What should leaders understand about their own role and responsibility?
What I learned way too late is that it's my responsibility to facilitate communication flow and knowledge transfer, especially when team members are full into details not everyone sees the bigger picture all the time. Therefore it's also important to make sure people have their focus area and are not doing many things at once, it makes them feel overwhelmed, reduces creativity, quality and speed of results
What was a pivotal moment where your business made a big leap forward?
This may sound trivial but has a magnificent impact: when we found a shared goal and a single direction to put all the effort in when we were working on many different products before.
What personal habit or behavior helped you accelerate your personal growth?
Intentionally taking a step back from operational work to keep the focus on the bigger picture gives me space to reflect and make better decisions.
What's a mistake that you're happy you've made?
We once had a phase where the team was quite small and we needed to make some tough decisions. I was not persistent with my approach and listened to too many ideas. This led to a big mess and I learned the hard way that in such situations, it needs a single informed decision.
What do you do to maintain balance in your life?
Taking care of physical well being by doing regular sport sessions and daily walks, as well as psychological well being by taking care of healthy family relationships through a super honest communication culture.
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Here’s More, From Other Founders Around the World
What’s an important guiding principle that informs the way you build and run your business?
One of our core values is experimentation. Rather than get stuck in arguing about what solution may best solve a problem or play to our ego, we focus on the smallest step we could possibly take to learn whether that’s true. It moves our minds away from thinking too big without sweating the small stuff and from getting stuck in discussions rather than actually doing something to understand the possible solutions better.
What should leaders understand about their own role and responsibility?
Your own time and energy is the most precious resource you have. Use it wisely, and learn what gives you energy, and what saps you. In the early years of building something, you need to throw a huge amount of time at it - and do many things you perhaps don’t like doing. But as you scale, it’s vital to take a step back and build a business that can grow rapidly beyond the time you put into it.
What shift in perspective has allowed you to see things differently?
It may sound simple, but realizing and truly understanding that we are all different and driven by different things has made a significant impact on me. This insight has changed the way I approach relationships and leadership.
What’s a guiding principle that informs the way you build and run your business?
One of our core values at Cozero is radical candor. It is the idea that the willingness to repeatedly enter uncomfortable situations to speak the truth benefits everyone in the long run. We believe that in order to grow and improve as an organization, we need to create an environment where our team is not afraid to challenge processes and decisions. Making this a core value guides us in difficult situations when it’s not clear which road to take.