Redesigning Engineering from Within: The Self-Management Journey of Deerns Spain

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.

In early 2020, just as the world was entering lockdown, the Spanish subsidiary of Deerns made a quiet but radical decision. Facing both financial strain and organizational inertia, the local leadership team chose to take a different path: they would restructure the company based on self-management, inspired by the NER group model. Thedecision wasn’t made lightly. It came after a period of deep internal reflection and external research, led by Mikel, then country director of Deerns Spain.

“If I had known this earlier, when I was a co-owner of the previous company, everything would have been different,” Mikel recalled, referencing the moment he first encountered the NER philosophy during a seminar with KoldoSaratxaga in Bilbao. At the time, Deerns Spain was still operating traditionally within a much larger multinational headquartered in the Netherlands.

Convinced by the values and potential of self-managed work, Mikel carefully prepared a business case for the board,translating the philosophy into metrics, risks, and strategic benefits. What followed was a cautious but consistent green light process.

The turning point came in March 2020. In a virtual all-hands meeting, the team was asked to decide not just onwhether to reduce working hours through a government furlough scheme (an "ERTE"), but also whether to formally adopt a radically new way of working. They chose both. That vote marked the beginning of a multi-year transformation that continues to this day.

Their clients include data centers, hospitals, and other mission-critical infrastructure. From the start, the challenge was clear: how do you decentralize decision-making within a corporate structure that remains largely hierarchical?

The team began by working with K2K Emocionando, the consulting group behind the NER model. Together they ran adiagnostic, followed by the creation of five working groups focused on key pillars: structure, salaries, personal development, innovation, and KPIs. Each proposal was co-created and then voted on by consent. When one team feltthat the proposed structure too closely mirrored what the consultants had initially suggested, they pushed back and demanded a fresh, collective design. The final result may have been less "efficient" on paper, but it was fully owned by the people it was meant to serve.

The transformation unfolded with clarity and care. Self-managed teams were formed around projects, supported by arotating steering committee composed of elected representatives. The former director's title became "coordinator", a facilitative rather than directive role. Salaries became transparent. A shared spreadsheet shows who earns what, based on skills and responsibilities. While full profit-sharing wasn’t possible due to corporate constraints, Deerns Spain negotiated a fair and consistent bonus system.

They embraced radical transparency not just in numbers, but in communication. "It’s not about knowing everything. It’sabout understanding what matters," said Blanca Capdevila, who leads People & Culture. Monthly all-hands lunches focus on demystifying financials and sharing updates in human terms. Feedback is structured and peer-based. Every year, each person receives collective input from their team, combining encouragement with constructive suggestions.

Challenges remain. Growth has brought complexity. The Spanish unit was recently split into two divisions to align withgroup strategy, which adds reporting burdens. Informal leadership can feel heavy. "Sometimes it’s like two jobs in one,” said Blanca, reflecting on the emotional toll of distributed responsibility. Yet the team finds ways to rotate roles and decompress.

What stands out is how Deerns Spain has balanced autonomy with accountability. Every project team functions as a micro-entity, echoing the RenDanHeYi principle of microenterprise autonomy. Their model of rotating leadership and distributed decision-making mirrors RDHY’s emphasis on decentralization. Employees co-create goals and manage themselves through mutual agreements, a close analogue to Haier’s internal contract system. Even without using the same terminology, their structure minimizes distance between the employee and end user, reinforcing zero-distance thinking and customer orientation.

The company also shows an intuitive grasp of what Zhang Ruimin once described as the ultimate goal of RDHY: not just transforming an organization, but helping people lead themselves. This leadership from everyone, not over everyone, is evident in how Deerns has embedded peer-led feedback, transparency in pay, and voluntary role rotation. Blanca’s reflection captures it best: "You don’t need ten screens to control everything. What you need is trust."

Their clients, many from risk-averse sectors, have responded with admiration. While Deerns Spain doesn’t lead with its governance model, it shines through in the quality of collaboration. Clients notice the initiative and cohesion. Behind the scenes, the Values and Culture team meets regularly, bringing together representatives from each team tonurture the invisible fabric of trust and coherence.

Over four years, profitability has more than doubled, rising from 3.5 million to over 7 million euros, with margins improving from 3% to above 10%. But beyond numbers, the sense of shared ownership has created something harder to measure: resilience, meaning, and a community that learns together.

There is no claim of perfection. As the team enters a new phase with more growth and complexity, they continue toreflect, adjust, and ask hard questions. But the foundation is firm. They are no longer just engineers building systemsfor others. They are redesigning their own system, and in doing so, becoming pioneers of a new kind of professional firm.

"My secret is not being a secret," Blanca smiled. "It’s just being transparent, facing problems, and respecting people. That’s it."

In the spirit of RenDanHeYi, Deerns Spain has built not just a workplace, but a platform for human potential. What sets their story apart is not only the consistency with which they’ve applied these principles, but the integrity with which they’ve lived them. They are not mimicking a model for the sake of trend, nor borrowing language to impress. Their transformation is grounded in conviction, shaped by collective design, and sustained by trust. In this authenticity lies their quiet strength, and their greatest contribution to the broader transformation movement: proof that even within the constraints of a corporate structure, it is possible to build something more human, more transparent, and more meaningful.