Ever since I was small, I've always been amongst the few girls who's handwriting is not the bubbliest and drawings are not the prettiest. Despite my "lack of talent" in the arts, when it came to choosing the roles we wanted to undertake for our smoothie business, CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) was one of my top choices because it meant that I would be in charge of the branding aspect of the business. At the same time, however, I was also interested in being a CEO because I knew it involved a lot of management, and I am considering majoring in business management when I go to college.
With all honesty, I was more hectic of taking the CEO position because I felt that I would be more of a "jack of all trades" rather than someone who would master a specific skill set. What I mean by this is that the job of the marketing team is very straight forward and tangible; they're in charge of market research, making the logo, the slogan, and the advertisements. The job of a CEO, on the other hand, is less tangible because they are in charge of overseeing and managing the team, making sure everyone is intrinsically motivated, and that all the different departments are on the same page.
At the end, after receiving help, feedback, advice, and approval from the rest of the class, I joined Pedro as the CEO of our business. It's been a week since then, and all I can say is that my initial concern was far away from the truth. On the one hand, it's true that the tasks of a CEO are less tangible than that of the marketing, product, human resources, or finance team. Nonetheless, what I've come to understand is that just because it's less tangible doesn't mean that the job or skills learned throughout the process are not equally as important.
One of my biggest take aways from my week was realizing that being a CEO is hard. While most people would find tasks such as maintaining a culture of excellence or making sure people stay motivated to be very menial tasks, they in fact require a lot of reflection, observation, thinking, organization, and structure. Pedro and I, for instance, started the week off with absolutely no systems in place, but all this lead to was chaos and inefficiency. We started encountering problems such as having the product team test run the smoothies, but forgetting about essential parts of the process such as reflecting upon the reaction of our "customers" and recording their feedback. One could easily blame the product team for not thinking through what they were going to do, but it was also Pedro and I's responsibility to make sure that they had fully thought through their process before carrying it out. Moreover, since we had no systems in place, whenever a team would leave the class to do something, we never knew where they where or what they were doing.
With all of this said, Pedro and I decided to sit down and get organized. We needed to find a way, a system, that would allow everyone to have access to each others to do lists. That's when Mr. Topf suggested we use Asana, an online software that allows you to organize tasks and projects as a team. Pedro and I spent most of the day understanding how to use Asana, presenting it to the class, and trying to organize all of the other documents we had created on Google Drive. As we were doing this, Mr. Topf told us that while he agrees that it's vital for us to have systems that help us maintain organization, it's also important that we are not separating ourselves too much from the rest of the team.
I couldn't agree with him more. While we were suppose to be the ones people seeked helped for, or voiced their concerns too, the fact that Pedro and I had spent the entire day working together, mostly isolated from the rest of the class, created a culture where it seemed as though we were exclusive and unapproachable. Since this was the last thing we were trying to do, we decided that from now on, all or most of the planning and organization would happen prior to our classes on Mondays and Thursdays. By doing so, we would have the entire day to work with all of the teams, give them feedback, and be present in important decision making.
Like I mentioned, being a CEO is not easy, and I know that I have already made several mistakes along the way, nonetheless, I recognize that this is a learning process. As each class goes by, I not only continue to realize things that need to get done in order to ensure a culture of excellence and an amazing business, but I work towards improving the things that I did wrong in our previous class. I'm really looking forward to this business. We have an amazing team, we're all extremely motivated, and we're here to create beautiful work. Beautiful smoothies :)
With all honesty, I was more hectic of taking the CEO position because I felt that I would be more of a "jack of all trades" rather than someone who would master a specific skill set. What I mean by this is that the job of the marketing team is very straight forward and tangible; they're in charge of market research, making the logo, the slogan, and the advertisements. The job of a CEO, on the other hand, is less tangible because they are in charge of overseeing and managing the team, making sure everyone is intrinsically motivated, and that all the different departments are on the same page.
At the end, after receiving help, feedback, advice, and approval from the rest of the class, I joined Pedro as the CEO of our business. It's been a week since then, and all I can say is that my initial concern was far away from the truth. On the one hand, it's true that the tasks of a CEO are less tangible than that of the marketing, product, human resources, or finance team. Nonetheless, what I've come to understand is that just because it's less tangible doesn't mean that the job or skills learned throughout the process are not equally as important.
One of my biggest take aways from my week was realizing that being a CEO is hard. While most people would find tasks such as maintaining a culture of excellence or making sure people stay motivated to be very menial tasks, they in fact require a lot of reflection, observation, thinking, organization, and structure. Pedro and I, for instance, started the week off with absolutely no systems in place, but all this lead to was chaos and inefficiency. We started encountering problems such as having the product team test run the smoothies, but forgetting about essential parts of the process such as reflecting upon the reaction of our "customers" and recording their feedback. One could easily blame the product team for not thinking through what they were going to do, but it was also Pedro and I's responsibility to make sure that they had fully thought through their process before carrying it out. Moreover, since we had no systems in place, whenever a team would leave the class to do something, we never knew where they where or what they were doing.
With all of this said, Pedro and I decided to sit down and get organized. We needed to find a way, a system, that would allow everyone to have access to each others to do lists. That's when Mr. Topf suggested we use Asana, an online software that allows you to organize tasks and projects as a team. Pedro and I spent most of the day understanding how to use Asana, presenting it to the class, and trying to organize all of the other documents we had created on Google Drive. As we were doing this, Mr. Topf told us that while he agrees that it's vital for us to have systems that help us maintain organization, it's also important that we are not separating ourselves too much from the rest of the team.
I couldn't agree with him more. While we were suppose to be the ones people seeked helped for, or voiced their concerns too, the fact that Pedro and I had spent the entire day working together, mostly isolated from the rest of the class, created a culture where it seemed as though we were exclusive and unapproachable. Since this was the last thing we were trying to do, we decided that from now on, all or most of the planning and organization would happen prior to our classes on Mondays and Thursdays. By doing so, we would have the entire day to work with all of the teams, give them feedback, and be present in important decision making.
Like I mentioned, being a CEO is not easy, and I know that I have already made several mistakes along the way, nonetheless, I recognize that this is a learning process. As each class goes by, I not only continue to realize things that need to get done in order to ensure a culture of excellence and an amazing business, but I work towards improving the things that I did wrong in our previous class. I'm really looking forward to this business. We have an amazing team, we're all extremely motivated, and we're here to create beautiful work. Beautiful smoothies :)