5 learnings from my innogy journey

Saying goodbye might be my least favourite activity in life. And yet… I find myself saying goodbye to many people this December. For good reasons: I have decided to move on to a new adventure in a far warm country. But still I care deeply about the people I work with, together we delivered exciting projects, we learned every day and we had so much fun doing it. Leaving the innogy tower for the last time I decide to write down my 5 most valuable experiences and what I learned from them. As therapy and to celebrate my soon to be ex colleagues. Here we go…

#5 Understanding the impact of cultural differences in Augsburg
‘Go to Augsburg to develop a blue print for agile product development. It will be fun’ they said... November 2016 I started at LEW in Augsburg. I had just finished a project at Essent where I led a team in the design of a new app. The team set-up was agile. In Augsburg things were different. To be honest, it was a total working culture shock. The team had been working for some weeks when I arrived. They passionately and extensively discussed every detail of the project, every day of the week without making a single decision. Not a match made in heaven with my impatience and preference to discover “the truth” experimenting and making decisions based on data. This was my first international project, little did I know about working with other cultures like the German, especially in Bavaria. 

In the project I had two partners in crime. First one was Agata, who had just started working for innogy Poland and was send to Augsburg straight away. We never explicitly spoke about it back then, but it was clear we were on the same wavelength. Second was Robert, who came in a few months after I had started. He was our much needed digital expert, and my much needed fellow Dutchie whom I could share my frustrations with while enjoying a glass of beer (or two, okay maybe three). Being stuck together in Augsburg made me bond with these two. Afterwards we stayed in touch, collaborated and helped each other where possible. With Robert I did several proof of concepts of tech his team was exploring. Agata joined my team for a while. If you know people well, working together gets easier and is more fun. Which is a core value for me!

During this project I learned countless valuable lessons about working with different cultures. ‘Tricks’ I would use in the Netherlands to make things happen all of the sudden didn’t work, where other actions got results I never expected. My most important learning was to always be aware of 1. where you are, 2. who you’re with and 3. where you come from. If you understand these three elements you are ready to start collaboration.

#4 Speeding up the organisation with design sprints
After Augsburg I continued on the international path, building an international team for agile product development. One of the tools I already used was the Design Sprint. I bought the book (Sprint, buy Sprint) when it was just published and immediately fell in love and started to apply the method. One of the biggest challenges I saw across the group was we were taking (waaaay) too much time to develop and launch new products. Design Sprints speeded up the process a great deal, and the idea was to push the method within innogy. And this we did. In September 2017 I got the opportunity to join a bootcamp hosted by AJ & Smart with the author of Sprint, Jake Knapp. It was a great training and it convinced me to use the method even more. 

Afterwards my team and the CX Factory created the innogy Design Sprint Bootcamp based on the AJ & Smart format. Fully facilitated by experienced innogy Design Sprint Facilitators. Things really took off when Farhad joined the CX team. He was (or became) a fan and quickly became one of the driving powers behind the facilitation team. In 2 years we organized over 10 bootcamps, fully run by internal Design Sprint Facilitators with hands-on experience. Today we have a DREAM team (Farhad, Holly, James, Agata and Sebastian) in Design Sprint Bootcamps that steadily transforms the organisation. I loved every part of this journey, it was challenging, took loads of energy but was totally worth it. The Design Sprint is everywhere and helps us to faster create better products for our customers, I couldn’t be more proud.

Design sprint facilitation team

I will also spoil my secret motive for the Design Sprint Bootcamp today. Leading an international department it’s important to stay up-to-date and understand what is really going on in the markets. Bringing people from all markets and subsidiaries together listening to their stories about the challenges and opportunities they face locally helped me a great deal to really understand what is going on. It also opened doors that would normally have stayed closed. 

#3 Keeping work/life balance while traveling for work
After working in Augsburg and Warsaw my team moved to Sollihul (UK) to work for NPower. Every time I started in a new country I braced for cultural impact. Usually I prepared with the help of a trainer, specialised in a specific culture. If you are only there for 3-4 months, you don’t have any time to waste on misunderstandings. Fully prepared we arrived in the office to find confusion all over the place. NPower was to be sold to a big competitor, many jobs would be lost. It was our first day there, the next day there were town hall meetings with more questions than answers. What a moment to start a project. It definitely made it tougher to stay focussed in uncertain times. Luckily the team was finally fully staffed and since we were all working on this assignment we had a bit more slack.

