Learning at Launchpad: You know less than you think
One of the reasons I joined Launchpad was our commitment to learning and to transparency. Learning, both personal and organisational, is vital to moving at speed, especially in uncharted territory! Moving fast often involves trying unconventional approaches to things, challenging received wisdom, and discovering what is actually important. If you are truly doing new things, you are going to have to learn a lot, and learn quickly!
Image courtesy of Unsplash: 3rd Meeting of the Science Demonstration Conference. Dr. Roger J. Berry, Radiation Branch, “Effects of Ionizing Radiation Upon Tumors” giving a presentation. 1962
Transparency and learning go hand-in-hand. If you can’t be honest about not knowing all the answers, and about your mistakes, then how can the organisation learn? If the organisation can’t learn, how can it ever get better? When I was at Google, we used ‘blameless post-mortems’, not to ‘celebrate failure’ or vilify blame, but rather to allow a free, transparent conversation about what went wrong, why it went wrong, and what we learn for next time. The most important part of the post-mortem is not recording what went wrong but recording what we need to do to prevent it happening again.
I joined Launchpad about 2 months ago now, and I’m reluctantly reaching the stage where I can’t claim to be ‘new’! Moving to a new organisation is a bit like taking a (slightly stressful) vacation to a new country — while you find a lot of familiar things, you are also exposed to a wealth of new ideas, experiences and cultural norms! At Launchpad, I have learnt an almost-overwhelming number of new things already. Many of those things I knew I didn’t know much about, some I thought I had a pretty good handle on but didn’t…
So in the Launchpad spirit of learning and transparency, I thought I’d share a few posts on what I’ve learnt so far. Of course, an important part of learning is ‘unlearning’, so I’m sure I’ll come back to some of these posts in six months and cringe at my naivety! I’ll expand on some of these areas in later posts, but to get started….
Things I knew I wouldn’t know and didn’t
When I moved from the ‘tech sector’ to the ‘energy sector’, I knew I was going to learn a lot about the energy sector — from the embarrassingly basic (what is ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ in the oil-and-gas business) to the fantastically complex (what are the implications for the electricity grid of local generation, local demand management, and the rise of electric vehicles). I’ve also learnt a lot from our awesome start-up residents, from how fibre optic cables can be turned into sensors, to the frequency response of seismic sensors.
Things I thought I knew, but didn’t
However, the area where I have got the biggest culture shock is, ironically, VCs and the start-up ecosystem. In the early days of Google Cloud Platform, many of our first customers were start-ups, some early stage, some too mature to really be called ‘start-ups’. Many of my friends came from, or went off to found, start-ups. I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but I thought I understood the space pretty well. As I stand on the periphery of the start-up community with the other noobs, I realise I was just an occasional visitor before, on nodding terms with a few regular faces, but quickly gone again. The start-up scene in London alone is a huge and fascinating place with it’s own networks, heroes, and cultural norms. As I embark on this adventure, I am humbled, excited, and fascinated to learn more.
Things I thought I didn’t know but did
Before Launchpad, all my roles have been as part of a large organisation :- IBM was huge when I started, and huger still when I left; Google was medium-sized when I started, and pretty huge by the time I left… Although Launchpad has close ties to BP, it’s quite independent, and is pretty titchy in terms of staff, with deliberate plans not to get big. I wondered how I would adapt.
Of course, I should have realised I was hired, in part, for my experience in scaling up the Google Cloud business. My experiences there, being part of a small, high-performance team, being scrappy and hacking our way through barriers, is perfect for Launchpad. Within hours I felt at home and I remember thinking “I know how this works!”. At the risk of getting all gushy, I feel re-energised and re-invigorated by being part of the start of something amazing. Organisations with a big mission seem to attract a special group of people, who care about building something beyond their careers. People who can be quite blunt in their feedback, but who share a deep bond, and challenge each other with love.
Let’s keep learning!
Despite the current difficult times, my Launchpad learning adventure continues. I’m looking forward to sharing more of my experiences and observations in future posts.
