50 Moments From 50 Years of ET Group
50 Moments From 50 Years of ET Group
With roots in Toronto dating back to 1976, we’ve grown alongside the technology that shapes how people communicate, collaborate and connect.
Over five decades, a lot has changed — the technology, the projects, the places we work and the scale of what we do. Along the way, we’ve welcomed new people, built lasting relationships and continued to evolve with the needs of our customers.
Behind every milestone are the people, projects and ideas that have helped move us forward.
To celebrate our 50th anniversary, we’re looking back at 50 moments that have shaped our story — and helped create the foundation for what comes next.
Our Roots and Evolution
1. Our Story Begins in 1976: Our history traces back to Pistil Enterprises Ltd., founded in 1976, and its later evolution alongside Sound Power Luminescence. In 1991, Pistil Enterprises Ltd. took over Sound Power Luminescence, helping create the foundation for who we are today. That history is why 1976 remains the starting point in our story — marking 50 years of growth, change and evolution in 2026.
2. From Traditional AV to More Connected Technology: In our earlier decades, our work included installed sound systems, amplifiers, speakers, wired microphones, projection screens, slide and film projectors, and early video and television systems. As the technology advanced, meeting and presentation spaces began bringing more of these tools together. Projection gave way to digital displays, laptops became part of the meeting experience, and interactive presentation and collaboration technology created new ways for people to share and work with content.
3. Expanding Into Hospitality and Entertainment: Our portfolio also grew across Toronto’s restaurant, nightlife and entertainment scene. We supported recognizable hospitality brands with audio, video, displays and control systems designed around the guest experience. From walls of screens showing sports and entertainment to custom AV control behind the scenes, these projects showed how technology could become part of the atmosphere and experience of a space.
4. Growing Into Integrated Corporate AV: As workplace technology evolved, our corporate projects evolved with it. Boardrooms and meeting spaces increasingly brought together videoconferencing, displays, presentation technology, room control, tabletop connectivity and dedicated AV infrastructure. Rather than operating as separate pieces, more of the technology in the room began working together as one integrated system.
5. From Individual Installations to Enterprise Scale: As our capabilities and customer base grew, the projects got bigger too. What might once have involved a single system or location can now mean designing, deploying and supporting hundreds of spaces across offices, campuses and multiple locations. At that scale, consistency matters — from how rooms are designed and deployed to how they’re supported long after installation.
6. Our Toronto Roots: Our home has changed a few times over the years, with each location marking a different chapter in our growth. Our Toronto and Etobicoke addresses have included 500 King Street West, 90 Thorncliffe Park Drive, 500 and 524 Front Street West, 29 Booth Avenue and, since 2022, 130 North Queen Street in Etobicoke. From our earlier downtown locations to where we are today, the spaces we’ve worked from have grown and changed right alongside us.
7. Built on Long-Standing Relationships: Some of the relationships behind our work have lasted for decades. Several team members have built long careers here, with some approaching 40 years with us, while customers and technology partners have continued to grow alongside us. That shared history has created a depth of knowledge and familiarity that can only come with time.
8. Trusted in Complex and Mission-Critical Environments: Over the years, we’ve built deep experience in justice, government and other environments where technology simply has to work. Courtrooms, correctional facilities, command centres and other highly regulated spaces come with requirements around security, reliability and day-to-day performance that go well beyond a typical meeting room.
Building a National Presence
9. Growing Beyond Toronto: We started in Toronto, but our footprint has steadily grown across Canada through acquisitions, new offices and a more distributed team. Today, we have employees based in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
10. Welcoming CONTI and Forte: In September 2022, we acquired CONTI Electronics’ audiovisual design and integration business assets, including the CONTI and Forte brands. The acquisition brought CONTI and Forte employees into our team and established a Vancouver presence, supporting our continued growth in Western Canada.
11. Expanding into Atlantic Canada: In 2023, we opened a new office and technology demonstration facility in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Now known as the Fredericton Experience Centre, it gives customers and partners a place to experience workplace technology firsthand across collaboration, personal, social and justice spaces.
12. Extending Our Reach Through Ricoh Canada: Joining Ricoh Canada in 2026 added a broader Canadian office and service network to the footprint we had already built, giving our teams access to additional resources and support across the country.
