Uncategorized-arkiv

Vad innebär GDPR för mig som rekryterar?

Skrivet av Peter Thorin den 2019-02-22.

Today many of us know what GDPR is and that it went live on the 25th of May 2018. I know a lot of you thought that this is gonna be just like the Millenium problem and that is soon will go over. Then you are misstaking because this is not the case with GDPR, it will be here for a long time and more steps will follow.

Right now, the Datainspektionen in Sweden chases big dragons but that they will also pick up smaller players to statute examples feels highly probable.

A personal information is information about a person that one can directly or indirectly connect to a person. It can be anything from name, email, address, IP address, cookies and mobile numbers to other less obvious tasks. No personal data may be processed without a legal basis, such as consent or entering into an agreement as in the case of employment. If you fail to deal with a person’s data, the fine may end at € 20M or 4% of your group’s global turnover.

But I am recruting right now, what should I do?

When recruiting, it is important that you handle the candidate’s personal information safely and that you can justify why you use them as you do. For example, for internal distribution via email to make decisions about an employment. Using e-mail to converse internally is usually the easiest way to make mistakes, namely by sending personal information between them and at the same time for example commenting on the person. All this information is highly personal information and should be handled like that, which means that all email conversations must be removed safely when the candidate’s management is over. This is of course not quite simple and hence it is better to do this in a different way.

The use of a tool that handles the person’s tasks is the easiest way to ensure that you are not wrong. One should not send around information, but instead use the candidate’s profile directly in the recruitment tool. At the same time you can check that only those people who actually need access have it. The tool can also take care of the candidates being informed about how their personal data are processed and that they have given their consent to it by applying for the service.

The new and safe way to recruite

With the help of modern, digital tools, it doesn’t have to be so difficult to comply with the new rules at all. Pitchler is just such a tool that helps you safely manage your recruitment in agreement with the new GDPR legislation. With the help of Pitchler’s cloud-based solution, you can collect all your applicants’ personal information in one place and check who has access to the data. Pitchler can also help you increase the accuracy of your recruitment. The candidates seeking your services through Pitchler’s mobile application are asked to record a video pitch by themselves and make a personality test that gives you the opportunity to see if they fit into the team. All this in addition to the traditional CV and personal letter.

Do not forget to be careful with your applicants’ personal data and great luck with your recruitment!

Websummit 2018

Skrivet av Peter Thorin den 2019-02-22.

Leaving a fantastic venue in Lisbon after Websummit 2018 with a smile on my face and loaded with energy. Exciting companies with brilliant ideas and some not. New friends, old friends and feature friends to be.

Event at Madame Petisca that we hosted together with Swedish-Portuguese Chamber of Commerce (CLS) at the moment to be with about 125 guest attended during the night before we got kicked out.

We have some meetings to organize and build the future. Next year, let us do the same event, same place but this time we need more Gin….

If I missed to connect with you on the event or lost contact, please ping me for contact! It was a little hectic night. Fun for us, out home town, Växjö, was heavily represented in Web Summit this year, 20 people at least! Växjö kommun Anna Sjödahl (next time your must join us).

How to create continuous innovation

Skrivet av Kristian Elmefall den 2019-02-21.

When I talk to customers about innovation and about creating continuous innovation, it is often concluded that they lack a strategic and systematic approach to innovation. They lack an innovation process or an innovation system. Companies must realize that the innovation process is one of the basic processes in today’s business. It is not often thought that it is enough to hire the figure to the left in the picture below, but it is actually needed a profile like the one on the right in the picture for inventions to become innovation ie. commercialized and create value.

For successful innovation, more profiles are needed in the management team mentioned in the picture below, but I save the different profiles to another post. In order for it to be repeatedly innovation, an innovation system is actually needed, but it does not have to be so remarkable. In a discussion the other day, a customer said ”and what is that innovation system we are going to develop?” And with development he meant programming. I then realized that I probably probably went a little too fast. That’s why I write this post.

I’m going to focus here on the five steps in the middle; direction, insights, ideation, selection and decision. I assume that if you want to drive their innovation strategically, you also have a strategy for their company and, as I wrote earlier, I do not intend to go here on how to evaluate and build their management team for innovation, nor does the execution phase now touch me. That saves me another time.

When you know your business strategy, you need to decide in which areas you should drive innovation. H1-H3 shown in the picture refers to McKinsey’s Three Horizions

which in principle means that you have to divide their innovation initiatives into those to be done now (H1), those who will deliver value of 12-36 months (H2) and those who will deliver value + 36 months (H3). I like this model, but then @Steve Blank presented a new view of the one I mentioned in a recent post. Steve Blank’s article partly explains my motivation for business model innovation.

When one has defined in which areas one wants to drive innovation and on what horizon the various initiatives are to be run, it is time to retrieve information and formulate innovation campaigns. These leads, in turn, to a lot of ideas that are clumped together, evaluated, experimented on to create a decision basis for innovation board that decides whether the idea is good enough to develop and commercialize.

So what do you have to do to have an innovation system then?

