#29 🎮💡💎 Recap: learning & community activities
What I've been doing professionally in the past few months, besides client work
It’s useful, from time to time, to contemplate and reflect on what’s been happening lately in various walks of your life.
I’m sharing with you here the mix of professional activities that I’ve been doing besides client work, as I’m going through this contemplation and self-reflection these days 🙏
My hope is that you will find some inspiration and maybe you’ll join me in one of the professional sharing spaces that I’ll mention. Here it goes ⚡️
🇷🇴 New community: Leaders in Tech 🌿
Earlier this year, I’ve co-founded LiT: the local community dedicated to growing and developing the leadership layer in the Romanian IT&C landscape.
The traction has been great, with 7 events through which we’ve created the space for engineering leaders to connect and share knowledge:
Growing Tech Organizations, Feb 22nd 2024
Startup Tech Challenges, Mar 29th 2024
Tech Knowledge vs Team Leadership, Apr 11th 2024
Team Topologies in Practice, May 10th 2024
Leading in Entrepreneurial vs Established Orgs, May 28th 2024
(Partner event with Stripe) Engineering at Stripe, May 29th 2024
(Partner event with Google & WiT) Product Development for Innovation, Jun 10th 2024
Next, I’ll host the strategic offsite in July for our LiT core team - to decide our way forward and strategic directions in which to invest for the next year and onwards 🧭
🇷🇴 10 years of the Product community 🎉
2024 marks an important milestone for the local Product community, which is dedicated to growing and developing the Product layer in the Romanian IT&C landscape.
These 10 years have been rich in learning experiences, lots of ups and downs in the community, many lessons learned and relationships developed 🙏
I’ve been lucky that the birth of the community coincided with my major career shift towards Product Management back in 2014, and since then I’ve been part of the core team, contributing to the development of the community by leveraging my previous community building experience and expertise.
The hardest part of our Product community’s journey has been in early 2020 when the pandemic hit and it was very hard to continue meeting face to face, yet we managed to recover in late 2020 / early 2021 and then accelerated with the Product Mentoring Program, which just finished its 5th edition 🚀
In the Product community, I wear multiple hats:
Leading the ‘elders council’ - stewards of the community & long term strategy
Leading the ‘organising team’ - refreshed each 6 months, taking care of the community activities for a half-year period
Leading the Product Mentoring Program - group mentoring format; the 5th edition gathered 21 mentors and about 180 mentees sharing experiences around 11 specific topics
Mentor in the Product Mentoring Program - usually mentoring on Product Strategy, Product Vision and Designing Product Orgs
Host of new formats & explorations - like the Product Marketing Management practice group, Product Clinics (linked to the Product Evolution newsletter) or Product interviews (linked to Produse Pe Bune - now on hold)
If you’re curious, here are some details about the community’s activities in the past few months:
Meetup: Pioneering Products: A Glimpse into the Future, Jan 16th 2024
Launch: PMM Practice Group, Jan 25th 2024
Meetup: Building Products for Internal Users, Feb 22nd 2024
Launch: Product Mentoring Program v5, Feb 29th 2024
Book Club: Evidence Guided by Itamar Gilad, Mar 21st 2024
Meetup: Transforming Product Organisations in the Age of AI, Mar 28th 2024
Meetup: (Romanian) Women in Product, Apr 25th 2024
Book Club: Transformed by Marty Cagan, May 16th 2024
Takeaways: Product Mentoring Program v5, May 30th 2024
Celebration event: 10 years of Product Management Romania, Jun 18th 2024
The 11 tracks in the 5th edition of the Product Mentoring Program have been:
Kick-starting your Product Management Career
Upgrade your Product Career
Product-Engineering Collaboration
Data-driven Product decisions: Reality vs Fiction
Stakeholder Management & Negotiation
Where is your Product going? Gain control and trust as a Product team
Product Discovery and Experimentation
Coaching for Product Leaders
AI - From Idea to Feature
Bridging the Gap Between PM & Design
Outcomes over Outputs Product Management
I’ve co-hosted the Upgrade your Product Career track, with 4 group mentoring sessions and assignments in-between 🙌
This has been experience way more impactful than I expected, and it actually shifted my way forward: thanks to the insightful conversations with my mentees, I’ve decided to continue offering career strategy mentoring sessions (as a secondary line of activity).