Behind the Work
13. A Home That Reflects the Work We Do: Our current North Queen headquarters is more than office space. It brings together people working across different parts of the business with areas for collaboration, staging, service and the hands-on technical work that happens before and after a system reaches a customer site.
14. Building and Testing Before We Reach Site: A lot happens before an installation ever reaches a customer. Our in-house staging and pre-build process gives our teams space to build, configure, label and test systems ahead of deployment, helping catch issues early and making onsite work more predictable.
15. The Service Work Customers Don’t Always See: Installation is only one part of the lifecycle. Behind the scenes, our service and onsite support teams troubleshoot issues, prepare equipment, maintain systems and help keep technology working once it is in use. Some of that happens at customer sites, while some happens from our own service and support areas.
16. Different Specialists, One Project: A finished space can involve people across strategy, design and engineering, programming, project delivery, installation, unified communications and ongoing support. Each sees a different part of the project, and complex environments often depend on several of those disciplines working together from the earliest design conversations through deployment and support.
17. Thinking About Virtual Work Before It Became the Norm: Flexible and virtual work were already part of the conversation well before hybrid work became commonplace. In 2017, Dirk Propfe was featured on the cover of Ivey Business School’s Intouch magazine for a story on “Virtually Virtual,” reflecting on virtual teamwork and why it could work for organizations. It’s an interesting snapshot of how early questions around remote collaboration, trust and the workplace were already becoming part of our story.
18. Bringing Human-Centered Thinking Into Our Technology Work: The way we thought about our own workplace also began influencing how we approached technology for customers. Rather than starting with products or equipment, the focus increasingly shifted toward the people using a space — how they work, how they need to collaborate and what the technology needs to make easier. Dirk later shared that approach through Human-Centered Technology Design for a Hybrid World at WORKTECH Toronto.
Recognition Along the Way
19. Seeing the Transformation Take Hold: The changes weren’t limited to organizational structure. Collaborative workshops, ET Connects and other opportunities for people to contribute ideas became a more visible part of how we worked together. By February 2022, we reported a 95% employee retention rate and an employee Net Promoter Score consistently above 50. We also reported profitability at 2.5 times the industry standard and four times the growth we had experienced in 2016.
20. Recognized for a Different Business Strategy: In 2018, we received an NSCA Excellence in Business Award in the Differentiating Strategies category, recognizing our move toward design thinking, participatory leadership, self-management and a more consultative approach to workplace technology.
21. Named Pexip’s Most Agile Partner: In 2021, we were named Pexip’s Most Agile Partner of the Year at the Pexip Americas Partner Leadership Summit, recognizing our ability to adapt quickly and find collaboration solutions around specific customer needs.
22. Receiving the Inaugural Tony Hsieh Award: In December 2021, Dirk accepted the inaugural Tony Hsieh Award in Las Vegas on our behalf. The award recognized the work we had done to explore more empowering and participatory ways of working. (Read the story behind the transformation and its impact.)
23. Taking Our Story to a Global Stage: In 2024, we received the Zero Distance Excellence Award for Emergent Excellence. Mark Chen represented us at the Zero Distance Excellence Summit in Qingdao, China, where he accepted the award and joined organizations from around the world in conversations about self-management, decentralization and customer collaboration.
24. Building a Multi-Year Record as a Best Workplace: Since becoming Great Place to Work® Certified in 2023, we’ve received recognition across several workplace categories. In 2025, our growth placed us among Canada’s Best Workplaces for organizations with 100 to 999 employees, where we ranked #15 in Canada. We were also recognized among Canada’s Best Workplaces in Technology, for Mental Wellness and with Most Trusted Executive Teams. In 2026, we ranked #30 and received the Fairness Award, alongside recognition for Inclusion, Technology and Most Trusted Executive Teams. (Explore our workplace awards and recognition.) 
Projects Across the Years
25. Supporting Justice Environments at Scale: We have designed, implemented and supported secure AV systems across courtrooms and correctional environments, and by the end of 2026 that footprint is expected to exceed 1,000 justice spaces. The work supports remote appearances, interpretation, evidence presentation, accessibility and other functions where reliability and security are critical. (Explore our justice technology solutions or see the case study behind this work.)
