Clarasys: Sustaining Progressive Principles through Growth and Challenge
Clarasys has never presented itself as a perfect model. Since adopting its teams-of-teams approach almost a decadeago, this employee-owned consultancy has been working out, in real time, what decentralization truly means whenhundreds of people must align without a hierarchy telling them how. Over the past few years, the firm has more than tripled in size, crossing the threshold of 200 employees spread across different countries. Growth has been an achievement, but also a quiet test of everything Clarasys says it believes in.
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“Most companies, when they have a number of years of financial difficulties, would potentially lurch to more control,” Robbie reflected during a recent conversation. “This has been a good test of whether we really stand by what we saidwe believe.” No sweeping structural overhauls have taken place. Instead, the past year has been defined by careful adjustments and reflection—an exercise in proving that progressive practices are resilient, not just convenient when times are good.
Trust has always been central to how Clarasys operates. Its flexible leave policy, sometimes called “unlimited,” was designed on the premise that adults can be relied on to make sensible choices. Yet as the firm expanded, the assumptions behind that policy came under pressure. “People probably looked at other leave people were taking and thought, ‘Well, they pushed it a bit, so I’ll push it a bit,’” Laura observed. Transparency, in theory, should encourage responsibility, but in practice it sometimes breeds comparison. Instead of withdrawing the policy, Clarasys has been working out how to reinforce the trust it depends on, without abandoning the idea that people deserve freedom.
Feedback has proven to be another area where ideals meet the everyday complexity of relationships. Giving honest,sometimes uncomfortable input sounds admirable, but it can be far harder when colleagues are close friends. “Part of that is socially, people are very close,” Laura explained. “So when you’re giving difficult feedback, it doesn’t just have a work implication. It could have a social implication.” The leadership team has been encouraging more direct conversations before pay reviews, hoping that clarity can remove some of the apprehension.
This remains a work in progress, a quiet experiment shaped by cultural norms that extend far beyond Clarasys itself.
As the company grew, the sense of intimacy that once felt natural began to thin out. In a smaller consultancy, people knew one another by default. Today, it is possible to drift between teams without forming deeper connections. “There are people I’ve never spoken to now in the company,” Robbie admitted. For a model built on collective accountability,that distance matters. To counter it, Clarasys has committed to keeping teams no larger than twelve, drawing on the same logic that informs RenDanHeYi micro-enterprise design: smaller groups create clearer expectations, stronger ties, and a sense that everyone’s contribution matters.
While the structures have remained consistent, the experience of working within them has changed. Overall employee satisfaction, once hovering near 90, has fallen to 76.2. The leadership team acknowledges this without defensiveness. They see it partly as a reflection of tough economic conditions across the consultancy sector and partly as an indicator that sustaining a progressive culture at scale requires constant care. “It’s been a challenging time,” Robbie said plainly.“But it’s a good time to learn. When things are under pressure, it really helps us understand better if these things are working for us.”
At Clarasys, progressive practices are not empty slogans. They are commitments, sometimes messy and unfinished, that have to be re-examined when the simplest alternative would be to revert to top-down control. In themonths ahead, the company will keep refining how it handles pay conversations, reviewing how flexible leave can remain sustainable, and exploring how to hold onto intimacy even as it grows.
As Robbie put it, with the quiet conviction of someone who has seen these ideas tested, “We haven’t fundamentallychanged our core values. That has driven our desire to be progressive.” For Clarasys, that may be the most important outcome of all.
