What is this?
This site is an open-source site describing how Crisp works and why.
Crisp is a consulting company based in Stockholm, Sweden. But we aren’t a very typical consulting company. For example:
- None of the 35+ consultants are actually employed by {{ site.company_name }} (although we do have a few employed office staff).
- We have no managers, not even a CEO. Instead we rely on self-organization and transparency. Almost everything is bottom-up, and anyone can drive any decision.
- Crisp’s main purpose is to enable consultants to be happy, and Crisp Happiness Index is our driving metric. Strong revenue and delighted customers are a side effect, not a goal.
- Crisp doesn’t want to earn money from it’s consultants. It is in practice a non-profit company (although not formally so). Consultants keep most of what they earn.
- Our ownership model is designed to keep our stock financially worthless. There is no incentive to “cash in”.
- Consultants are 100% autonomous. They can do whatever they want (as long as they don’t hurt the brand or our house), and work as much or as little as they want.
We get a lot of questions about how this works in practice, especially from other consultants looking to create something similar. After many years of experimenting we’ve converged on a model that works well, basically the sweet spot between being an independent consultant and being an employee. So we decided to open source it.
Want to start a similar org? See How to clone the Crisp DNA.
Why open-source the Crisp DNA?
- To make the world a better place! The model has helped us be happy and make a positive impact in the world, and publishing it may help others do the same.
- Open-sourcing it is a fun social experiment, we’re curious about what’s going to happen :o)
- By making our model public, we’re more likely to keep it up-to-date and improve it as we learn.
- Putting it on GitHub makes it easier for others to clone and evolve the model, and we can learn from that.
Contents
Driving principles
(these principles drive almost everything at Crisp)
What is Crisp and why?