26. Growing with GreenShield Across Seven Cities: Since 2017, we have completed 57 AV projects with GreenShield across seven Canadian cities. The relationship has grown across executive boardrooms, hybrid rooms, multipurpose environments and other workplace spaces while supporting greater consistency across locations.
27. Building a Nationwide AV Standard with Sobeys: In 2024, we partnered with Sobeys on more than 12 AV projects across Canada. Through discovery sessions and stakeholder engagement, we developed repeatable designs for executive rooms, training spaces, huddle rooms and town halls, creating a more consistent hybrid meeting experience across locations.
28. Supporting Hybrid Learning and Collaborative Research: Our work in education has included a range of approaches to teaching, learning and collaboration. At BCIT, we helped connect existing video technology with newer collaboration platforms to support campus-wide hybrid learning. Our work with York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering included an interactive virtual classroom, while at OCAD University we supported collaborative research spaces designed around accessibility and participation.
29. Technology Across the Campus Experience: Our education work also extends beyond traditional classrooms. At the York University Student Centre, technology helped create a more connected social and community space for students. Our work with a leading Canadian independent school has grown across more than 25 projects and two campuses, spanning classrooms, gymnasiums, a swimming pool, boardrooms, multipurpose spaces and shared areas.
30. Bringing the Cisco Innovation Centre to Life: At Cisco’s Toronto Innovation Centre, we helped create a flexible environment for demonstrations, training and global collaboration. The project brought together cross-platform videoconferencing, intelligent cameras, ceiling microphones, touch control, wireless content sharing, digital display pillars and a multi-panel video wall.
31. Creating an Immersive Digital Experience at B6: At Bentall GreenOak’s B6 building in Vancouver, we helped transform a large architectural surface into an immersive digital canvas combining a large-scale video wall, custom content and discreet audio. The installation also created a platform for showcasing work from local artists.
32. Designing Around Sagamok Anishnawbek’s Council Circle: We partnered with Sagamok Anishnawbek on a hybrid-ready Council Chamber built around the Nation’s circular Council layout and governance practices. Microsoft Teams Rooms, Televic Plixus and individual uniCOS units were brought together alongside custom nameplate overlays and VR design work to support the unique environment.
33. Standardizing 176 Rooms Across 40 Locations: For a leading Ontario utility, we designed and deployed AV across 176 rooms spanning 40 locations. The work ranged from smaller collaboration spaces to executive environments, with standardized room templates, centralized conferencing and remote monitoring helping make a large distributed environment easier to deploy and support.
34. Connecting Technology Across an Entire Headquarters: For a leading Canadian dairy provider, we helped create a Toronto headquarters where technology extends across huddle rooms, boardrooms, collaboration spaces, digital signage and larger Town Hall and streaming environments. The project also used CAD and VR planning and incorporated existing equipment where it continued to serve a purpose.
35. Supporting Infrastructure Teams Across Eight Locations: Since 2022, we’ve delivered more than 10 AV projects across eight locations for a leading Canadian infrastructure organization. Standardized meeting environments connect executive leadership, regional offices and project teams whose decisions can directly affect active job sites.
36. Building an 8K Centrepiece at GreenShield: At GreenShield’s downtown Toronto office, we helped deliver a 10-foot-high, 27-foot-wide video wall with 8K native resolution. People-tracking cameras add an interactive element, allowing content to respond as people move through the space. The installation is another chapter in our long-standing work with GreenShield.
37. Modernizing Secure Collaboration at RBC: Our work with RBC has included modernizing executive and meeting environments to create more intuitive, hybrid-ready collaboration while meeting the reliability and security needs of a major financial organization.
Learning and Staying Connected
38. Bringing Global AV Insights Back from ISE: Our teams attended Integrated Systems Europe in Barcelona in both 2025 and 2026, meeting with global manufacturers and partners while exploring developments across unified communications, LED, audio, workplace management, immersive AV and smart-building technology.
39. Staying Close to the Collaboration Technology Ecosystem: Enterprise Connect and Cisco WebexOne have given members of our team a closer look at developments in AI, collaboration platforms, room systems, security, governance and interoperability while strengthening relationships with the partners behind many of the technologies we work with every day.
