HOLIS: Building a Company Without Bosses, Budgets, or Barriers
HOLIS is a Japanese enterprise overseeing 27 businesses, including golf equipment, bridal services, and recycling shops, mainly in Aichi Prefecture. With more than 500 employees and over ¥7 billion in total business value, it mayresemble a typical diversified group on the surface. But since 2018, it has quietly been rewriting the rules of how acompany can operate. Instead of hierarchy, it's built a system grounded in trust, ownership, and shared purpose.
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.
Under the leadership of CEO Takuya Katagiri, HOLIS moved away from traditional structures toward a model centeredon self-management and financial transparency. While not explicitly modeled on RenDanHeYi, the company's evolution has reflected many of its core ideas,especially when it comes to decentralization, internal entrepreneurship, and aligning employee success with customer value.
Since 2024, HOLIS has deepened this approach. Teams function as autonomous micro-enterprises, each responsible for its own profit and loss. These teams make decisions without waiting for top-down approval. Instead, they rely on one another, using an advice process that encourages consultation and collective wisdom. Gone are sales targets and rigid planning. In their place are regular check-ins where teams reflect, adapt, and move forward together. The setup bears a resemblance to how RenDanHeYi promotes nimble, frontline-driven decision-making, without the bottlenecks of hierarchy.
Across the organization, employees have grown comfortable with taking initiative. When issues arise, they don’t wait to escalate them up the chain, because there is no chain. They solve them, talk to each other, and keep the work moving. Rather than relying on layers of approval, employees are empowered to respond directly to customers' needsas they see them, ensuring quicker and more thoughtful solutions. This closeness to the user echoes RenDanHeYi's "zero distance" philosophy,an effort to remove friction between the person doing the work and the person benefiting from it.
HOLIS's financial model reinforces this mindset. All company revenue is split into five transparent accounts: profit,owner compensation, taxes, expenses, and loan repayments. This approach, adapted from the "Profit First" method, flips the usual logic of financial planning. Instead of waiting to see what profit is left over, the company sets it aside from the beginning. Everyone can see where money goes. This visibility builds a sense of shared stewardship.
People become more financially fluent, and over time, start thinking like co-owners rather than just employees. While unique to HOLIS, this blend of financial discipline and radical transparency shares DNA with how RenDanHeYiencourages open accountability at all levels.
Incentives at HOLIS are tied directly to this model. If teams spend wisely and grow revenue, they see the benefitsfirsthand. Surplus from the expense account is distributed as bonuses. A portion of profits is also shared, with the rest reinvested. Employees can even lend money to the company through an internal deposit system, earning returns from the profit pool. Some continue receiving these distributions well into retirement. These mechanisms strengthen a sense of long-term connection, not just to the business, but to one another. It's a form of collective ownership that, while structured differently, resonates with RenDanHeYi's emphasis on shared rewards.
One of the most striking shifts has been how HOLIS bridges the gap between employees and customers. The company works to align their interests, believing that when people feel ownership over outcomes, they naturally care more about the user experience. Teams are encouraged to listen closely to the people they serve and to makethoughtful adjustments in real time, without needing to wait for approval. Over time, this has reduced customercomplaints and increased loyalty. It is a practical demonstration of how empowering teams to focus directly on user needs creates mutual benefit,an ambition at the heart of RenDanHeYi thinking.
Internally, learning happens organically. Colleagues run workshops, share insights, and document what works (and what doesn’t). When someone tries something new, it’s seen as a contribution, not a risk. Practices like "Open Books Days" and "Customer Voice Circles" help create space for reflection and exchange. These aren’t formal trainings, but moments of connection where the organization learns together. That rhythm of learning-by-doing, supported by transparency and peer feedback, enables adaptability over time,a goal shared by many organizations influenced by RenDanHeYi.
The company’s ability to move quickly has grown stronger. Employees don’t have to ask for permission to test ideas. One recycling team, spotting a new opportunity, launched an online shop with its own budget. They didn’t wait for sign-off. They simply acted. This "safe enough to try" approach has taken root across HOLIS, enabling people to respond to the market in real time. While HOLIS arrived at this philosophy independently, its embrace of experimental autonomy mirrors the kind of creative freedom celebrated in RenDanHeYi ecosystems.
As a result, engagement is high. People feel trusted, and they repay that trust with commitment. Turnover has dropped close to zero. Teams are more efficient, and decision-making is faster because it’s closer to where the action is.
HOLIS today resembles a thriving ecosystem of small, connected businesses. Each one has room to breathe, but theyare linked by a shared culture, one that values initiative, responsibility, and mutual support. It isn’t always easy. With 27 different businesses, consistency can be a challenge. But the model continues to evolve, grounded in the belief that people thrive when they are free to lead themselves.
The story of HOLIS shows what becomes possible when a company lets go of control and chooses instead to build asystem that trusts its people. The result is not just a different way of working, but a different kind of company altogether, one where the boundaries between employee and entrepreneur, colleague and client, begin to blur in the best possible way. While not following any single framework, HOLIS has become a case worth watching for those seeking to apply or adapt RenDanHeYi principles in a way that fits their own context.
