Things may not go as expected. We need to be quick and up on our feet to find solutions that will make us a better company. We are pivoting on a regular basis, but of course, each corner we turn is thoroughly thought through and agreed upon in favor of our companies growth and success. S T R A I g h T T A L K Some pieces of our puzzle just weren't fitting right, so, we talked it out. Taking it back to the old days, we sat in a circle out in the grass and straight talked--for those of you who don't know what that is, it is when you say everything that is on your mind, whether its good or bad, you just get it off of your chest once and for all. For a year and a half now, we know that culture is extremely significant to us, when something starts to mess with our culture, we immediately want to fix it so that we are shifted back in the right direction. As a class we talked through some things like motivation, initiative, work ethic and culture. That's what I love about our class culture, we have the autonomy to stand up and say what we need to say; but, we don't just get the chance to say it, but we are allowed to act upon it in the way we want to. This straight talk was not Mr. Topf telling us what was wrong, it was us as a group talking about a problem, and coming up with a solution. Over the years I've learned that we shouldn't hold things in, if one of us is feeling a certain way about the class, it's most likely we aren't the only one. Gisella, Pedro and Andrea stepped it up, saw a problem and took action. We should all be taking more action, which is what one of our initial problems were. We aren't all motivated to push ourselves to complete tasks quickly. I think we just weren't realizing how CLOSE our deadline for having an actual BlendZ stand is... by the end of summer break--which is only four months away-- we will have the BlendZ stand set up and running. At the speed we were working at, we couldn't possibly meet our goal, it might not even be done by the time we finish the year. This is why finding solutions to our problems as they arise instead of waiting is the BEST thing we could do for our company. In just one month, we have changed our structure, set more goals, modified our work day, and found a solution to make us all motivated and determined to meet our goal. Speaking for myself, I love having the chance to start a business in high school. As DD said: "we are doing what most college students are applying to Babson for: to get the chance to create their own business." We are doing what many teenagers dream of doing, but don't get the chance to do. That enough should be motivation for us to get this done right, but unfortunately, something is de-motivating us as a class. Talking it through in our straight talk, we got lots of things off our chests that we needed to get off. Most of them were about motivation and working in class. The conclusion we came up with was that we were doing busy work at school such as e-mails and reading, things we could be doing at home, instead of collaborating with each other and using our time as wisely as we possibly could for the short amount of time we have left. Then, we came up with another area of which we all agreed upon: this busy work was being done at school because we had too much time to work on the project in one day. We all prefer to have the class time to collaborate, learn content, and read. Pulling it together as a class and as a team has made this straight talk all the more powerful and meaningful to the company. We came together, talked, discussed, concluded and proposed. Now not only do we have a better structure to our days in the IA, but we have also built a stronger bond that has allowed us all to be heard and pulled us together creating a stronger culture. Pivoting is quite the ordinary when starting a business, and it is quite evident when you take BlendZ as an example; we have pulled something as ordinary as smoothies and created it into a business we are enthusiastic and motivated by, and I think that is what matters the most.
2 Comments
Tracey Hines
11/10/2014 01:49:10 pm
So true, you need to evaluate practices once in a while to keep things moving forward in business.
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Corey Topf
11/16/2014 08:24:50 pm
Hine-Z! This is one of the aspects of our culture that I value the most as well: "That's what I love about our class culture, we have the autonomy to stand up and say what we need to say; but, we don't just get the chance to say it, but we are allowed to act upon it in the way we want to. This straight talk was not Mr. Topf telling us what was wrong, it was us as a group talking about a problem, and coming up with a solution."
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AuthorSenior. One of the 13 students in the Innovation Academy at Colegio Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Lima, Perú. Archives
June 2015
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