40. Sending Our Largest Team Yet to InfoComm: In 2026, we sent our largest team to date to InfoComm in Las Vegas, with people representing Growth and Innovation, Design and Engineering, Customer Engagement, Project Delivery and Vendor Relations. It gave people from different parts of the organization a chance to explore new technologies, meet partners and bring ideas back into their own areas of work.
Supporting the Full Lifecycle
41. Managing More Than 200 Rooms Proactively: For a major Canadian financial institution, we introduced Remote Monitoring and Management across more than 200 meeting rooms nationwide. The program reduced average issue-detection time by 98.7%, lowered support-ticket volume by 75% and produced more than $100,000 in annual support and energy-related savings.
42. Embedding Technicians Across 135+ Spaces: Our Meeting Room Technician programs place dedicated AV specialists directly within customer workplaces. For one global financial client, our embedded technician team supports more than 135 spaces across Toronto, London and other global locations, including executive boardrooms, hybrid classrooms and mission-critical environments.
43. Expanding Our Work in Justice and Corrections: As our justice work grew, so did the range of environments we supported — from courtrooms to correctional facilities. That included purpose-built solutions such as Video Remand Cabinets, designed to support secure virtual appearances and communication, alongside courtroom collaboration, remote monitoring and ongoing AV support.
44. Seeing a Space Before It Exists: We’ve used immersive VR design reviews to let customers experience proposed spaces before construction or installation begins. Stakeholders can walk through layouts, assess displays and sightlines, review camera coverage and make decisions while changes are still much easier to make.
45. Connecting Old and New Technology: Not every modernization needs to begin with replacing everything. Across projects in education, energy and enterprise environments, we’ve helped customers connect existing video systems with newer platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Webex. For one Ontario energy provider, interoperability allowed existing systems to work with newer cloud collaboration platforms without requiring an immediate rip-and-replace.
46. Building Sustainability Into the AV Lifecycle: Our approach has included maintaining and reusing equipment where it still has value, replacing individual components where possible, reducing unnecessary site visits through remote support and directing end-of-life equipment toward responsible reuse or recycling. (Read more about our approach to a more sustainable AV future.)
47. Staying Involved After the Installation: Many of our customer relationships continue long after a room goes live. Help desk support, onsite technicians, preventative maintenance, remote monitoring and ongoing optimization all play a role in keeping spaces working as technology, workplaces and customer needs continue to change.
The Next Chapter with Ricoh
48. Beginning Our Next Chapter with Ricoh: On February 2, 2026, we announced that we had joined Ricoh Canada as a wholly owned subsidiary. It marked one of the biggest changes in our 50-year history and the beginning of a new chapter — one that allows us to build on what we’ve created while becoming part of a much larger organization. 
49. Preserving Who We Are: We continue to operate under our existing brand and leadership team, with customers working with the same people and teams they already know. As we move forward with Ricoh, we’re continuing to build on the relationships, experience and specialized expertise developed over the past 50 years.
50. Combining Our Expertise with Ricoh’s Scale: Our next chapter brings our AV design, integration, unified communications and managed workplace expertise together with Ricoh’s broader resources, digital capabilities and service coverage. Together, we can support more of the workplace technology lifecycle while continuing to bring the hands-on approach our customers know us for.
Looking Back — and Moving Forward
Our story has been shaped by five decades of people, projects, customer relationships and turning points.
Some of that history can be seen in the finished spaces. Some of it lives behind the scenes — in old project photos, equipment racks, design drawings, staging work, service calls and the people who have spent years learning how to make increasingly complex systems work.
Together, these milestones show just how much has changed, from our early Toronto roots and individual AV installations to projects spanning hundreds of rooms and locations across the country.
As we begin our next chapter with Ricoh Canada, we’re carrying that experience forward. Technology will keep changing, and the spaces where people work, learn and connect will change with it.
The next 50 years will build on the projects, relationships and people who brought us here.
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Is empathy the missing link in tech integration for hybrid?
Building the hybrid workplace requires technology integrators to pay more attention than ever to human behaviour. Canada’s ET Group is using the principles of design thinking to make empathy central to the development process.
