With the main summer season now over, the yearly “what have I learned from practicing endurance sports this year” LinkedIn post below. Previous versions here and here.

• Nothing bad lasts 100 years: the first 30 km of Vasaloppet, once the excitement of the first hill is over, are quite flat and frankly boring. So boring, in fact, that I started to doubt I’d finish as I wondered whether I’d stand another 60 km of the same thing. Thankfully, the hills started and the fun began.
• Have fun but keep your eyes open: one of the disadvantages of such a big race (15k participants this year) is that skill levels vary greatly and that can cause dangerous situations without a lot of space or time to react. I was very happy to be 9 km away from the finish line in one piece when a person in front of me started braking on the left lane in a short pause between two descents. With the speed I had I would have rammed them with disastrous results, the slope was too icy to brake in time and I couldn’t change lane safely, so the next best thing was to throw myself at the snowbank on the side of the track. They didn’t even notice I probably saved us both.
• Get media training: I ended up giving 3 interviews to Swedish media, including one live to the public broadcaster, Mexican skiers being a rather exotic bird.
• Don’t take yourself too seriously: the aforementioned SVT interview is rather bizarre, so naturally we used it to introduce me to our Nordic team.
• Roll with the punches: I got stung by a bee right above the left eyebrow on the bike around 35 km away from the second transition in Ironman 70.3 Jönköping and there was no medical attention before getting off the bike, so had to pedal while my forehead was throbbing. Thankfully I didn’t get an allergic reaction, a paramedic removed the sting in T2, and I could finish the race.
• Follow your curiosity and take your chances: I stayed for the award ceremony in Jönköping, which I never do because I’m in the bottom half of my age group, just because I wanted to see what’s what. The World Championship was slated to be in Lahti, Finland, a month and half away, and long story short, one ticket rolled down enough I could take it! Compete in a world class event, right on my doorstep. Wow.
• It’s ok to open up about impostor syndrome: for a while after it sank in that I was going to compete against the best in the world I panicked. I worried about not belonging in that “room”. Coach reminded me I won my ticket fair and square.
• Never stop learning: one week before the WC, while watching a video, I found a technique improvement that ended up shaving almost 5 minutes off my swimming time in Lahti, and it’s the most stupid little detail.
• Listen to the data, not just your gut: I knew it might rain but didn’t take my jacket after the WC swim, only cycling sleeves because the sky looked clear enough. It poured the whole ride, 13 degrees with wind around 12 m/s in some places and the sleeves were soaked through anyway and useless.
• Follow your plan through: During the bike section of the WC I lost count of how many people overtook me, as I tried to stay in my power zone rather than going head-to-head with the competition. I knew the cycling route was challenging and with the weather even more so, with a difficult half marathon still ahead. 20km before the second transition I started seeing people on the side of the road who looked like they were abandoning the race with aluminium blankets. I saw even more people in blankets in T2, with what looked like hypothermia. I also stayed in my power zone during the run and even the two leg-breaking 3km ascents went fine, and finished the race almost ten minutes below my previous PB.
• Give back to the people around you: I always try to be friendly and joke a little with the spectators and volunteers in races, but this year especially so. Thinking about all their effort, the years we spent in lockdown and feeling their support when you’re not necessarily 100% makes me very grateful. I want to contribute to that human connection.

This is an archived copy of a blogpost by Qvik regarding a talk I gave there in June 2023. The original here.

Without backup from company culture, company strategy will fall on deaf ears. Schibsted has found a unique way to combine the two by focusing on people and continuous discovery and delivery.

Schibsted is an organisation with several well-known digital brands in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. In Finland, they are best known for Tori, Oikotie and Rakentaja. The company has over 1,000 employees and scores of product teams across the Nordics.

Luis Orozco, Schibsted’s Product Director, Engagement and Trust, explains that for him, building a company culture started with acknowledging that we all have work lives and personal lives, and these two come with different identities.

“Maintaining two identities takes mental capacity. We want to lower the cognitive load of people so we encourage our people to be themselves at work.”Luis Orozco, Product Director, Engagement and Trust at Schibsted

For instance, when Orozco introduces himself at work, he also talks about his love and passion for cross-country skiing and good tacos. For Orozco, good tacos are basically as essential as breathing.

“It’s important that people at work see each other as real people, not just titles.”

Company culture isn’t born on a 3-day management retreat

Company culture is not a statement or nice words on a website but the sum of how all employees behave. When people in the company are open, the company culture is open. Culture also shows what you really are, not what you say you are.

Orozco quotes management consultant and writer Peter Drucker: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The quote doesn’t mean that strategy is not important. It just states the fact that, if your company strategy and company culture are not aligned, your strategy is quickly forgotten.

“It’s really important that the top management has their ear to the ground.”Luis Orozco, Product Director, Engagement and Trust at Schibsted

The same goes for everyone working in a leadership position. Leaders are responsible for creating trust and psychological safety, which ultimately lead to resilience. They also decide which things are encouraged or discouraged at the workplace.

“This is something that you have to think about consciously, and it’s easy not to.”

Have failure cake and deployment pulla but avoid OKR watermelons

Nordic consumers have a lot in common, and as a pan-Nordic company, Schibsted is well aware of that. But what unites the Nordics above all, according to Orozco’s personal observation, is the love of cake.

“Everybody loves cake. So when we learn, we have cake, and when we launch something, we have cake. We also have this thing called pulla-driven development: every time there is an important deployment, we give pulla to the team”, Orozco says. Pulla is the Finnish word for a sweet bun or cinnamon roll.

The idea is to acknowledge people’s contributions and give credit where due. By celebrating both success and failure, Schibsted aims to build a fearless culture that doesn’t shame people for trying and occasionally also failing.

Work at Schibsted is planned based on a dream of what they would love to have ready by the end of the year, and the dream is based on the company strategy. After defining the dream, the teams define the must-win-battles that lead to this dream coming to a reality and then decide on the Objectives and Key Results they will follow.

OKRs are marked on a confidence sheet in different colors: green is on track, yellow is at risk and red is not achievable.

“What I don’t like to see is the OKR watermelon. That’s when the sheet looks like there’s green, green, green and suddenly, at the end of the planning period, red. It means that the team is not estimating their work confidence and progress as they should.”

Join Qvik’s next Digital Product meetup?

This article is based on Qvik’s Digital Product Meetup held on June 14. The DiP meetups are a place for product managers, product owners and people in product management to discuss and learn about relevant themes.

The next meetup will happen after the summer holidays. If you’re not on the invitation list yet, leave your contact details in the form below.