I am not a details person. If you took me to an art museum, I would stand really far away from a painting and look at it. I would take it in, as a whole, from far away, and then once I’m sure I fully appreciate it from back there, I’d take a little step forward. I’d get a little bit closer and notice new things, look at the brush-strokes and individual patches of color.
This is also how I approach the work that I do. I like to think about the purpose of the work, then about what big pieces or steps will get me to the final product, then I’ll eventually get to the details. This may explain why I am notoriously slow when it comes to work.
One of the first biodigesters we visited
A start-up, by nature, is the opposite of slow and big picture minded. Especially a start-up in the process of scaling, like Sistema Biobolsa. Demand is growing now, new offices are opening now, and new problems need to be fixed now, so that the business can continue to function and grow. It’s all real time.
The weeks prior to our time in the field, spent preparing travel plans, strategies for deliverables, methods of research etc. always felt tentative. And tentative they were. Once we finally arrived in Mexico City and began our first day in the office, it became clear that all of our work would evolve as we went along. We jumped right in and set to work on our first task.
The first couple of weeks were challenging for me, because I had to adapt and work in a way that is opposite of what is logical to me. New tasks were given to us almost daily without much context, so I wasted a lot of time trying to make sense of these tasks and how they fit into our overarching goal of what we wanted to accomplish for Sistema.
Somewhere around the third week, I came to terms with the fact that our project and deliverables really were works in progress, that would evolve and change as we went along. Just as everyone else in the office tends to what needs to be done, at that exact moment. Once I was able to accept this, I started to embrace the work that we were doing more. I dug into the details, quite literally without knowing exactly what each task would contribute to our deliverables in the grand scheme of things. I just focused on doing them well.
When we had our first meeting with the Sistema Biobolsa team to discuss what we found after doing some analysis of their database, I felt a huge sense of gratification, like the work that we were doing was important and valuable to the company. Our results would inform and change surveys that were in progress and needed right away. People reacted immediately, this is the nature of the enterprise and I was able to learn a lot from it.
I think the collaboration between our team and Sistema Biobolsa worked well in the end, because we were able to be flexible and give Sistema help where help was needed at the time, and therefore produce deliverables that would be the most valuable to the enterprise and therefore the most fulfilling for us.
