Here I want to have a brief outlook of my week day pearls and what they mean to me.
So, let's start...
Day 1. Mon. Got to meet Karin and Per during the coffee kick off. I liked the bright eyes of these guys and was really thankful for the opportunity they gave to all of us. Alright, let's then look at the office space! Universum should have a great one, I thought... Entered the building and took the stairs, but actually down... At this point I felt like okay as Per was going down really confidently, as if he does it every single day... 3-4 floors down and we are here, a cute basement I would have called it back then. A small room for 12 coworkers, full of boxes and other stuff. At that time my mind was working in a way just how to optimize this whole room so that we are all fit. I had accepted this room as our HQ for 2 months and I think the majority of us did the same. After we were told it is PRANK, I felt how amazing such a PRANK was. No one complained, we just started optimizing the workspace and I think it was a crucial moment for all of us as a team. It was a REAL kick-off. It showed that we are the right persons here, ready to change the world no matter what the conditions are. I liked this thing the most on that day.
Day 2. Tue. Things I remember about the day: our usual round table; insight into NOVA by Frederick, Johanna, Hanna and David; values exercise continued; visit to SUP46 "30 under 30". Briefly mention some points from the NOVA meeting and then go to my pearl.
So, what is the NOVA about? It is about selecting, identifying and merging top talents in a network, the selection is done through the assessment of different skills, such as AQ, BQ and EQ. The proper combination of each of them will make you be the Nova guy. The most important thing here is how would you identify the top talent even when you do use complex, but unobjective assessment systems? This is the question that is still unanswered for me.
Moving to my Pearl of the day: it is, for sure, the group dialogue we had when we tried to identify our personal strengths with the help of the team. This exercise was very valuable for me mostly for two reasons. First, Stefan and Inna helped to identify what is really important to me, what are my core strengths, so that their help brought me to the thoughts of how can I focus on my strengths to achieve my personal goals and add maximum value to the team. Second, it has helped me to understand better what kind of personalities my teammates are, what is the way they think and, again, what are their strengths.
Day 3. Wed. The Pearl of this day was pretty simple to recognize, it was, of course, the meeting with Lars-Henrik, the founder of Universum, Nova and other great companies :). Here I would post some of his phrases that I recognized as most important for our project and for me personally.
"Learn how to sell, do not ever be afraid to call anyone"
Three advices to run your venture:
1) "Trust instincts --> use your intuition"
2) "Do not be afraid of failing"
3) "Do not do too much planning --> more action
What kind of skills do people you work with should have? -People skills, execution skills, behaviour in actions and speed.
Day 4. Thu. What we did: presentation of Joel Lundberg concerning i2i's idea generating software and Tom Kelley's book "The 10 faces of innovation"; 2 Per's presentations on design thinking, internship agenda and a sunlight on the Nova's plans to expand and our future talent networks as a key for successful expansion; visit to "Spotify" Stockholm HQ; visit to "Wrapp"; visit to "Tink" (guys, if you want me to introduce these three - you are welcome to ask me, so that I will make a special post on the content); Start-up Social meeting, where we had an opportunity to get to know several entrepreneurs and developers.
My Pearl of the day was to listen to and learn from all these invaluable presentations, Q&A sessions and business insights. This was the most intense day we had so far, a lot of knowledge from one day. I would specifically outline here the case of expansion fail of Wrapp team and their further decision to concentrate on the Sweden market as a testing market and a specific expansion to US only; the Wrapp's tradeoff between the merchants and customers interests; and the wise decision of Tink team to hold their expansion until they are of certain size and have a careful expansion plan.
Day 5. Fri. This day was also pretty intense. Firstly we made a reflection exercise, then made World Cafe exercise with a help of which we were able to identify our vision, mission and principles, after that we went to a Google and Schibsted offices, finished our day with a visit to SUP46 and a quick presentation of "Spontaneo".
My Pearl of this day was, from the one hand, a very informative presentation of Schibsted business model, values and vision. From the other hand, I found the World Cafe exercise really insightful for the "how" part of the work that we are going to do, so that visualization techniques with a combination of great team play makes this exercise perfect for mutual understanding of "how".
To continue this topic, if you guys would like this post and idea, I would like to make such a thing each Sunday - a post with small posts inside, describing our days and my reflection upon them.
from Russia with LOVE,
Ilya
So, let's start...
