Intro
Hello my dear readers,
Greetings from Gothenburg! I arrived here on Thursday to finally visit my sister Milda who moved here for a scientist job at AstraZeneca. I got extremely lucky with dry and warm weather, so plenty of things to do outside. Gothenburg especially strikes me with its sustainability focus. Apparently, it’s the most sustainable destination in Europe.
As usual I have prepared a short list on my readings and writings over the last month.
My Monthly Fail Story
Too many tools and platforms, failure awaiting
In 2021 I decided to commit sharing more failure stories on social media and less of “Look, my dear network how well I am doing!”
So here is my 10th story related to the new Linkedin feature to have calls. Two weeks ago I agreed to have an appointment via Linkedin, so I thought let’s try out this new feature to have a call directly on the platform. It’s so convenient that you can just click a button and have a conversation instantly. Well, unfortunately this convenience turned out for me to be a bit of a personal failure. Since I somehow forgot to mark it in my work calendar, I missed the scheduled call which made me feel really ashamed, irresponsible and unprofessional.
What is even more disappointing is that the person was waiting for me for 15 minutes and obviously didn't feel nice.
My key lesson here:
Multitasking and using too many platforms at the same time sometimes contribute to failure instead of time savings. So, my advice is that if you too like to use the LinkedIn video call feature, always make sure to mark it in your work calendar.
I would love to hear your failure stories too! Please share it by replying to this email.
Find Your Purpose
About middle age crises (or any other ‘stop-up and rethink your life’ period) and how to deal with it
About middle age crises (or any other ‘stop-up and rethink your life’ period) and how to deal with it.
When I talk about my "millennial crisis" journey which I experienced a couple of years ago, many senior people raised their eyebrows and say "Oh, that sounds similar to middle age crisis."
Recently I had a similar discussion with Daiva S Naldal and I am very happy that she agreed to write a guest blog post with her own thoughts and perspective on this topic.
I find this article extremely thoughtful, insightful and refreshing. In fact, Daiva argues that "millennial crisis" or "middle age crisis" is too often associated with negative feelings - crisis.
Instead, we could look at it more positively because it is a great moment to stop and rethink your life. Thanks Daiva for your inspiration!
Enjoy this reading and please let us know what you think.
Smelling CO2 impact of your digital lifestyle
Have you ever thought how the CO2 impact of your digital lifestyle SMELLS?
This was a question posted to the audience by [Lija van Vliet[(https://www.linkedin.com/in/lijavanvliet/) from In4Art during her inspiring presentation about how artists experiment together with scientists to create meaningful innovation.
I had no clue that you could ever SMELL the CO2 of our dramatically increasing digital lifestyle which is contributing to more and more CO2.
But this is exactly what I did last week during the Erasmus University Alumni event. I have an opportunity to smell CC, attachment and spam. I can tell you, they all smelled bad!
I find this project by artist Leanne Wijnsma extremely thoughtful and original! I hope to see more and more projects where artists collaborate with scientists to create new solutions helping our humanity.
Personal Growth
The dangers of leaders falling asleep in their success and how to avoid it
How does it happen that some very successful people suddenly become ‘outdated?’
How can we avoid it in this vastly changing world where learning can never end?
These are the questions I am analyzing in my blog post which also includes a couple of pragmatic advises to avoid getting ‘outdated’ which come from my personal experience.
What are your thoughts in this topic?
The importance of reframing your question: Tabasco sauce story
Who doesn't know the iconic spicy Tabasco sauce which is one of the longest still family run businesses since 1868?
Who knows why this extremely spicy sauce has a relatively big hole in its bottle? Well, apparently the idea to create a bigger hole in the Tabasco bottle came from one factory employee who overheard a question from the CEO asking his marketing team "How can we create an ad that causes more people to buy our product?"
The factory worker reframed the CEO's question and said "Why don't you just make the hole bigger?" In this way the customers unknowingly uses more of the product and buys more bottles as a consequence.
I love this story so much! Not only because it shows the power of collective idea generation from everyone in your organization, but also the power of reframing a question.
Business
Artificial skin invented to allow the chameleon robot to adapt its colour
Did you ever have one of those days when you thought it would be cool to completely blend into the environment you are in, just like chameleons do?
Well, apparently the South Koreans researchers have exactly found a solution for you!
Ko Seung-hwan and his team created an artificial "skin" which is built with thermochromic liquid crystal (TLC) ink and vertically stacked multilayer silver nanowire heaters.
This allows the chameleon robot to adapt its colour based on the environment he/she is in.
This can serve as a great use case for military personnel whom apparel colour gets adopted based on the environment they are in.
Benelux Baltics in Business "Rethinking Leadership: new or old normal" conference
As a proud Lithuanian 🇱🇹 who is living in The Netherlands 🇳🇱 for already 9 years, I have been thinking for a while that I would like to share more of my knowledge and experience with others on how to do business in both regions.
This is how I immediately said YES when Jurga Baltram invited me to become a co-founder of the Benelux Baltics in Business non-profit networking organization.
I am so proud that a couple of weeks ago we were able to unite more than 100 business professionals, entrepreneurs and students from both Benelux and Baltics regions in our first, but we already dare to call annual, conference “Rethinking Leadership: new or old normal”
If you have missed the conference, check out this article which summarizes the key insights from our each of our speakers.
We are currently working very hard to prepare the 2022 event calendar 🗓. Please, contact me if you would like to help organizing the events or know someone else who might be interested in contributing.
Positive News: sharing customer data and getting business value
While working in the tech industry among many very smart professionals, I often get reminded about the importance of data privacy and how nothing is free in this ever connected digital world.
I understand those concerns and I find them fair enough. However being an optimist in nature, I also believe that sharing data can be beneficial for you too. I mean not all companies are bad! There are many who are working every day trying to solve customer problems and I believe data can be a great source for it.
So, in this sometimes too overloaded with negative news world, I was so happy to read a positive story about a Finnish supermarket, S group, which used its customers data for their benefit.
By openly sharing purchasing data they helped their customers to better understand their spending habits, nutritional information, calculate CO2 impact and shopping trends which can be benchmarked among others in the population. Even more interestingly the S Group increased their revenue by 14%!
What an inspiring story! I wish you to read more such success stories. Do you know some other examples?
Books
Designed for Digital by Jeanne W. Ross, Cynthia M. Beath and Martin Mocker
While being a bit of a bookworm, I often get a question which book I would recommend the most for professionals interested to learn more about digital transformation.
I find this question very difficult to answer because each book I read on this topic gave me new ideas. However, if I push myself harder, I would come to an answer "Designed for Digital" by Jeanne W. Ross, Cynthia M. Beath and Martin Mocker.
I especially enjoyed that the authors were able to provide a framework of change which consists of 5 bricks: operational backbone, shared customers, digital platform, accountability framework and external developer platform.
Each brick was explained not only conceptually, but also with supporting case studies. And one of them I especially enjoyed, it came from my former colleague Edgar van Zoelen who talked about Philips HealthSuite Digital Platform.
Make An Impact
Greetings from Gothenburg!
Did you know that Gothenburg city is one of the most sustainable destinations in the world?
I believe that “Bracelets with a story” fit this city’s vibe so well! Why? Because these bracelets are also sustainable. They are made from recycled paper by disadvantaged women from rural Uganda.
Would you like to buy a small sustainable piece to yourself or your friends? Check it out on my website. All the money received from your purchase goes into funding new business ideas for women.