From Consultant to Hyper-Growth Startup : Notes from an ESTIEMer Out There
Back in 2013, as I landed back home from Eindhoven I could not help but wonder what laid ahead. Ready to approach my last year of studies, my mind kept floating away, as I tried to picture what life would be like a little down the road. Now, almost 3 years later, I can see how clueless I was. In the past 3 years I have been lucky to have worked with great people all the way from the United States to China, and to have transitioned from the consulting world to what is now one of the fastest growing startups in Silicon Valley.
Throughout this (yet short) journey, I am thankful for the time I spent in ESTIEM, the inspiring people I met, and its profound effect on the way I approach both work and life. It gave me the chance to try things such as working with people remotely, preparing working group sessions and speaking in front of a crowd. It was that experience that widened my horizons and gave me the confidence that precipitated my recent adventures.
In the midst of all that change, I learned a lot. And even tough consulting for a multinational corporation and working on a tech startup can be very different, they are closer than appear to the naked eye. In fact, when I reflect on the past few years, I tend to come back to the same set of lessons I have learned, and that I (perhaps naively) think will continue to guide my work life in the near future.
1. Turn change into your best friend
Work can be chaotic, especially on a startup. Organized chaos might be the simplest way of putting it. You have virtually no processes in place (which is probably a good thing). People have a “let’s get things done” mindset, and somehow the wheels keep moving. And while that might be ideal at first, that changes when your goal is to scale that organization to a new level. Interestingly, the same can be said about reorganizing a logistics department of a food retailer. In both cases, your ability to rally people into embracing change while keeping the big picture in mind is key. As drivers of new initiatives and projects, I have learned that having a methodical approach to work, being flexible to setbacks and having a positive mindset over the challenges at hand is critical. In practice, this might mean always having a clear mind over your objectives for the upcoming week, never going to a meeting unprepared and constantly questioning the status quo. In short, if you can keep your act together through change and separate the forest from the trees, you will be alright.
2. Communicate your lungs out
Working as a consultant means you are often the middle man between your client and your supervisor. In a startup, while Engineering is coding, Sales is closing deals and Support is answering tickets, a lot is going on. Small decisions taken everyday affect the outcome of your projects and it is easy for information to get lost. It is our job to be effective at communicating with our teams, with the people we report to, and with the rest of the organization. And how can we do that? Flag problems early, escalate issues quickly and make changes visible to everybody involved (e.g. send lightweight status updates even if no one asked you to). The root of many conflicts and poor decision making boils down to misalignment of expectations and information asymmetry. Few things will be more important than keeping people aligned every step of the way .
3. Stay away from your comfort zone
A colleague once told me that you only grow when you move somewhere out of your comfort zone. Not too much, or you will get frustrated and probably quit, and not too little, or you will settle down and turn your brain into auto pilot. Being nervous before conducting a customer workshop, presenting your budget to the Council or needing to push your colleague on yet another action point are all part of the journey. Look for opportunities that will put you in a position that you have never been before. Being young is the best excuse to do just that, to take chances and make mistakes. Personally, I like to ask myself if there is anything else I could be doing that would help me learn more. And if the answer is yes, I am probably not in the right place.
4. Don’t be an a**hole
Regardless of working in tech or manufacturing, in Taiwan or in Portugal, people are fueled by the same core motivations. And yet, everyone is unique. If there is one thing I learned in the past 3 years is that the ability to put yourself on another person’s shoes will help you find success. Odds are that your job will require more taking than giving, more following up than implementing and asking more questions than the ones you can answer. People on the other side will be uncomfortable at times, but at the end of the day, things need to get done. It is on managing that balance that your emotional intelligence will come into play. And while I am still a rookie at this game, a few things I try to do are: to pay it forward, to listen more than I talk, to put my ego aside and to drive a sense of confidence at whatever I do.
And that’s it. Having been from East to West, from the corporate world to the startup life and working from the executive level to the shop floor, these are what I consider to be some of the most important lessons I have learned. And if by reading so far it seemed that it has all been a walk in the park, the reality is far from that. There are times all that change takes a toll on you. In some ways, these past 3 years have been an emotional roller coaster. There were times I laughed, cried, loved experiencing the world out there and times when all I wanted to do was to go back home. The glamorous life of living on a plane and travel from place to place might be great for your FB profile, but sometimes it is lonely and feels empty. But in the end, that is all right. Would I have done it differently? I don’t know, and don’t really think about it. Tomorrow is another day and odds are that sh*t is hitting the fan.
My bottom line? Take time to dream and think of where you would like to be in the future. Not because your plan will come true (it probably won’t), but because you will put into perspective the things that matter to you the most. And by doing that, you are already getting a head start. They say life is what happens when you are busy making other plans, so plan away and enjoy the ride.
