It is currently week 2 into the Venture Builder program. It certainly feels like an extremely long week has gone by as we had our first taste of working together between our sub-teams. The most challenging obstacles were encountered during our research process. With everyone being new to the topic and having zero prior experience collaborating as a team, we failed to be objective. Quite notably, we had a communication breakdown, misaligned expectations, and various degrees of mishaps.
Some questions that were considered:
How could we have worked better together?
Did we ask the right questions?
Did we identify each other’s strengths and weaknesses?
Did I try to understand the objective or did I let my preconceived notions and biases get in the way?
Despite having the discussion and presentation given last week about the 4 different modes of thinking, it became unmistakably evident that we had completely overlooked the topic. All the hours spent gathering data and information became redundant. We were not able to produce applicable materials for building our data lake. These were just some of the underlying issues that manifested into this week’s hurdles.
During our meeting, Mr. Edward, DLT Project’s EIR, brought up an intriguing idea about perceptions. When we examine a business, are we looking from the perspective of a “Principal” or through the lens of an “Agent”. For one thing, the mindset and interest of an agent employ a certain set of limitations mainly because the agent is merely acting on the under the principal. However, when we learn to adopt the mindset of a principal, we begin to add more dimensions to our interests. In essence, the agent’s ambitions are more inclined toward their duties within a principal’s system.
While the principal-agent relationship generally pertains to the realm of business and finance, the primary consideration here is to be mindful of our mindset. If we choose to inhabit the mindset of an agent, chances are we less likely to think outside the box. To be ahead of the game in venture building, it is undoubtedly crucial to be wearing the “principal hat” as Mr. Edward mentioned.
All things mentioned, this week has been a physically and mentally taxing journey. Although some of the team’s morale has dwindled, eye-opening lessons were learned. I am looking forward to making substantial progress with my team and ready to face upcoming challenges.