In a world where technology is always evolving, it’s so easy to get distracted by all the bells and whistles, and forget about what actually matters: the user.
This is a huge problem, especially when it comes to creating hybrid workplaces, because when human behaviour is not taken into account, there will be more problems created rather than solved.
However, we are able to avoid this problem by using design thinking. And a crucial element of design thinking is empathy. Empathy allows us to focus on the human experience, and really understand the true needs and desires of the user; even some they weren’t aware they had. Through walking in their shoes, we see the problem from as many perspectives as possible. We are able to identify all of the gaps and explore many different approaches to finding the long-term hybrid workplace solution.
That’s not to say that it’s always an easy process. The idea of a deep discovery phase can be off-putting for some clients. They assume that it’s going to be too time consuming. But that’s actually not the case. By taking the time to listen to an organization’s story, we get to the best solution much faster than if we had simply installed whatever tech is new or trendy. Plus inviting clients to be so involved allows for deeper and more trusting relationships, because they feel truly seen and understood.
Discover more reasons why empathy matters every step of the way when using design thinking, and how it opens the door for more creative and inclusive solutions by reading our latest interview with WORKTECH Academy here.
ET Group is a Corporate Member of WORKTECH Academy. This article is the third in a series on the role of design thinking in technology integration for the hybrid workplace. Read the first two articles here and here.
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How can technology and design collaborate on hybrid?
Technology integrators and interior designers need to work closely to create the hybrid workplace, but too often there is a divide. ET Group is using the principles of design thinking to build bridges – is this a blueprint for collaboration?
Where designing hybrid workspaces is concerned, technology is to design as music is to dancing. You can’t have one without the other. Sure, you can separate them, but paired together they’re just so much better.
Include technology early in the design process
In order to create successful hybrid strategies, companies need to think about space and technology collaboratively, not as separate design phases with different desired outcomes. Too often, organizations are leaving technology decisions to be made at the end of the design process, and they are missing out on opportunities to optimize these choices to suit all of their employees’ needs. By taking a human-centered approach, Design Thinking creates the right foundation for the ultimate partnership between interior designers and technology integrators.
Lead as co-experts
This is why it’s important to think of designers and technology integrators as co-experts, and give them the opportunities to collaborate with each other as early as possible. Design Thinking allows for a process that allows both parties to collaborate and build on each others different areas of expertise where best suited, in order to co-create the ideal hybrid workspace for the client. As our CEO Dirk Propfe explained to WORKTECH Academy, “We need to jump into each other’s swim lanes to learn together”.
5 key principles to a succesful relationship
At ET Group there are 5 big things we often think about when working with designers in order to guarantee a successful outcome:
1. Define what success looks like.
2. Agree on the process.
3. Focus on experience, not just appearance.
4. Prototype together early and often.
5. Keep it simple.
You can read about these 5 big things in more detail, as well as the rest of our interview with WORKTECH Academy here, and understand why we believe Design Thinking will help achieve better collaboration between design and technology.
ET Group is a Corporate Member of WORKTECH Academy. This article is the second in a series on the role of design thinking in technology integration for the hybrid workplace. Read the first article here.
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Can design thinking unlock technology integration for hybrid workspaces?
When it comes to the topic of moving to a hybrid workplace, it’s clear that the key to making it happen is through technology. One of the biggest challenges companies experience today is how to integrate technology successfully into their current systems and processes. Is design thinking the answer?
Designing a hybrid workplace
As companies look to quickly adopt new solutions to enable their hybrid workforce, organizations are struggling to find harmony between the technology tools themselves and the people driving the organization forward. Without a people-centric perspective, companies lack the right balance that is needed to find success to the hybrid workplace.
Could it be that a new approach is required to unlock technology integration in the hybrid workplace?
For the last several years we have been pioneering an approach known as design thinking with our global clients and experiencing huge success. Design thinking is a human-centric approach that seeks to put people at the centre of the solution they are creating for and develop solutions with the user in mind. Design thinking really hones in on the process of discovering and defining every aspect of your business, and looking at it all from every possible perspective. We want to know who your people are, what they do, and why they do it.
