Scaling an entrepreneurial culture (CitizenM Hotels)

CitizenM states it boldly in their mission. They are on a journey to change the hotel industry.

CitizenM is a true scaleup: Since their first hotel opening in 2008 there are now, in 2020, more than 20 hotels open around the world and at least 10 more under development.

Why was CitizenM looking for a new way of working?   

All “Citizens” are proud of their unique culture. They characterize it as vibrant, warm, just-get-things-done, and entrepreneurial. They believe it is an important contributor to the success of CitizenM’s mission.

OrganizationBuilders joined CitizenM at a moment when there were several organizational challenges typical for any scaleup:

• How do you create value centrally, without the command and control structure that inhibits the much-needed local autonomy?

• How do you speed up decision making when business becomes more complex with an increasing number of hotel openings?

• How do you keep a growing Support Office (they don’t believe in head offices) customer-focused, with meaningful (and fun) teamwork?

What have we done?

At the Support Office we introduced the bol.com inspired “Spark’ way of working. “Circle meetings” as CitizenM calls it, are a very fast-paced approach to conducting teamwork.

We started with a short diagnostic and then supported three initial pilot teams for about three months. Then CitizenM took over, supporting all the new teams participating and experimenting and tweaking the methodology. Along the journey we have supported with additional tool training for the hotel managers and a train-the-trainer program.

The roles and meeting format helped CitizenM find the balance in each of the “how do you…” questions above. Circle meetings are now used by a variety of teams at CitizenM, including the regional hotel groups, cross-functional innovation teams, hotel opening circles and finance functional circles.

What are the results?

Circle meetings have spread quickly across over 50 international teams. The main benefit to CitizenM: No trade-off between their initial disruptive innovation mindset and corporate professionalism, while keeping their valued culture intact.