I took up the business lead role in KAAOS Project from the get-go. It has been five months of interesting interactions, ideation processes, business meetings, teams’ meetings and most importantly, constant learning.

One thing to know about me is that I’m very good at initiation. I get bursts of motivation and inspiration that gets me moving (typical trait for Belbin’s shaper) and that was one major reason why I wanted to step up for said role from the beginning. I trusted my vision and skills when it comes to people management and getting Kaaos’s business side of the ground. My straightforwardness and the skill to make (calculated?) decisions quickly has aided me massively. I am eager to point the way on where I want things to go, and the role of a company’s first business leader was perfect for that… for me.

What seriously surprised me was my lack of understanding of our collective vision. Who told me that I’m also supposed to listen my team members’ preferences and wishes and not only lead the team alongst my own vision? Everyone, I’m pretty sure. Did I listen? No.

Took me a while to understand that one of my biggest business values, making loads of profit, is not the most important value for everyone else. As I was doing everything to prioritize the money side of everything we do, I forgot that not everyone looks at entrepreneurship through dollar-shaped glasses. There are many sides of entrepreneurship and making money is only one of them. There is one huge side of being an entrepreneur that almost slipped my mind: Getting to decide what you do, how you spend your time, how you decide to spend your 24 hours of the day…

I ended up learning so much about people around me and the things that get them up in the morning. Someone I have been immensely grateful for is our team leader, Ismo Huusko (ismo@kaaosproject.fi, go book a call) who help me understand about the importance of empathy in a leading role. As I was fully endorsed in business and Kaaos making money, Ismo was making sure people in our team are working together and, most importantly, satisfied doing so. I would say we were a complimentary duo and hopefully keep on working together in the future. Shoutout!

In conclusion, I will not be taking my dollar-shaped glasses off… Those glasses help me pull 14-hour days like the one today, that’s for sure. However, what I now realize is that I in a leading role cannot be shoving my own vision and values down my team members (I once in a meeting accidentally called them my employees. Red flag?) throat. I want people around me to be inspired by my ambition and future-driven vision, but I need to do it by respecting their values and factors of motivation. I know I will be leading a multi-million company of my own soon and this period as the first business lead in Kaaos Projects helped me understand what type of leader I strive to be for my future employees.

PS: I’m also known for adoring the f-word and what I am not proud of is how I infected some of my team members vocabulary with the word. Here is what my dear innocent best friend Jacinda wrote on this document as I was getting more coffee, after sitting in Puisto Café with me for 12 hours today:

I fucking hste that bitch Jacinda because she always gives me shit and fucked everything up

Facts.