WORKTECH Academy interview
We sat down with WORKTECH Academy and explained our approach on the principles of design thinking and why it helps integrate technology successfully in the hybrid workplace.
Check out our full interview with WORKTECH Academy to learn all about Design Thinking, and how it can help bring your technology to the next level.
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ET Group was recognized for transforming our ways of working. Here’s how we did it.
Everyone wants to work at a place where they feel valued. Where you have the freedom and power to make real change. Where you feel like you have a voice and a purpose. At ET Group, these are only a few of the reasons why our employees love coming to work everyday, and are the driving force behind one of our greatest achievements.
By Ciara Williams, ET Group
In December, 2021, ET Group President and CEO Dirk Propfe traveled to Las Vegas to attend the Inaugural Tony Hsieh Award gathering, and accepted the Tony Hsieh Award on behalf of our organization. The award, presented by the Greenlight Giving Foundation & Keith Ferrazzi, honours the life of the late Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh and the ways that he continues to inspire organizations to be innovative, authentic, and create better ways of fostering connection. Tony believed that there was always room for improvement and that above all else, people come first.
For ET Group, it is an extreme honour to receive this award, and to be seen for all of the hard work and dedication that was put into transforming our ways of working to be more empowering, inclusive and ultimately life-giving.
While accepting the award, Dirk gave an emotional and eye-opening talk about all of the ways ET Group stands out, and why our way of working is not only different, but essential to our success.
You can watch his talk here:
Dirk begins by telling a personal story about the two life changing experiences that inspired him to transform ET Group into what it is today.
A stark awakening in the Galapagos Islands
The first experience details his time visiting the Galapagos Islands, where he witnessed a lot of awe and beauty, being surrounded by so much life. But there was also a lot of ugliness. At the time, he was developing a deep interest in topics such as sustainability and climate change, and while in the Galapagos Islands, he couldn’t help but notice the litter and environmental abuse that could only have been caused by us as human beings.
He became painfully aware that the world is all interconnected, and that we need to pay attention to how we as a species are affecting the broader ecosystem that others call home, too.
However, rather than letting the ugliness bring him down, he chose to find inspiration in its place. Instead of wallowing in despair at the destruction of this beautiful ecosystem, he asked himself “how can I best contribute to creating a more life-giving world?”
This one question led him down a path of introspection and discovery. and he found himself soon embarking on another adventure: Sweden
Schooled in sustainability
Dirk enrolled in the Master’s Programme in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability at the Blekinge Tekniska Högskola school in Sweden, with the intention of discovering how to create more viable ways of working and living. While attending this program, he was able to learn and unlearn many things about himself and others as human beings. He cherishes the opportunities he had to learn about and experience different ways of being and working that “truly energized and amazed [him].”
For example, while visiting a company in London during his thesis research, instead of simply observing them like he had planned, he was warmly invited to participate and collaborate in a strategy session. He felt seen and heard, like his voice mattered. He truly valued the opportunity to learn something that was never taught in business school, or any other organization that he had been to before, which is that:
“We can all come together, co-create and be part owners of what we’re going to bring out in the world.”
This was the feeling that he held onto when he returned to ET Group and began laying the foundation to create what is now a life-giving environment that our team thrives in.
But what was the reason?
In 2016, Dirk saw ET Group as what could only be called a toxic workplace. We were your typical corporation that harvested an unhealthy and unsustainable working environment. There was in-fighting, debt and extreme egos everywhere. Decisions were made in a hierarchical fashion and for many of our employees, working at ET Group was just a job. A job that was losing people rapidly.
Dirk knew things had to change fundamentally, or else see ET Group disappear.
When he came back to work, he was ready to make those changes. And it started with asking one very important question:
“How can we create a more life-giving organization?”
After getting to experience a taste of what a life-giving organization could be, Dirk proposed a major shift in the ways that ET Group operated. In order to create a more healthy and innovative environment, he introduced new company structures inspired by his studies of Teal Organizations and Holacracy. ET Group implemented a self-organized approach to team management, self-set salaries and a promise to create safe spaces for everyone.
This means that everyone on our team is self-managed, as well as credited and compensated for their hard work, not just the leadership roles.
