Andrea Hurtado
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-The CULTURE S L I P-

11/9/2014

4 Comments

 
WHO SAYS YOU HAVE TO GRADUATE FORM COLLEGE TO START YOUR OWN BUSINESS? We, in the Innovation Academy, were given the opportunity to start our own business in school; there is no better way to learn about entrepreneurship than by experiencing it in your own startup. All the learning have come from the successes and failures; maintaing a business has been extremely CHALLENGING because it's not only about having our finances straight and ongoing sales, but also maintaining a culture of excellence. The culture in every company is different because it exemplifies each companies values and beliefs, but in every company is one of the MOST important things in order to keep the employees MOTIVATED and GROW.
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The journey in BLENDZ has been like a roller coaster, were we've achieved outstanding things that has brought us to the top, but we've also tripped and failed. Because we have a strong culture, we've always managed to overcome our obstacles and climb to the top once again. However, on Tuesday while talking to some of my peers we realized that there was something wrong, we were having a CULTURE SLIP. After discussing many things that were going wrong we realized that three main problem were that we are TAKING OUR TIME FOR GRANTED, INITIATIVE  IS STILL NOT HAPPENING, and we are NOT CHALLENGING EACH OTHER. This problems had to be discussed as a group because we have less than two month to pull it together, so that we can make our vision tangible for next semester. 
TIME is MONEY in the business world and TIME is PRECIOUS. For next semester we want to have our trailer up and ready to start sales the first month of school, we want to hire employees and we want to see our vision in real life. However, in order to do so we need to get the trailer build over the summer, but first we need the money. If we don't stop and look at the calendar we wouldn't have realized that we have less than two months to raise $15,000. So we've CHALLENGED each other to RAISE $500 by December 1. CRUNCH TIME is here and things have to start happening. Also, we have a long time to work in school and many of us have taken this time for granted. So to push us to be more efficient and productive we've cut BLENDZ time. This way we will work more at home and leave the time we have in school to collaborate, meet, and plan together.  
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INITIATIVE has been a problem since the beginning, but to tackle it we've decided to list down all the tasks we have to accomplish by the end of the semester. Therefore, if you don't have anything to do you can take on a task and work on it. There will be no more wondering around or asking people for jobs. This allow us to get more things done on time and have less people without a task. 

Finally, we are not CHALLENGING each other and this is one of the many reasons why things don't get done, we push deadlines and we don't dig deep. So, like I mentioned we did a list with all the tasks and we PLACED deadlines for the most important ones. The deadlines are VISIBLE and REAL this will push us to have things done without pushing deadlines because by not completing the task it will have an impact on everyone. Also this will allow each person to dig deeper on their task since each person is assigned one task at a time.
We've worked extremely hard to get where we are now, our time is limited and if we want to active our long-term goals we have to work together to make them happen. This is just one stone that brought us down, but as we work together to fix the road so we can reach our goals.
4 Comments
Valentina Alvarez link
11/10/2014 01:58:47 am

Andre! I think it's awesome that you take the time to reflect like you do at Blendz; in the 2017 cohort, we recently read Good to Great, which said that when organizations don't take the time to face the brutal facts, they usually go downhill.

As you mentioned each of the obstacles that Blendz faces, I found that they are the difficulties that Breakthrough (our magazine) is facing, too. Time, initiative, and challenging ourselves. They are tough to handle but I also liked that you gave solutions to the problems you encountered point by point and, once again, I found myself thinking of Breakthrough and how we could apply the same solutions for our own organization. Awesome post, very bold and honest. I think whether one is part of an organization or not, they can take something from it. :)

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Andrea Hurtado
11/21/2014 08:16:57 am

Valee!!
I agree sometimes you have to stop, look back, and reflect. It has been very hard for us, but now that we are aware of the challenges we are facing we are trying to embrace them.

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Corey Topf
11/16/2014 07:35:36 pm

Hey Drew! There are three basic steps you highlight here that are important when it comes to solving any problem with our business. 1. Recognize and admit that there's a problem. 2. Reflect on it and see how we can solve it. 3. Act on that solution and iterate along the way.

I feel like we're getting better at all three of these steps as a group, and even though it's hard at times, it's great to see how quickly we come together to figure things out. Thanks Rue!

Reply
Andrea Hurtado
11/21/2014 08:18:15 am

Heyy Corey!!
Yes you are right! Our culture is amazing, we sometimes have ups and downs, but as we reflect and recognize the problem we confront it.

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