards each other

Positive psychology is a stream in psychology that focuses on human flourishing, rather than curing diseases. This stream of psychology is very influential in the entire organization of K&S. In the work they do (e.g. applying positive psychology to education and change management), and very much in how they work together. Do you know that feeling when someone compliments you on a strength of you that you were previously unaware of? This is almost an everyday feeling when working for K&S. The members of K&S are extremely conscious and reflexive, noticing talents in every conversation and helping you to find out what your biggest strengths are.

Apple trees

If you go to the front page of the website of Kessels & Smit, you see a graphic of a large apple tree. Does this mean they have their office located at an apple orchard? Do they love apple juice? No, the “apple tree” is a structure they have for every member. Everyone at K&S has 2 or 3 people in his/her apple tree who are responsible for the personal wellbeing and development of that person. The apple tree meets about once per month, to help with personal development, career reflections, and for junior consultants to help to find work. The people are mutually chosen, meaning that you can choose your apple tree, but only if the others also want to be in your apple tree. As K&S is a collective of autonomous consultants, this apple tree structure helps to ensure nobody is falling behind or not in the right place in the organization. This support system works great as these people are “mutually attractive” (i.e. both people like to help each other) and are not as biased towards guiding you in a certain direction as a normal boss would.

To conclude, engagement is an important aspect of organizational life. Making members of you organization thrive means that sometimes you have to create bold experiments to set up an engaging environment.