VIVA! Conversion: Reimagining Autonomy in Digital Marketing

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 2023, he started what he described as an “eternal evolution” toward self-management. Reading Frédéric Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations and learning about practices from other companies led him to question inherited assumptions. “I read the book and thought, this is dangerous reading, it makes you start to question everything,” he recalled. Around the same time, he explored concepts that connect with RenDanHeYi principles, such as reducingdistance to the customer and linking individual contribution with rewards.

One of the first steps was to make all financial data visible to employees. The company opened its profit and loss statements and cash flow reports, and Toni began recording monthly videos explaining the results in clear terms. This level of openness was unusual in the Spanish marketing sector. “The transparency is there,” he said, “but helping people use that information to understand the business is something we’re still working on.”

The company also committed to distributing 28% of profits to employees. This figure includes the main 25% profit-sharing pool plus a 3% peer bonus. The distribution criteria combined tenure, salary level, and a portion that employees allocated themselves by voting. While this approach has created a more visible connection betweenindividual and collective performance, a principle that aligns with the spirit of shared rewards in RenDanHeYi, it has also brought challenges. Toni described the experience as “very interesting to see how people face the responsibility,” noting that it often felt difficult and exposed tensions around fairness and recognition.

To create a structure that could support autonomy without drifting into confusion, VIVA! Conversion began testing holacracy. Rather than a full adoption, the company has been experimenting step by step, introducing some principles gradually while keeping other parts of the traditional organization in place. This process has included piloting self-organized circles that define their own accountabilities and governance. According to Toni, trying holacracy in this way has helped teams start to operate more as interconnected micro-units instead of silos, a direction that echoes aspects of RenDanHeYi’s focus on micro-enterprises owning their results. Yet he acknowledged that the transition was difficultfor some colleagues. “We were shaped in a hierarchical system in every part of life,” he explained. “When you start to open up decision-making, somepeople get excited, some freeze, and some think it’s all chaos.”

The culture has also shifted in other ways. Employees were encouraged to propose new circles, such as one focused on fashion and e-commerce. In several instances, circle leads were chosen by peer vote rather than appointment. At the same time, the company continued to face questions about how to set fair compensation and define clearboundaries around spending. For example, while employees were issued company credit cards to buy what they needed without approvals, disagreements sometimes arose about what expenses were appropriate. “We have a lot offlexibility and a lot of autonomy,” Toni said. “But when it comes to money, people care. You need boundaries that everyone understands.”

These experiments have produced mixed feelings among the team, combining enthusiasm with uncertainty. Theprocess of transforming career expectations has been especially delicate. Toni described how some employees stilllook for a predefined career plan, while others have started to think more entrepreneurially about their role in the company’s growth. He often reminded people that there is no single path. “In a small company like ours, there’s no magic ladder. You create your own path,” he said.

At the same time, the challenges have been an important source of learning. The peer bonus process, the debates about spending boundaries, and the gradual introduction of holacracy have all helped clarify what it means to shareresponsibility and trust. These experiences have shown that transparency and autonomy can strengthen commitment but also require patience and clear communication. In this sense, the company’s journey reflects how RenDanHeYi principles, such as linking individual contribution to shared rewards and reducing distance between decisions and those doing the work, can be adapted to a creative services environment.

Despite the complexities, several indicators suggest the approach is delivering results. The company has keptemployee turnover below industry norms and has been recognized among the most engaged workplaces in Spain through independent surveys. Financially, VIVA!Conversion has maintained margins around 20 to 25 percent and projected growth of about 30 percent for the year.

Reflecting on the journey so far, Toni emphasized that the work is far from complete. “We haven’t finished designingour model,” he said. “Holacracy is just something we are testing, not an end in itself. What matters is that people feelthey can grow and contribute.” He summed up the ambition simply: “I want to show that you can do good work, grow the business, and let people be themselves. That’s the real test.”

For VIVA! Conversion, the transformation remains a living experiment, one that continues to evolve as the team learns how to balance freedom, accountability, and shared purpose.