Exploring team journeys — Our in-depth insights
The first week on the journey to building @salyuda. Starting from a deep understanding of who we are and from this creating a vision of the future we are going to create. From here we build.
Of all the models I have seen to visualise a company; the strategic tree is the one which most resonates with how I believe businesses should be built. Whereas there is definitely a lot of value in the various models from my MBA, the Strategic Tree (introduction in English here) is the first integrated view of People, Planet & Profit I have seen which looks like it could work — designers to the rescue, thank you designers, you rock! Especially Ivan Logra, without Ivan today would not have been anywhere near as effective as it was, thank you. As we’ll see in the weeks to come, the Strategic Tree process/journey will give @salyuda a lot more than an operational mission and vision, it will set the ground rules which will steer all decisions which follow. I believe if we align from the start it will reduce the risk of issues emerging in future. I am fully aware that it is unlikely other startups would spend time on something like this when surely we should be focusing on product, getting an MVP out the door and iterating to a product market fit. I see the argument however I know from my previous life coaching teams in London that if a team is not aligned with what they are working on, they will not deliver a product which shows the care which customers deserve. Defining values and our utopic vision will allow us to ensure everyone who joins the team is aligned with @salyuda and will help us deliver on this crazy challenge we have decided to take on.
Culture counts!
The first week has not been easy, reflecting on and stating the various episodes of my life which brought me to the point of starting @salyuda. Why am I here, what emotions drive me, what beliefs do I hold as “certezas”, how do I see the world, who are my heros? If that wasn’t tough enough, follow this up with having to present this very personal information to the team was……. to be honest it wasn’t tough at all****, there’s a few Bowie references in there, a little of Michael Porter’s recent journey into Shared Value and a titan or two in Chuck Feeney (thank you Chuck), Amartya Sen and Hans Rosling. Yes Elon, you made it in, twice. The “Archivo Profundo” exercise has helped me state my reasons and beliefs in digestible format for others to understand. I’m Irish, we talk, a lot, and I can ramble, a bit. Seeing similarities in the points the team brought to today’s session confirms to me that the team are a fantastic fit with what I saw for @salyuda from the start. All in I spent roughly two full days in preparation for today’s session where we grouped the ideas together (we used trello — see photo) into themes which will form the values of the company. For the later ⅔ of the session we focused on one value which emerged as the closest to the the core concept and which also challenged the business model. Iterating on our individual statements of why the model works (or doesn’t) we managed to get to the point of one final statement which encapsulates why we are all involved in the project and why the business model works, lucky bonus — not lucky. Along the way we picked up a very useful holstee manifesto-esque summary of the Why, How & What a-la Simon Sinek which in some form will appear on the company website.
One value agreed on, five more to go, these should be easier now that we have agreed on the first and potentially most difficult.
**** As a founder, if you are truly aligned with the company you are looking to build, this should not be work for you, if anything it should be a joy to let your team know the depths to which you believe in what you are asking them to join you in building.
FYI — the idea behind salyuda is not Made in Clare. I became aware of the concept of directed remittances while on the FMS course at MIIS in Monterey, California in 2014, I approached the team working on the project and asked to join, they didn’t bite so I went back to London dejected, spent a year in the wilderness looking for something else to work on, realised nothing I found was more for me and started to put the wheels in motion to work on @salyuda (salud & ayuda if you are wondering). If the original team are reading this, I wish you every success, we both want the same thing, remittance money improving the lives of people around the world.
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