The Product Marketing practice group: I’ve been hosting this series of work sessions since February, along with 3 wonderful colleagues that are experts on various PMM topics - working with 6 participants on how to better market their products.
We’ve covered lots of ground here, going from Segmentation and Positioning, to Messaging, Pricing, Branding and GTM.
PMM is an extremely valuable discipline and a strategic capability that is underdeveloped locally and I’ll do my best to champion it going forward ⛵️
🇷🇴 Joining the leadership team of the Facilitation Association
Facilitation is about helping a group of people achieve the results it wants, usually in some constraints like a 2h working session.
I was one of the co-founders of the local IAF chapter back in 2020 and ramped up my activity in September last year.
Since then, we’ve finalized and launched the Power of Facilitation book in Romanian, we’ve successfully ran two editions of the local IAF Facilitation Mentoring Program, along with initiatives for the extended facilitation community and lots of internal sharing sessions.
Here are some of the initiatives I’ve led in this wonderful community:
IAF Pop-up sharing: Use of Self, Sept 4th 2023
First edition of the IAF Facilitation Mentoring Program, Aug-Dec 2023
Mentoring on Visual Facilitation
Sharing with IAF Ireland about Mentoring Programs, Oct 31st 2023
IAF Pop-up sharing: Internal Communities of Practice, Nov 6th 2023
Pop-up sharing sessions in the Visual Practice group, Using cut-outs - Nov 27th 2023, Procreate and Procreate Dreams - Dec 20th 2023, Midjourney - May 7th 2024
Mentor spotlight - examples of Visual Facilitation, Jan 31st 2024
Second edition of the IAF Facilitation Mentoring Program, Feb-Jun 2024
Mentoring on Visual Facilitation
IAF Pop-up sharing: Pricing facilitation services, Mar 11th 2024
During the elections in May, I’ve decided to formally join the leadership team, ran and was elected for the VP of Communication & Community role in the board 🤝
My aim is to help promote the power of facilitation and to encourage people around me to practice facilitation in their day-to-day work.
This recap is getting long, so I’ll just mention & link the other activities that are worth mentioning:
🇷🇴 Strategic Thinking series
Since September 2023, I’ve been hosting 17 sharing sessions and workshops around strategic thinking, the ability that helps you decide a way forward in a specific context.
Quick overview of session topics:
Strategic Thinking for L&D
Intro to Foresight
Staying up-to-date with Various Sources of Information
Transitioning to New Leadership Roles
Connecting People Aspirations with the Organizational Mission through Consistent Decisions
Dealing with Information Overload
Foresight Workshop
Creating Autonomy for Teams and Team Members
Applying Systems Thinking for Personal Development
Applying Strategic Thinking for Career Progress
Role Portfolio Workshop
Visual Structures for Better Decisions
Week Design Workshop
Abilities for Tomorrow’s Opportunities
Using AI in a Professional Context
AI at Work Workshop x 2
You can find a detailed recap & materials from the sessions on gandirestrategica.ro 🧭
I’m very happy that people get inspiration from this pro bono series and will continue it when my bandwidth allows space for new sessions.
🇪🇺 EODF Book Club
As part of EODF (European Org Design Forum), I’ve rejoined the Book Club organising team at the start of 2024 and will be leading it going forward.
If you’re interested in these sharing knowledge sessions about org design, please join the free newsletter or become a member of the EODF association, both on eodf.eu
Quick recap of the latest Book Club editions we’ve organized:
Guest Author: Tracey Camilleri - Book: The Social Brain, Feb 6th 2024
Reading Lounge: VSM Guide by SCiO, Mar 5th 2024
Case Study: Déjà vu All Over Again: What the Past Can Teach Us About the Future, Apr 9th 2024
Guest Author: Henry Mintzberg - Book: Understanding Organizations...Finally!: Structuring in Sevens, May 15th 2024
Reading Lounge: Destructive Dynamics in Organizations, Jun 4th 2024
Writing
As you can see above, I’ve dedicated most of my professional spare time to community leadership and program management lately. Yet, writing is one of the most effective ways that I’ve discovered for scaling how I share knowledge with people around me, so I’m definitely resuming constant publishing over the summer.