Day 1. Mon. Got to meet Karin and Per during the coffee kick off. I liked the bright eyes of these guys and was really thankful for the opportunity they gave to all of us. Alright, let's then look at the office space! Universum should have a great one, I thought... Entered the building and took the stairs, but actually down... At this point I felt like okay as Per was going down really confidently, as if he does it every single day... 3-4 floors down and we are here, a cute basement I would have called it back then. A small room for 12 coworkers, full of boxes and other stuff. At that time my mind was working in a way just how to optimize this whole room so that we are all fit. I had accepted this room as our HQ for 2 months and I think the majority of us did the same. After we were told it is PRANK, I felt how amazing such a PRANK was. No one complained, we just started optimizing the workspace and I think it was a crucial moment for all of us as a team. It was a REAL kick-off. It showed that we are the right persons here, ready to change the world no matter what the conditions are. I liked this thing the most on that day.
Day 2. Tue. Things I remember about the day: our usual round table; insight into NOVA by Frederick, Johanna, Hanna and David; values exercise continued; visit to SUP46 "30 under 30". Briefly mention some points from the NOVA meeting and then go to my pearl.
So, what is the NOVA about? It is about selecting, identifying and merging top talents in a network, the selection is done through the assessment of different skills, such as AQ, BQ and EQ. The proper combination of each of them will make you be the Nova guy. The most important thing here is how would you identify the top talent even when you do use complex, but unobjective assessment systems? This is the question that is still unanswered for me.
Moving to my Pearl of the day: it is, for sure, the group dialogue we had when we tried to identify our personal strengths with the help of the team. This exercise was very valuable for me mostly for two reasons. First, Stefan and Inna helped to identify what is really important to me, what are my core strengths, so that their help brought me to the thoughts of how can I focus on my strengths to achieve my personal goals and add maximum value to the team. Second, it has helped me to understand better what kind of personalities my teammates are, what is the way they think and, again, what are their strengths.
Day 3. Wed. The Pearl of this day was pretty simple to recognize, it was, of course, the meeting with Lars-Henrik, the founder of Universum, Nova and other great companies :). Here I would post some of his phrases that I recognized as most important for our project and for me personally.
"Learn how to sell, do not ever be afraid to call anyone"
Three advices to run your venture:
1) "Trust instincts --> use your intuition"
2) "Do not be afraid of failing"
3) "Do not do too much planning --> more action
What kind of skills do people you work with should have? -People skills, execution skills, behaviour in actions and speed.
Day 4. Thu. What we did: presentation of Joel Lundberg concerning i2i's idea generating software and Tom Kelley's book "The 10 faces of innovation"; 2 Per's presentations on design thinking, internship agenda and a sunlight on the Nova's plans to expand and our future talent networks as a key for successful expansion; visit to "Spotify" Stockholm HQ; visit to "Wrapp"; visit to "Tink" (guys, if you want me to introduce these three - you are welcome to ask me, so that I will make a special post on the content); Start-up Social meeting, where we had an opportunity to get to know several entrepreneurs and developers.
My Pearl of the day was to listen to and learn from all these invaluable presentations, Q&A sessions and business insights. This was the most intense day we had so far, a lot of knowledge from one day. I would specifically outline here the case of expansion fail of Wrapp team and their further decision to concentrate on the Sweden market as a testing market and a specific expansion to US only; the Wrapp's tradeoff between the merchants and customers interests; and the wise decision of Tink team to hold their expansion until they are of certain size and have a careful expansion plan.
Day 5. Fri. This day was also pretty intense. Firstly we made a reflection exercise, then made World Cafe exercise with a help of which we were able to identify our vision, mission and principles, after that we went to a Google and Schibsted offices, finished our day with a visit to SUP46 and a quick presentation of "Spontaneo".
My Pearl of this day was, from the one hand, a very informative presentation of Schibsted business model, values and vision. From the other hand, I found the World Cafe exercise really insightful for the "how" part of the work that we are going to do, so that visualization techniques with a combination of great team play makes this exercise perfect for mutual understanding of "how".
To continue this topic, if you guys would like this post and idea, I would like to make such a thing each Sunday - a post with small posts inside, describing our days and my reflection upon them.
from Russia with LOVE,
Ilya
Wow! Great summary of the week man. I think this will be super helpful to go back and read after a few weeks to remind us of how we started and help us see how far we have come. Thanks for sharing! :)
ReplyDeleteGreat job and thanks for this roommate!! Now you're making all of us look bad with our blog posts huh :P Hahaha…joking aside, I think this will be really helpful in terms of looking back to the previous weeks should anyone of us feel the need to. I know I'll definitely use it (and that means more staying up writing blog post till 2am for the both of us hahaha!!) :P
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