Intro
Hello my dear readers,
I hope you had fun summer vacation or still preparing to go somewhere. I am back home in Rotterdam after seven weeks being away and it feels great. Although we have great memories of our work'ation + vacation, it was definitely not all the time easy. But yeah! We definitely learnt a lot and will take those lessons for the next summer.
I hope you missed my newsletter a bit :), so here it goes! My summer readings and writings.
My Monthly Fail Story
Multitasking doesn't work
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 7th story related to the summer holiday season. In June once planning my road trip holiday, I was booking many different hotels including a short weekend gateway to the Lithuanian seaside once working remotely from my parents' house.
Three weeks ago I got a message from one of the hotels that I didn't show up... Apparently very stupidly I mixed up the months and booked it a month too early. Unfortunately, I lost one night stay money through my lack of attention to details such as choosing the correct month!
The key lesson learnt here: Although looking at the big picture always helps, in many situations small details matter! And don't do too many things being tired. In my case I have been sitting for 5hrs non-stop on Saturday planning my trip :)
Remote work is over romanticised
My 8th story is related to this new romantic idea of how amazing it is to work remotely from anywhere you want in the world.
This summer I did four weeks of remote work from my home country Lithuania. While I did manage to do some work, looking back I encountered many unplanned failures and lessons learnt:
1 . Internet quality! Although Lithuania boasts of the fastest internet in Europe, it seems like Airbnb hosts prefer to choose the cheapest option.
Tip: ask your host to do an internet speed test at e.g. 9am.
2 . Unergonomic working environment (i.e. chairs and table).
Tip: find a local co-working space, but be ready to pay extra money.
3 . Socialising overload! Of course since you are back home, it's so tempting to meet your friends for lunch or dinner every day, but this can be rather exhausting after a while.
Tip: Don't plan too many lunch or dinner appointments with friends during your working week and try to slightly imitate your normal home routine. I would love to hear your failure stories too! Please share by replying to this email.
Find Your Purpose
Firstly WHAT or WHO?
For a long time I thought that as a leader you should first start with WHAT - define your strategy, vision, mission, purpose and then look at WHO - your team. I thought it would be hard to attract great talent if you don't have your "North Star."
It was refreshing to learn from Jim Collins that actually you should do it the other way around. Firstly, get the right people on the bus, put them on the right seats and only then figure out where to go.
According to Jim's research, this is exactly how great leaders ignite successful business transformations.
When you think about it a bit more it does sound logical.
Imagine if you got a team who is mainly interested to reach a certain destination point. What happens if after a while the destination changed? People who joined you due to other people in the bus will say "Fine! Let's take that other path. Anyway it will be fun because we are all here together."
What are your thoughts about this approach? Please share it by replying to this email.
Have you already created your SuperPower Avatar?
I am a big fan of self-reflection. Although reflecting on yourself should be a continuous process, I find two moments in a year especially suitable for taking a short pause. It's naturally the end of year and summer time.
Over my experience I learnt that having your crystallised "SuperPower Avatar" is very helpful. This is like a character card to communicate your personal strengths to the outside world.
Are you interested to learn more about the SuperPower Avatar and how to create your own? Click here to read more!
Personal Growth
Benelux and Baltics
Over the last years I realized how important is to ensure that your purpose is not focused on only ONE thing (e.g. work) as it used to be a case for me.
Therefore, besides my job at Schuberg Philis I am working with Integrated Villages NGO selling ‘Bracelets with a story’, writing my personal blog and mentoring with LT Big Brother.
Nevertheless, a couple of months ago I realized that I would like to contribute more to my home country Lithuania 🇱🇹.
When I met the energetic and passionate Jurga Baltram who shared her vision to create a networking organization between Benelux and Baltics, it didn’t take me much time to say YES and become a co-founder of this non-profit organization.
Check out our website to learn more or write me a personal message if your organization is interested in becoming a partner.
From millennial crisis to a purposeful leadership
Purpose and millennials became almost like a synonym. I am one of those ‘typical millennials’ too who is constantly thinking 🤔 whether I am living a purposeful life.
Two years ago this became a very big dilemma in my own life. This is when I faced what I call a 'millennial crisis' and decided to leave my corporate job to pursue volunteering with women in rural Uganda.
This career break taught me a lot and I have been talking about my learnings many times too. However, when talking to the inspiring Mira Vasic from InTouch I got triggered to look at it from another angle this time. So here is the result!
Thanks Mira for writing this article and thanks European Business Review for publishing this story.
Business
No one is immune to a crisis: 10 golden rules of crisis management
Crisis! For me just hearing this word immediately sparks lots of negative emotions, stress and fear. What should I do if I come across a crisis?
This can happen at work, society or personal life. The recent pandemic years showed that unfortunately we cannot choose if we have a crisis or not.
In fact, Natasha Konstantinova who is a crisis management expert says that crisis is inevitable. The only thing what we can control in crisis situations is how we respond to it.
I am so pleased that Natasha has agreed to share her extensive experience in crisis management and wrote a guest article on my blog. Check it out and feel free to connect with Natasha if you would like to learn more about this topic.
Reducing industrial waste
Did you know how much waste lies within manufacturing supply chain?
According to Stephen Pratt who talked at IT Visionaries podcast, this sums to ~$2 trillion covering three areas:
1 . Excess inventory within supply chain - wrong materials sent to a wrong place and time. This equals to ~$446B.
2 . Within factories - defective goods being produced worth ~$861B.
3 . Unplanned downtime which equals to ~$689B.
While many of us - individual consumers do our best in recycling and composting, it seems that reducing waste in industrial activities is where the biggest problem lies.
At Schuberg Philis we work with factories helping them to reduce this type of waste by using data and smart algorithms. If your company is struggling with similar challenges, please reach out and let's talk!
Books
Genghis Khan by Jack Weatherford
During my summer vacation I always try to avoid reading business books.
So this time, I would like to share with you a great historical book by Jack Weatherford on Genghis Khan. Even though this book is not directly linked with business, I found so many leadership insights which can inspire people in business too. Did you know that?
1 . Once Mongols acquired new lands they allowed their occupants to keep their culture, language and even religion. In fact, in Mongol empire all religions were living together peacefully.
2 . Genghis Khan chose his closest team members NOT based on family relations which was very common those days, but rather based on talent and loyalty.
3 . The Genghis Khan office always encouraged knowledge sharing among different acquired lands to bring the best from different parts of the world.
Although the Mongol empire lasted throughout the 13th and 14th centuries, these leadership insights are still valuable today.
Too often BIG corporates acquire smaller ones and 'kill' their culture. We also too often still see that leaders hire the same or very similar people to themselves. And eventually, knowledge sharing in big organizations is still rather undeveloped, so we often need to "reinvent the wheel."
What was your favorite book that you read during your summer? Feel free to reply to this email.
Make An Impact
Power ladies reunited in Hamburg
While road tripping back home from Lithuania, we purposely stopped in Hamburg!
Not only because it is a wonderful port city full of beer, fish sandwiches and cargo cranes, but also because I could reunite with my lovely ex-Philips colleagues.
It was so cool to receive so much brainstorming and ideas how to move forward with my "Bracelets with a story" project which supports female entrepreneurship in rural Uganda.
More to come! Stay tuned.