Flat, Flexible, and Fast: Meet 'Arianna', the AI Agent Running Drop

AI and Flat Organization at DROP

Drop has been around for 25 years. As you know, we have always operated in the digital space, and this has constantly led us to consider the concepts of change and evolution. We have seen different eras succeed each other on the fronts of technology, mobility, commerce, sociality... culture and organization.

Skipping the whole story of how the world went from SMS to AI glasses, today we want to focus on the culture/organization topic, which we believe has played a strategic role in sustaining evolution.

One of the aspects we have most often encountered is the market's need for extreme flexibility and service customization. Not only have we never created a "product" to sell, but from the beginning, we understood that every project, every story, would have its own identity: we have made non-standardization our creed.

Living and growing with non-standardization was not conceivable with a structured/imposing organizational model. Vertical, pyramidal, or military-style models never took hold at Drop: initially because we were few, then, as we grew, this continuous confrontation with innovation and customization led us to shift toward models that supported the concepts of composability, flexibility, and adaptability.

Holacracy, Self-management, Teal, SEMCO: Hot Topics at Drop

We became passionate about Holacracy, Self-management, Teal, SEMCO... all those models that entailed a large component of democracy, freedom, trust, ethical values, and tolerance for error. After a couple of years of study, discussions, and comparisons, we realized that our culture, steeped in these readings, had changed. We had not adopted one model but had adopted principles in a leopard-spot manner, spreading values within the company that led to a very visible change... a bit like when a fashion takes hold in a social context.

The moral: we went from a personnel turnover of 15-20% to 0.

We are happy at Drop.

The Challenge and the AI-Based Solution

Our current model, the Drop model, is not formalized in a manual. There is no process mapping, but there are established habits that are equivalent to processes, in fact, they are worth more: they have been established organically and have not been imposed. Everything works, but with limitations and bugs, naturally.

We recognize that flexible organizational models can sometimes lead to challenges such as confusion, entropy, and a potential lack of efficiency. To address these risks, Drop has developed and implemented a solution, unthinkable just two or three years ago: we have introduced Arianna, a state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence agent, into the model.

This AI agent is designed to:

• Feed on information (in the form of statements) coming from the collective, which can freely propose them. Once validated by a core team, the proposals end up in a RA (Resource/Knowledge Asset); the agent uses this RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) to provide answers.

• Create order: It analyzes and organizes information on best practices, customs, some rules, and principles, ensuring that every person, every team, has access to knowledge and history.

• Serve as a reference, the completion of every team: People can ask, for example, what the onboarding process is, how to request holidays, where to start when drafting a quote. One can ask how to request a raise, what the smart-work policy is, which tools are used for development, where the official Drop presentation is, who to talk to to delve into a specific topic... in short: anything.

The AI agent does not replace human decision-making or creativity but acts as a catalyst, allowing our teams to focus on what they do best, minimizing administrative and organizational inefficiencies.

The AI Agent Offers Benefits for Everyone

With the AI agent by our side, we are seeing:

• Greater clarity: Less ambiguity in roles and responsibilities.

• Improved efficiency: Smoother processes and faster decisions.

• Enhanced collaboration: Better information sharing and seamless coordination.

• Strategic focus: More time to innovate and achieve our goals.

• Great involvement: Every person at Drop can contribute to shared knowledge.

We are excited about this new chapter in Drop's evolution and believe that the integration of AI will further strengthen our ability to thrive in a dynamic business environment.