From Breakdown to Breakthrough: The Ongoing Transformation at Dectris

This blog post is part of 80+ case studies of progressive organizations we created for the ZeroDX awards 2025. These organizations embody the principles of RenDanHeYi in their work structures:

• Zero Distance to customer: Decision what to build is based on insights from the marketplace

• Autonomy: Small teams with full decision-making autonomy enable speed in execution

• Shared Rewards: Everyone in the micro-enterprise participates in its financial success.

At DECTRIS, the transformation didn’t begin with a strategic initiative. It began with a conflict between two long-time employees. Ivo Pejakovic, a production planner with over a decade at the company, and a then-member of the executive board, were assigned to resolve a critical failure in the company’s IT systems. Their working relationship was strained, and they initially struggled to collaborate. But as the project progressed, the urgency of the problemforced them to find common ground.

In searching for better ways of working, Ivo began studying self-management models. He explored practices like Sociocracy and Holacracy, eventually enrolling in a formal course on self-managing teams at a local university.Together with colleagues, he introduced emotional retrospectives, created new roles to support collaboration and administration, and helped draft a team credo to guide behavior and decision-making. The group eventually merged four teams, including IT services, infrastructure, and quality management, into a self-managing unit called Business Systems. They created governance structures, role election mechanisms, and regular feedback loops that emphasized transparency and shared responsibility. Over time, the tension between Ivo and Marcus gave way to mutual respect, and their collaboration became a model for others.

While this bottom-up effort grew quietly, a parallel process was forming at the top. Matthias Schneebeli, a physicist bybackground and one of DECTRIS' earliest employees, now CEO, had led DECTRIS’ development department for years. He had already been experimenting with Agile methodologies to address stalled software cycles. When he stepped into the CEO role, he seized the opportunity to redesign the company from the ground up.

He replaced traditional departments with three value streams: Customer-to-Customer (C2C), Market-to-Market (M2M), and DECTRIS-for-DECTRIS (D4D). Each stream was made up of self-organized teams operating with clear domain descriptions instead of line managers. Instead of a single boss, each value stream is coordinated by a group of two to three Delegators, who help set strategic direction and mediate cross-team tensions without direct interference. Above this, the Purpose Team steers company-wide direction. The core teams, made up of Delegators and Purpose combined, form the leadership layer, focused on facilitation rather than control.

This structure simplified the hierarchy to just three layers: teams, Delegators, and Purpose. It also introduced new clarity around team responsibilities and interfaces. Teams are distributed along the value stream, from sales and procurement to production and delivery. For example, the M2M stream, focused on R&D and product development, is the largest with around 60 employees. Teams are not functionally siloed but instead connected in sequence, reflectingthe principle of value flow from market insight to customer delivery.

For many employees, the shift brought moments of confusion and emotional challenge. Some teams had grown used to the stability of line managers and initially hesitated to step into full responsibility. Others found themselvesnavigating uncertainty about how to make decisions or manage tension without defaulting to old hierarchies. Rather than shy away from these moments, DECTRIS chose to address them head-on. The organization recognized that transformation would only succeed if it embraced the discomfort as a catalyst for growth. This awareness led to a deeper investment in support systems that reinforced self-leadership, collaboration, and trust.

To support this transition, DECTRIS introduced two key roles: Sponsors and Collaboration Facilitators. Sponsors,often former managers or experienced peers, helped teams define roles, implement decision-making practices, and advocate for them during the shift. They guided teams through tools from Sociocracy 3.0, including role selection and consent-based decision-making. Collaboration Facilitators focused on emotional dynamics: hosting retrospectives, moderatingtensions, and nurturing connection. These roles reflect a key RDHY principle: psychological safety as a foundation for decentralization.

A second RDHY-aligned innovation came with the redesign of the salary system. Traditional reviews were replacedwith a participatory process. Employees evaluate themselves across five dimensions: leadership, subject matterexpertise, ownership, collaboration, and communication. They then meet with a peer, a Delegator, and a Purpose Team representative to agree on a mastery level that maps to Swiss salary benchmarks. The evaluation includes weightings that vary by role, for example, collaboration might count more for a project manager, while expertise weighs more for a technical specialist. Money is not discussed in the room, only capabilities.

Transparency comes slowly, as employees begin to understand how their peers relate to the same system. As Ivo noted, “It’s a slow transparency.”

This framework was born from grassroots frustration. When Ivo’s team noted they were doing the work of their linemanager without equivalent compensation, they began prototyping a fairer model. Early attempts using peer evaluation were scrapped in favor of a more structured system. Today, levels of mastery are linked directly to compensation bands that mirror local market data. About one-third of employees also own shares in the company, which increases their access to financial reporting.

Together, these shifts reflect a distinctive approach to P&L ownership, not just at the level of business units butembedded in how people are developed and valued. DECTRIS’ version of ‘zero distance’ to the user comes throughthe reconfiguration of teams around value streams, with customer experience and innovation structured into the flow of everyday work.

The impact has become visible. Development cycles are faster. Problems are solved at lower levels. Teams coordinate directly rather than waiting for approval. Where once unresolved issues routinely climbed the ranks to senior leadership, they are now handled swiftly and effectively within the teams themselves. This shift has lightened the load on executive management and is a clear sign that self-organization is working. For Matthias, this change reflects adeeper cultural evolution, one where responsibility no longer needs to be delegated upward because it is owned from the ground up.

Still, DECTRIS isn’t chasing the next big change. The priority now is stability. The company is investing in mentorship,training on conflict resolution, and support for self-responsibility. As one leader put it, “We should really start to live in this system and get everything out of it.” This next phase is less about redesign and more about embodiment, ensuringthe structures now in place can truly support a culture of continuous learning, shared leadership, and accountability.

DECTRIS' journey shows how a willingness to confront dysfunction and nurture trust can lay the groundwork for transformation that is both human and lasting.