1. Be clear with the strategy of your company.
2. Decide in which areas you want / need to innovate.
3. Get information and inspiration.
4. Create ideas using as many people as possible in the company and perhaps with open innovation even outside the company.
5. Test your ideas as easily and cheaply as possible.
6. Decide on clear predetermined bases if this is an idea that you should develop and commercialize.

The similarity between building an MVP and wallpapering

Skrivet av Kristian Elmefall den 2019-02-21.

After my last post on how to use in Lean Startup in internal projects, I have had several interesting discussions on how to work with Lean Startup and different angles and tools within it.

What is striking in most discussions is that having started working with Lean Startup in some way, they have taken on MVP (minimal viable product). What is equally striking is that you do not take the time to formulate hypotheses so that the validated learning, which is the very purpose of an MVP, becomes very limited. For this purpose, there is a framework called LOFA (Leap of Faith Assumption). When we cut, reason and argue around new products and services, it is natural that we make assumptions. What is important is that we understand that it is assumptions and not truths, and that we identify when we do it. We will use these assumptions then when we work with LOFA and make our MVP.

(Photo: Yuliya Evstratenko/Shutterstock)

The basic hypotheses

There is always a basic hypothesis that one must consider, the ”value hypothesis”. That is, if a customer finds pleasure in using the new product or service? If it is a new product or service for the market then there is another fundamental hypothesis to test and it is the ”growth hypothesis”. Is it a working way that you thought your customer base should grow on?

Let me give two examples of these hypotheses.

Value-hypothesis:

“Sugar cake is good, falu sausage is good and caramel is good. I will launch a new dish that is sponge cake with falu sausage and caramel, it will all love ”.

Growth hypothesis:

”By offering the dish free of charge to a number of schools, the children will start to love it and nag their parents so they have to go and buy it”

There are now grounds for building an MVP. I can do the right thing in my kitchen and offer it to the school where my son goes. Then I can find out:

1. Does the kitchen receive a trial right in that way?
2. Do the children think about it?
3. Are they going to nag their parents so they try to get the right?
Thus, the smallest possible experiment that creates learning that is validated by potential customers.

When we validated these two hypotheses, we can continue. It seems that this can be a good idea. Make a list of other important hypotheses, which hypotheses must prove true for this project to succeed? That is, our Leap of Faith Assumptions. Don’t overdo it but make a reasonable list of relevant hypotheses (the price of eggs for the sponge cake is probably not where this idea will steal). Then draw them into such a four-liner, and focus on validating those in the upper right quadrant.

Remember, until we have validated learning, we just guess and validated learning arises only through meeting with customers. So what was that beginning with?

What is the similarity between wallpapering and building an MVP? Well, you often cheat with the preliminary work.

Lean Startup, more than just paying customers

Skrivet av Peter Thorin den 2018-10-30.

Last week I was at a coaching session with a customer who said, “Kristian, I know what Lean Startup is, I know the process and have read quite a bit about it. But I am doing an internal process improvement, how should I go about it then? In this scenario there are no customers I can interview in order to validate my idea.” It hit me then that there are many who view Lean Startup that way, in other words only internalising the lightweight version. Send out an early version of your product or service out on to the market and see if people are willing to pay for it. Due to this I find it necessary to cover the fundamental questions one should answer before a project starts when using Lean Startup.

Whether there is an external paying customer, or an internal process to be improved there will always be a customer. Either it is an internal customer or the users themselves are the customer. Would they consider changing to this new way of working? There are however, misconceptions here. The purpose for Lean Startup is to reduce the risk in large projects, that is why you incorporate the method. It is not specifically a customer centric approach but tends to address those uncertainties as that is often a source lacking clarity.

Before we look at how we can minimise risk in a project I would like to ask a fundamental question when using this method which also expands to other aspects of life.

“How do we know this?”

Too often our underlying biases lead us to make assumptions based on what makes us comfortable. By answering the question “How do we know this?” and backing up the answers with facts we can minimise risk rather than run projects with loose ends based on risk.

Let us apply this first question before starting the project. “Do enough people experience this problem?” If the answer is yes, then the follow-up question ought to be “How do we know this?”. If the answer is “Because I have this problem every morning”, then it is simply not enough. The only thing we know is that a person – you – have this problem. Time formulate the first hypothesis. “X people have this problem”, or “ X percent of those asked have this problem” from which we try to validate the hypothesis så that we may with good conscience answer “Yes this is the
problem” and on the question “How do we know that?” answer “because X% of those asked confirmed that this is a problem they are indeed having”.

The other question we should ask yourselves before starting a project is “How are people which have this problem go about solving it today?” If there is no good answer
for this then perhaps it is not as big of a problem after all? Big problems are addressed by users due to the upside that come from solving it.

The third and last question is “Is your solution a better alternative for those who are experiencing this problem?” On this question it becomes even more important to follow up with the, “How do we know this”. It is too easy to fall in love with your own solution causing you to assume your solution to be superior to whatever exists today.

When these three questions have been answered first, only then should you begin to consider what the buyer would be prepared to pay for the solution.

Do enough people experience this problem?
How are people solving the problem today?
Is your solution superior for those who are experiencing this problem?