Because there are no “leadership roles”. That was made very clear by Dirk, who, even though he has the title of CEO, made sure that this fundamental shift in the company was supported by everyone, using what became ET Group’s Generative Decision-Making Process.
These examples are only a small snippet of the long list of key practices that ET Group has committed to, in order to keep ourselves in line with our human-centric way of life. You can find the rest of our organization’s cultural practices, toolkits and values in our handbook.
ET Group developed 3 fundamental practices to create a more life giving organization: self-organizing around purpose, self-set salaries and distributed ownership and safe space practices.
1. Self-organizing around purpose
Dirk’s first move was to get rid of the traditional hierarchy model. Having owners, managers, or “senior” staff creates inequality, making people feel like their opinions don’t matter.
Now at ET Group, we have self-organizing and self-managing teams (or circles). Our teams are created and organized around how they each contribute to ET Group’s overall purpose: to bring Harmony to Work and Workplace with Technology. In line with Holacracy, each team makes our own decisions regarding how we are best able to meet this purpose, without having to wait for C-Suite approval. Every team member has equal say in what goes, and has equal opportunity to share ideas or concerns.
This freedom allows us to spend less time competing with each other, so we can be more productive and collaborative while ensuring that our clients are getting everything they need and more, because that’s why we’re here.
2. Self-set salaries and distributed ownership
One of the most unique aspects of working at ET Group is our self-set salaries and distributed ownership. In the past, ET Group was owned and governed by only 3 individuals. Today, the company is owned by 70% of our team members.
But owner or not, who is anyone else but you to say how much you and your contributions are worth? When compensation is directly tied to the value and contributions an individual makes to an organization, you begin to see a drastic evolution in the responsibility and ownership that they feel towards the company. As Dirk says, “you have agency for your own life, and we respect that.” This is why we have implemented self-set salaries to encourage personal growth among our employees and let them know that we do see that value in them.
We take pride in the things that we own, and there is an abundance of pride at ET Group; in ourselves as individuals, in each other and in our work.
3. Creating safe spaces for everyone
At ET Group, we don’t hire roles, we hire people.
For this reason, we encourage our team members to bring their whole selves to work, not just their work selves. We don’t believe in hanging up your uniform (metaphorically or otherwise) at the end of the day. When you leave behind parts of who you are under the guise of “professionalism”, you leave behind creative ideas, lack energy and miss out on opportunities to make real connections, which is already challenging in an increasingly hybrid world.
We recognize that everyone is unique, and it’s because of all of the different personalities, perspectives and talents within our team that we are able to thrive at what we do. Sometimes that means that some of our people hold more than one role, because we don’t believe in restricting ourselves.
When we say that our people are our greatest asset, we mean it. Which means taking care of each other. For example, our human-centered way of life means checking in with each other – really checking in with each other – at the beginning and end of every meeting. If someone is having an off day, we want to know so we can empathize and proceed accordingly. We don’t move on until everyone gets to say how they feel, or what they need.
Our Team Connects allow everyone to take part in companywide decisions, and anyone can bring anything to the table. No secrets or hidden agendas.
Too good to be true?
It probably sounds that way, but it really works! Our Employee Net Promoter Score is always over 50 points, and our retention rate is 95%. At ET Group, our team members want to work, so it makes sense that today, our profitability is 2.5x the industry standard, allowing us to have 4x the growth we had in 2016.
The results speak for themselves. As Dirk says:
“This story we’ve been telling ourselves on what it means to be human wants to be retold; life is not about how I can succeed or be better than others. It is about seeing and appreciating each other as wonderful beings with different gifts, talents, and dreams. It is about being in service of each other, and life itself to create beautiful things together. As a collective, it is imperative we shift the narrative and realize what makes us truly happy and fulfilled is to be in service of each other and the planet as a whole.”
There is always more to the story
Becoming who we are today was a necessary and conscious change, and not an easy one at that. It required – and still requires – being always open to trying new things. Sometimes those things fail, but that doesn’t mean that we’ve failed, it just means that we’ve learned, and only become better for it.
“Every day, we put conscious effort into challenging ourselves to make systematic, consistent change. That requires effort every day. Every day requires navigation towards what you feel is the right thing to do, versus our cultural autopilot. It requires steeping yourself in the practice of evolution.”
