The shared governance training introduces you to alternative organizational models that transform the traditional company: holacracy, sociocracy, liberated company. Over two intensive days, you explore the principles of these approaches, their strengths and limits, and experiment with concrete tools through role plays. A strategic skill for executives and organizational transformation consultants in French speaking Switzerland.
Rethink decision-making and power circulation in your organization
For executives seeking organizational progression, shared governance opens concrete paths to durably transform corporate culture. This course focuses on hands on cases: consent-based decision making, circle structure, clear roles, tension management.
This approach offers a balance of individual and collective dimensions, verticality and horizontality as well as a model allowing to apprehend the different tensions inherent in the life of an organization. This approach allows us to organize ourselves in the service of a common goal by balancing efficiency and relational quality. It offers a range of meetings and processes that allow you to transform each tension felt by members into a concrete stage of evolution, to integrate complexity and to adapt with agility.
Our pedagogy promotes learning by experimentation in a playful atmosphere. The theoretical content transmitted is linked to human issues and values. Demonstrations and experience sharing times complete awareness and learning. The teaching materials can be used freely thanks to a CC-BY-SA license. As far as possible, the program is adapted in an agile manner according to the expectations of the participants.
For this training, a fictitious project based on a real project, serves as a starting point for this collective adventure. Residential training allows immersion in the dynamics of a group and facilitates the integration of concepts.
This training offer is part of an educational ecosystem including dimensions: advice, theoretical discovery, practical experience, support in practice, supervision, community of peers.
Traditional organizations show their limits: too centralized decisions, slowness, lack of engagement. Shared governance proposes concrete models to distribute power, accelerate decisions and unleash engagement. This shared governance training introduces you to these approaches over two intensive days.
Brian Robertson’s holacracy proposes a circle structure with dynamic roles (not fixed positions), highly formalized governance and triage meetings, clear authority distribution.
Older and less formalized, sociocracy shares with holacracy the principle of consent-based decision (not unanimity, but absence of reasonable objection).
Isaac Getz’s liberated company bets on maximum autonomy, trust and absence of bureaucratic control. More radical, it draws inspiration from concrete cases (Favi, Chrono Flex).
At the heart of shared governance, consent replaces majority or unanimity. A proposal is adopted if there is no reasonable objection. The training experiments this method through role plays.
Not all organizations are ready for shared governance. The training details success conditions, classic pitfalls and possible progressive approaches.
Designed for executives, HR directors, organization consultants, coaches and transformation managers interested in alternative governance models.
In Carouge or Le Flon, in ITTA premises, this course runs over two days with an expert instructor.
What is shared governance?
Shared governance designates organizational models that distribute power and decision making (holacracy, sociocracy, liberated company) rather than centralizing them.
What’s the difference between holacracy and sociocracy?
Holacracy is more formalized (roles, structured meetings). Sociocracy is more adaptable and less prescriptive.
Can all companies switch to shared governance?
No, certain conditions must be met (size, culture, leadership commitment).
Is consent-based decision slower?
At first yes, while teams appropriate the method. Long term, it accelerates difficult decisions by avoiding blockages.
Is this training held in Geneva?
Yes, at the ITTA center in Carouge in Geneva, at Le Flon in Lausanne and in a virtual classroom.
How to launch a transformation toward shared governance?
The course details possible progressive approaches: pilot on one team, transformation by circles, accompaniment by consultant.
How to go further after this training?
Leadership and change management trainings, or dedicated certifications (Holacracy Practitioner).
Leaders in organizational transformation, founders of cooperative structures, HR or transformation managers, consultants accompanying liberated companies. In Geneva and Lausanne, the course welcomes participants from international organizations, banking, consulting and growing SMEs. No specific prerequisite is required other than a concrete willingness to progress on the subject.
You leave with an operational mastery of the fundamentals, reusable canvases on your concrete cases, a structured action plan for the weeks that follow. Many participants report a visible effect from the first week back, with sustainable anchoring over four to six weeks of regular practice. The course combines short theory inputs, practical exercises on your real situations and personalized trainer debrief.
An SME founder discovering holacracy to respond to autonomy aspirations from her team. A transformation manager experimenting sociocracy on a pilot service. A leader wishing to decentralize decision without losing coherence. The course adapts exercises to your context with personalized trainer feedback, and each participant leaves with an action plan calibrated to their own situation.
This training combines well with executive leadership for the direction posture, change management for deployment, and transversal management for piloting without authority. Many participants enroll in one of these courses in the following trimester, according to their current priority and professional context.
Shared governance models (holacracy, sociocracy, liberated companies) gained visibility from Frédéric Laloux works (Reinventing Organizations) and experimentations of Buurtzorg, Zappos, Patagonia. Beyond fashion, these models offer serious responses to the limits of classic hierarchical management. This training proposes a pragmatic initiation to these approaches, with critical posture on their contributions and limits.
Most participants signal a noticeable effect from the first or second week of return, with deeper anchoring over four to six weeks of regular practice. The course closes with a personalized practice plan calibrated on your professional rhythm, with milestones at one, three and six months for participants wanting to track their progression more formally over time.
At ITTA centers in Geneva and Lausanne, this course runs in a small group with an expert trainer and a format alternating concise theory, practical exercises and personalized debrief. Group confidentiality is explicit and held. Each participant arrives with a real case and leaves with an action plan calibrated to their context. The course integrates recent evolutions of the domain (digital tools, hybrid formats, 2025-2026 practices) without losing focus on fundamentals.
Does shared governance suit any structure?
No, some contexts (highly regulated, traditional hierarchies) suit poorly. The course helps evaluate relevance for your context.
What difference between holacracy and sociocracy?
The course details both models, their origins, codes and contexts where each works better.
Is the course critical of these approaches?
Yes, the course adopts pragmatic posture: no idealization, but reading of success conditions and pitfalls.
Where do sessions take place?
ITTA has three centers in French speaking Switzerland: in Geneva (Carouge, Route des Jeunes 35), in Lausanne at the Flon (Rue des Cotes de Montbenon 16) and at Lausanne Mon-Repos (Avenue de Mon-repos 24). The training is also available in virtual classroom.
Monday to Friday
8:30 AM to 6:00 PM
Tel. 058 307 73 00
ITTA
Route des jeunes 35
1227 Carouge, Suisse
Monday to Friday, from 8:30 am to 06:00 pm.