With the 5 of us (Mussie, Ines, Nena, Salim and I) staying we decided to rent a house instead of staying in a hotel. We ended up renting a 10 room MANSION in Hampton in Arden. Even with this much space you quickly get to know each other. Who burns their dinner, who is ocd when it comes to neatness, who leaves all doors open all the time, whose offer to join for dinner should you decline… You’d be surprised :) Even though living with colleagues isn’t always easy, it made being away from home easier for me. Living in a homey environment enabled me to focus on other things in the evening, like going to yoga or for a run. When the team moved to Antwerp they organised movie nights, really cool to join. 

During this period I learned there are different responses to traveling this intensively for work. It is more complex to keep work life balance and unfortunately not everybody will succeed. Recognising positive or negative signals in others has been a super valuable lesson for me. Especially since the signals are universal and they don’t only apply to people who travel for work. I hope it will help me to be a better leader in the future.

#2 Building a cross-Europe community 
As in any big organisation big changes happen at innogy every 1,5-2 years. We changed from acceleration team to international product factory. Big change: we worked with all markets at the same time. Number one task: build a community across markets and create a playbook for product development and go-to-market excellence. During our first steps as a new department we learned we would become E.ON in the future. An interesting time to build a new department with new steering model. The appetite to work on new projects internationally was small. The leverage we had was maybe even smaller. It was a tough job, and often it was not really or really not fun. 

In this year I learned how matrix organisations work, you could say I learned it the hard way. One of the disadvantages of the model is that it can lead to blurred authority, especially when managers are not 100% aligned (are they ever?). This results in reduced agility in decision making which leads to… well, you can imagine right? Especially with lots of people involved in take-over projects it was a tough time to make this new organisation work and deliver impact. I don’t have a fantastic feeling about this time. Often I felt myself waiting, or alone facing a big challenge, or unappreciated when I had countered one. What motivated me to continue was the fantastic group of people that formed the Product Factory community (Mik, Geert, Piotr, Bettina, Andrea, Jakub, Matthias P & S, Julian, Farhad etc). 

Product Factory Community

This is also where the big learning from this period comes in. A strong community can make the matrix work. A community of people who are active and super critical about the content, who have the ability to think from group perspective while making sure they get the best out. True reciprocity, which is rare in companies like innogy. Therefore I am forever thankful to the Product Factory ambassadors, hope you keep the spirit alive in 2020! 

#1 Empowered colleagues are the biggest reward
In 2019 I was looking to engage our community and increase impact. One of the things I read about were design sprints @ scale. In the design sprint community (outside of innogy) there was a buzz about this new thing. Companies like google, Lego and the New York Times were doing it and it helped in transforming the companies while creating new products for customers. From the pictures it also looked like a lot of fun. Early 2019 we decided to organise one ourselves, we being the CX Factory and the Product Factory. Idea was to work on 9 cases simultaneously involving all markets to kickstart new projects in product development and CX. And so it happened. 

In June 100 innogy colleagues gathered in Amsterdam for the first innogy Design Sprints @ Scale. 2 days of working on creating a solution for their challenge, overnight prototyping and customer testing on the 3rd day. The enthusiasm, energy and creativity unleashed during the event was amazing and I had so much fun sharing the stage with my co-host Lawrence. The power of 100 people going through the same motions while working on their own challenges, was beyond anything I expected. A Design Sprints @ Scale buzz now went through our company. Not only were 9 prototypes developed, the teams were eager to continue working on them and deliver them to our customers. It opened doors that stayed closed before. And late October we did it again, now for all German innogy companies. Teams were basically standing in line to join.

Kicking off Design Sprints @ Scale in Amsterdam

I learned many things from these two events. For instant how groups can elevate individuals to shine for the greater good. But most important: these two events allowed me to energise colleagues on a bigger scale and afterwards they shared their enthusiasm and feelings of empowerment with me, which is the biggest reward I can receive.

Truly grateful for my innogy journey and all awesome people who joined along the way I am now driving home for Christmas. 

I wish you all the best, beginning with happy holidays!

Curious what I’m going to do next? Stay tuned here, or follow me on Instagram @siselarabia