All of this is just a sneak peak of what it’s like to work at ET Group. To hear the full story, check out Dirk’s full speech for more details about why we love our organization!
We also encourage you to visit our ETG Way Handbook and learn about more of ET Group’s innovative and forward-thinking practices.
And before you go, ask yourself:
How can YOU create more life-giving ways of working?
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Do you Lack Meeting Room Space? Without Exception, Every Company or Agency I Speak with has This Problem
The Inevitable Problem of Not Having Enough Meeting Room Space
The nature of work has been changing from less individual focus-time work, to more group collaboration work. The result: Time spent in meetings has increased significantly.
This doesn’t mean that all meetings are effective or that individual time is unimportant. But, there is a trend towards an increasing amount of time working with others to solve problems, and to collaborate and innovate in the workplace. If you don’t have the right design for your workspace your collaborative efficiency can be hindered.
“…Research has shown that while individual work might sometimes result in a faster answer, collaboration consistently delivers deeper and richer ideas because of the broad perspectives and cross-pollination of ideas that teams can offer…” 360 Research
“A Steelcase joint research study with Corenet Global found that two-thirds of organizations collaborate between 60% to 80% of the time. There’s good reason for it — collaboration works. Research has shown that while individual work might sometimes result in a faster answer, collaboration consistently delivers deeper and richer ideas because of the broad perspectives and cross-pollination of ideas that teams can offer. But whether alone or in a group, the drive for innovation requires greater creativity.” 360 Research
The reality is building collaborative solutions means more meeting space is required.
Two Trends Working Against the Availability of Meeting Space
1. Companies Are Reducing Their Real Estate Footprint (Less Space = Less Rooms)
Often the biggest fixed cost a company has is their real estate. Some are reducing their space to save money but most just don’t need as much real estate as they used to.
Why Not?
More flexible work policies allow people to work away from the office such as at home, on customer premises or even on the road. Secondly, companies are redesigning their workspace to accommodate more people in less space while making the workspace much better to work in. Finally, personal computing devices are allowing workers to take their work with them anywhere they go.
I have heard clients say that they can “shoot a cannon off” on a floor and no one would get hurt. People are just not in the office as much. Some will even argue it is easier to get individual work done when you are out of the office.
I have a friend in the Commercial Real Estate market, who visits clients and often tells them they have too much real estate because they just aren’t utilizing the space the way they used to.
2. Organizations Do Not Effectively Use the Rooms They Have
As it can be really tough to get a room or space to meet in, you’d think it makes sense to utilize the space that you already have right? Unfortunately rooms often sit idle more than they should because the systems are not in place to manage these spaces properly.
What Happens?
People book a meeting room and then plans change but they forget to free up the meeting room. This is how meeting space is wasted. Offices are left empty when their owner is away – another wasted opportunity for meeting space. Meetings take longer than they should for a number of reasons none of which are related to how the actual meeting is conducted. These are examples of wasted time and valuable meeting spaces.
Another example of wasting time is “finding a place to meet”. As per Steelcase Workplace Surveys:
- 70% of employees report losing up to 15 minutes a day looking for a place to collaborate with teammates
- 23% waste up to 30 minutes daily.
This is costly for organizations and has a real impact on productivity.
On the Bright Side, There Are Ways to Combat Both Trends That Work Against the Availability of Meeting Space
This table provides you with multiple solutions for solving the inevitable problem of not having enough meeting room space.
| Getting More Space From Less Space | How to More Effectively Use Meeting Rooms |
| Move from less “I” space to more “We” space – more flexible space | Scheduling systems |
| Virtual meetings | Enabling faster start time |
| Automate meeting wrap up | |
| Make technology easier to use |
I will discuss the details around the solutions, which offset having less real estate in our next blog.
Identifying your lack of meeting space is half the battle. The next step is about finding the right solution for your organization. Contact us to discuss the situation in your office and stay tuned for our next blog Part 2: How to Get More Space From Less Space – Factors Offsetting Less Real Estate, where I will delve deeper into the solutions in the table above which help to make meeting collaboratively easier, by making more ‘meeting space’ available.