In the past few months, what have you been experimenting with and learning from it, Partner at Whitmore, Karoliina Luoto?
Withmore is a small agile lean coaching company of two consultants who have grown tightly together, Miika Kuha and myself, Karoliina. Already during the first full year of the new company, 2021, it became evident that in the long run, we will need more hands, since there’s too much work for two. So in the last few months, we have been experimenting with joining forces with Päivi Thuneberg, an enthusiastic business developer, service designer and solution-focused coach.
For all of us, this experiment is a serious one: work needs to be fun, and the visions need to synchronize. For all three of us, the effort-value ratio needs to be good for us to enjoy our work. And if the coaching customer organizations don’t get their problems solved with all of us contributing, there’s no point for us to exist as a company. With all of this in mind, we agreed on a couple of months of co-work experimenting.
So far, the results of the experiment have been excellent. The biggest learnings have been these: Skills are quick to learn, attitude and morale are the things that matter. Even though in the beginning the three of us did not share all the techniques or methodologies, that’s an easy gap to fill. What would not be easy to teach one another, would be the can-do attitude which for all of us forms an important quality of organizational coaching – belief in small steps and seeing the way forward in all kinds of situations.
In a small company, the financial balance is also about nuances. Withmore had a solid first year financially, and with three persons onboard we just need to be careful to continue on that track. When you are busy, communicate more. Three persons can already create silos if they are not careful. We need to all the time remind ourselves that the busier we are, the more time we need to use on communication, so no one is left alone with problem-solving or the not-so-fun chores.
But the bottom line of this experiment is the more the merrier!
Thank you Karoliina!
Small experiments and inspiration 