LTD-Day4 | 3Dec15 | Week1

It’s been a really hectic week.

Live the Dream is a 9-week intensive accelerator programme for Kiwis aged 18–30. Develop your social entrepreneurship and enterprise capability, and grow your ideas for a better world.

FOR YOUR REFERENCE

Christchurch Team Leaders

Eva (Riddell) — Team Mom | Programme Manager
Wayne (Vargis) — Team Dad | Capability and Venture Development Coach
Jess (MacDonald) — Team Auntie | Community and Events Coordinator

Having to be somewhere 9–5, at least 4 days a week, has been an adjustment from freelancing and being able to work anywhere. I want to be more diligent with my reflections daily but it could prove to be an impossible task to finish one on the day everyday so I will just make sure I write one for each day, regardless if it is published on the day it is about.

The weekend has been amazing. But it’s Sunday night now, Week 2 begins tomorrow, and I haven’t written my Day 4 reflection. I also rushed my Day 3 reflection on Friday so I proofread and edited that too. You can find it here.

9am PITCH RECORDING

We were put on the spot again (this is becoming a regular occurrence) by Eva to do our pitches because Jess had the idea of filming it every week for our reference. Nothing beats watching yourself do a pitch, just so we can ascertain which areas need improvement. This was nerve wracking (as it is every time we’re asked to do our pitch) and I’m glad I haven’t figured out how to download the video off Facebook because otherwise I’d feel obligated to upload it here.

It’s the last contact day of the first week and to be quite frank, I’ve winged every single pitch I’ve done — including the one I did on my CTV interview and at the Launch Evening. I’m generally the type of person who hardcore prepares for these things (and wins award for best pitch!) but because I haven’t even gotten a solid idea down, I feel there is so much space for improvement. And it’s also made me realise which areas of my venture I really need to do ore research on. It would be interesting to see what my pitch will actually look like by the time the showcase rolls around.

10.30am FIRST MEETING WITH EXTERNAL MENTOR

The class had been matched up by Eva and Wayne based on the Speed Dating scores and I got partnered up with Diane Turner, the Principal Advisor to the Office of the Chief Executive at Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu. What an absolutely impressive woman!

Today, we just got to know each other. She gave me a run down of her career and family life and I did the same. We talked about our aspirations and dreams, what motivates us, and what keeps us going. By the end of it, I was so grateful and felt that Eva and Wayne made a spot on decision partnering us up. She and I are going to do some great work together!

11.30am-2.30pm LUNCH / WORK TIME

I went for a walk to the Botanical Gardens because it was a nice sunny day and we had some free time to out our heads down and do some work. I did some brainstorming and took some notes down as it was a good time to reflect on what I’ve learned from Diane and what we’ve been through this week. I got back to our room in the Whare Ora at around 1.30pm and started watching the Scrum & Agile video that Jess had uploaded for us to watch. This got us all warmed up for the afternoon’s Goal Setting Session.

2.30pm-3pm WAYNE’S WORLD Session 1

Tis week’s 1-on-1 mentoring session with Wayne was in two parts, the first half was to discuss what I can do to improve my pitch and the second half was to discuss the steps I need to take to develop my venture based on my performance this week.

He said that I am very good at delivering a pitch but I need to be able to articulate my solution better by humanising the problem and validating that the problem really is a problem. He said I needed to do this in 3 punches:

1. Articulate what the solution is.
2. Explain how the solution will solve the problem.
3. Discuss what the impact will be.

I needed to feed back to something tangible.

After this was discussed, I explained to Wayne that I’m generally even better at pitching but we’ve been thrown under the bus so much this week with having to do our pitches on the spot. To be honest, I haven’t even defined my problem enough to be able to really articulate my solution properly.

So I told him to steps I wanted to take to be able to define my problem better. This week we had workshops on problem definition and I planned to do the exercises that we learned so I can wrap my head about what problem I am REALLY trying to solve. He smiled. I asked why and he said that he had written down a list of things for me to do on the second half but I just talked to him about everything he had in his notes.

“You just mentored yourself,” he said.

Funny. So the session was cut quite short because I already knew the steps I needed to take. But in a nutshell, I needed to:

• Define problem.
• Nut out solution in manageable chunks.
• Conceptualise a prototype.

One of the things that Wayne said was that I am such a visionary that I think way too big and way too far ahead that I often forget that for me to be able to get from where I am to my vision, I have to take certain (realistic and manageable) steps. If I figure out those steps and map it out clearly, I’ll get to my goals quicker. I’m quite aware of this and it is good to have people around me to help me figure out what those steps are so I can take action!

3–4pm GOAL SETTING

Jess did another workshop on Scrum and Agile to help us with our goal setting this week. Here are my main take aways from it:

To find out more about Scrum and Agile, watch this video.

We then set off to set our weekly goals and I kept mine pretty simple for the week. Here’s what it looked like by the time I was done:

4–5pm Feedback Circle and Week 2 Programme Overview

This took longer than planned because the group just had so much to reflect about and it was really good hearing everyone’s thoughts after surviving week one. Eva made us do this exercise to get our thinking going.

We did another feedback round of everyone’s WIN, LEARN, and GOOD CONNECTION where everyone got to talk about their win for the week, what our biggest takeaway is for the week learning-wise and a good connection we’d made for the week.

My big WIN was figuring out my first EPIC GOAL — to figure out a tangible starting point for my venture. My LEARN was that I need to define my problem further so I can better articulate my solution. And I made two good connections for the week, first I felt that I should be talking to Kate more as we have very similar ideas on the work-share platform and second was Diane Turner who I feel is the perfect match for me as a mentor.