If you are curious of the various topics that I write about, here are the most recent articles on my newsletters:
🌿🧭🌳 OD112: Skill erosion as a major strategic risk 🚨 on Strategy & Org Design Goodies, Mar 3rd 2024
#47 🧭💡 Simple guiding words on Personal Strategy, Jan 5th 2024
Link #45 🌱🌿🌳 L&D Consulting: Developing trust on Linked Learning, Mar 8th 2024
#05 🏗️ Platforme & Dimensiuni Strategice: Despre forța relativă on Arta și Știința Platformelor, Jul 2nd 2023
🚀 EVO21: Product Skills Self-assessment (Google Doc) on Product Evolution, Apr 10th 2024
#02 💡🤝🎯 Pregătirea exercițiului anual de strategie și planificare on Proiecte pe Bune, Jul 10th 2023
#09: Cum dezvoltă produse cei din GoPro? on Produse pe Bune, Nov 13th 2023
🧭 Folosirea AI în context profesional 🙌 (continuare) on GandireStrategica.ro, Apr 11th 2024
ℹ️🧑✈️ Principle 3: Less, but better. on Info Navigators, Dec 21st 2023
Other insightful activities
Speaking on the Innovation Day at uSpot Talks on Apr 24th, 2024
L&D Consulting practice group around the RCAA Consulting Framework that I’ve created (initiative now on hold)
Monthly writing sessions in the Draft community
EMCC Romania: sharing sessions about Team Coaching
Guest lecturer on Product Development at FABIZ Masters in Entrepreneurship
Info Navigators sharing group (initiative now on hold)
Interesting Courses
How to Research Trends - recommended if you work with trends
Emotions at Work - recommended if you work with lots of stakeholders
Mentoring EQA Program (EMCC) - recommended if you want to become a professional mentor
Course Creator Course - recommended if you want to progress on creating your own online course
Key takeaways
Through all these interconnected experiences that I’ve had lately, here are the 3 insights that are influencing my way forward the most:
Staying relevant is a huge need across professional fields, especially as people get older and new technologies keep on coming.
Having mentors that help people make progress on their professional journeys is something that is widely recognized as being useful, yet that is put into practice only occasionally / inconsistently.
Visuals truly help people make better decisions about their business / their product / their team / their career and so on.
Hence, I’m adjusting my portfolio of activities as follows:
Main activity
Visual Thinking Partner for CEOs and GMs in B2B Tech
Clients: Experienced business leaders (Chief Executive Officers or General Managers)
Client organizations: 150-500 people Tech companies (or BUs in corporations) operating in Europe and serving B2B customers
Main client need: Get clarity on better approaches for achieving key goals
Productized service: Visual Working Session (1.5h)
Main differentiators:
Seasoned Visual Facilitator who pioneers using 2D and 3D visuals for guiding Sr. leadership decisions and initiatives
Experience & expertize as Adviser in Strategy, Org Design and other General Management topics
Track record in addressing complex business challenges with visuals
Track record in advising and mentoring leaders in Tech companies
Track record in working with B2B Tech companies
Key personal strategic moves behind this activity:
Focusing mainly on Strategy work
Focusing on my strength of using visuals for complex decision making
Focusing only on B2B Tech companies
Focusing only on client organizations with increased levels of complexity (150+ people)
Focusing only on remote work sessions
Focusing only on the adviser/thinking partner way of helping
Expanding geo: from Romania to Europe
Secondary activity
Career Strategy Mentor for Professionals in Tech
Clients: Mid-career professionals in Tech (product managers, engineers, designers)
Geo: Romania first, Europe next
Main client need: Get clarity on better approaches for career progress
Productized service: Career Strategy Mentoring Session (1.5h)
Main differentiators:
Vast experience in mentoring + EMCC Accreditation as Mentor
Focus on the Tech sector
Original Career Strategy methodology
Personal Strategy & Strategic Thinking thought leadership
Track record in Career Strategy mentoring
Key personal strategic moves behind this activity:
Downscaling from high-level Strategy & Org Design work
Leveraging insights, experience and dot-connecting from higher complexity challenges to make a bigger impact at an individual level
Investing in my first B2C business line - connected to my long-term vision of developing premium knowledge products
Focusing on Romania for gaining traction
Leveraging networks developed through communities and newsletters
Tertiary activity
Knowledge Products Developer in the Stay Relevant problem space
This is a seasonal activity for the time being, ramping up when the primary and secondary activities slow down (e.g. during July, August, December, January)
The main initiative currently connected to this area is finishing my “Stay Relevant in your 40s” book 📖
Game on 🎮
Bülent
I’m a lifelong learner like you.
Thanks for reading my personal blog and stay tuned for new posts 🔜