Teams that bond together, succeed together.
LGO Team Seminar in Bordeaux
Last week, the entire New York City office flew to Bordeaux to meet with the Tech and Development teams. Although the offices maintain daily communication, This was the first time that both New York City and Bordeaux offices gathered together under one roof!
LGO has grown rapidly over the past few months, with many new additions to the team. We are very proud of our recruitment efforts — each person we have added brings a unique experience to the team. We truly believe that having such diverse backgrounds is one of our biggest strengths.
Managing diversified profiles also comes with its own challenges.
As the blockchain industry is relatively new, the individuals which have joined our team come from a variety of backgrounds. After consulting with LGO’s advisory board, our founders decided that it was crucial to bring everyone together. This was done in order to align our interests and ensure that all employees work under the same common values and a shared vision.
Here is a quick debrief of what happened in Bordeaux.
Conferences
9:00 AM, The whole team met to kick off the seminar with a single track conference.
After a few welcoming words from our co-founder and COO Ouziel Slama, our CEO Frederic Montagnon made a speech reminding the entire team of LGO’s core vision,
“I want to use this time to explain to you all our vision, and how important it is to stick to it. Many of you here today have joined only recently, and it is very important for the whole team to understand exactly what we are trying to accomplish here, and how. Throughout my experiences in entrepreneurship, I have observed how companies stray off from their main vision, and those companies, unfortunately, do not exist anymore”
-Frederic Montagnon
Frederic followed up by projecting clear ambitions for the future of LGO Group, emphasizing the importance of our values in developing a fair, orderly, and transparent market for cryptocurrencies.
Hugo Renaudin and Hugo Finkelstein also addressed the team during their scheduled panel discussions. They introduced the businesses they are currently leading, respectively LGO Markets and LGO Launch. They utilized this time to introduce their key team members, strategies and structure.
Bordeaux’s team took over the conference track to speak about tech-related topics. For the New York office, it was great to learn in detail about how the team has structured itself to work as efficiently as possible. Jean-Baptiste Dusseaut, a lead LGO programmer, introduced the whole team to eXtreme programming methodology and how they are utilizing it to develop the platform.
“eXtreme Programming is part of the agile methods family. It’s still popular among seasoned practitioners because it didn’t forget that to build the right software right, you need both technical mastery and business mastery. It has evolved a lot, but its main idea remains: empower your developers to confidently respond to changing customer requirements, even late in the life cycle. Managers, customers, and developers are all equal partners in a collaborative team. Allowing a simple, yet effective environment enabling teams to become highly productive. The team self-organizes around the problem to solve it as efficiently as possible.”
-Jean-Baptiste Dusseaut
Finally, Frederic Martin, LGO’s security architect, presented the challenges of Hardware wallets, the crypto-space difficulties of implementing a solution which meets the specific security requirements for institutions. He explained how LGO aims at solving this by offering an innovative solution with high-security standards.
Team building
The afternoon was dedicated to team-building exercises, the occasion for everyone to spend time outside of a work frame allowing members to get to know each other in a casual environment.
The whole team went out to discover the Cap Ferret, a headland situated close to Bordeaux. The group was separated into teams of four, with the objective of going across Cap Ferret and finding out specific information to fill out a quiz. The weather was beautiful and everyone had a great time.
Team building exercises are a big part of growing a successful company: They teach participants essential skills through engaging activities:
- Increasing trust: Trust is crucial for any high-performing team. People who trust their colleagues, both in character and capability, are more willing to step out of their comfort zone in order to pursue a common goal. They support one another, leverage each of their co-workers’ strengths and build something bigger together than they could not have done on their own.
- Constructive criticism: Through casual and non-work related activities, people can find it easier to speak their mind in a more relaxed environment. It is a unique opportunity to share your thoughts and ask your colleagues questions.
- Onboarding: We are proud of the team we’ve brought together, and we are committed to retaining all these valuable talents. As a new team, it is crucial for LGO to build a company culture. The sooner members of the team are able to meet their co-workers in person, the faster they become ready to work and contribute in meaningful ways.
Open Space
Friday morning was dedicated to an open space session.
“ “Open Space” is a technique for running meetings where the participants create and manage the agenda themselves. […] This method is ideal if you want participants to gain ownership of an issue and come up with solutions. Participants agree on the areas of discussion that have importance for them and then take responsibility for facilitating the sessions. ”
(Source: https://www.mind.org.uk/)
The purpose of this time without an agenda was to provide the opportunity for anyone to express what they believe the most important thing for LGO is at this point in time.
Pascal Grange, Software Engineer at LGO and facilitator of this open space, asked for the whole team to respect “Owen’s one law” (also called the “Law of Two Feet”). The premise is: If at any time during the open space someone finds themselves in a situation where they are neither learning nor contributing, he/she has to use their two feet and go someplace else. Under this premise, all participants are given both the right and the responsibility to maximize their own learning and contribution. When participants lose interest and get bored in a breakout session, or accomplish and share all that they can, the rule is to move on.
The first part of the open space was dedicated to the “Marketplace”, a time to share and exchange ideas. Each person was invited to propose a topic or issue for discussion: Everything which came to mind could be shared freely, chances were others were also interested and would like to share about it as well.
When all topics had been issued a time and place, participants may choose to attend those individual sessions. Several workshops were organized around the ideas which were presented and small groups of people began working together exchanging ideas, and gaining knowledge within these various topics. Participants then moved from one discussion to another in order to gain as much exposure to the topics as possible.
Conclusion
LGO, like every other company, faces challenges. We are developing an innovative marketplace with a complex architecture. But we have the greatest resources we could ask for: an experienced, passionate and skilled team.
With such potential at our fingertips, we are confident in our ambitions and have every reason to be proud of being part of a unique, secure, and transparent solution.
LGO Group’s mission is to build confidence in all stages of a crypto-asset’s life: from creation to sale, promotion, acquisition, storage, and use. Our ambition is global. We want to enable large financial institutions with the ability to trade cryptocurrencies with complete confidence and trust while providing retail investors an identical secure framework.
