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My Personal Reflection
At the strike of the new year, I made it a goal to write reflections on big turning points in my life. Usually, I would journal this, but this time around, I want to post my learning publicly. So here I am, on a Saturday evening, writing about how I changed IKEA’s future.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch…
Recently, I’ve found writing reflections are the best part of ending chapters. The first 1/6 of this year has resulted in the starting and closing of many chapters. Last night, I closed one of the longest short chapters of my life, working alongside IKEA…it was a collective effort where my group and I put in 200+ hours of work, sacrificed mental stability and left our social lives behind — all in a space of 4 weeks. Nothing out of the ordinary 😅
Hold up…what!?
Let’s rewind a bit ⏪
A 17 year old working alongside IKEA? Seems a little out there at first glance, but I was given the opportunity to do so. But before jumping into the details of the entire experience, let’s rewind to the very beginning…
September 2021 marked the beginning of a new phase in my life, it was my senior year in high school, but I also joined a human accelerator called The Knowledge Society (TKS). Through TKS, I was exposed to emerging technologies, unique mindsets and given the opportunity to talk to and connect with like minded individuals.
The beginning of February was the start of our global challenge. The intention behind these challenges are to give young teenagers real world exposure at a young age. This year, we were given the opportunity to work alongside IKEA and it was an unforgettable experience.
So what was the problem statement exactly…?
IKEA has a huge emphasis on adapting to the needs/wants of the customer of 2030. So they posed this problem statement
How do we increase our market share as city landscapes are shifting and technologies are evolving by 2030? How can IKEA increase accessibility and sustainability while not compromising on affordability to their customers?
At first glance, this seems like a lot. IKEA basically told a group of 4 teenagers to use their brains and figure out how to make IKEA successful in 2030 😅. Despite it being a difficult challenge, I was extremely grateful for this opportunity — I don’t think I’ve grown this much in a short period before 📈. Overall, this entire month was a rollercoaster ride, full of ups and downs, but most importantly, it was a huge learning experience 🤩
Don’t stop researching.
This seems like common sense, but a short 4 weeks ago, I was lacking this common sense 😅. I’m kidding, but going into this challenge with IKEA, we thought spending 1 week on researching would be plenty. At the end of this first week, we had done a lot of research and we went on with our challenge; we pushed the brakes on research after a short span of 6 days. A couple days later, I realized how dumb that decision was 🥲. Following the first week, we had no clear path on where to go. And guess where that took us…into many rabbit holes of researching.
This was an important lesson for not only myself, but for my entire team. One thing that we took away was this:
Research never stops
We treated the research phase as a step in our process, but rather it’s a phase that never ends. It’s similar to how we humans never stop learning, there’s always going to be new information out there, something that we’re yet to come across. This was the case for this IKEA challenge; it took us a day or 2 to realize that we needed to do more research, but after we did, we found that we came across new information and we became more knowledgable.
Despite learning this lesson the hard way, it’s something that applies directly into everyone’s day to day life. We humans all have the desire to leave an impact on the world, and in order to get to that point, we need to look for ways to improve. This comes from researching and learning and continually making an effort to create an impact. Experiencing this first hand was a great learning experience and it’s something that I’m going to carry with me beyond this challenge.
Team Dynamic is 🔑
One of the biggest takeaways from this entire challenge is that team dynamic is really important. It’s more than just putting together 4 of the smartest people you can think of, but rather of putting together a team that works well together. This goes back to a famous quote by Johan Cruyff:
“Choose the best player for every position, and you’ll end up not with a strong XI, but with 11 strong 1's”
In the past, I’ve had groups of smart individuals, but haven’t worked well together as a collective unit. If this is the case, the vibe of the group becomes awkward and it turns more into a competition where everyone is trying to one-up each other. This time around, the group dynamic was one of the main reasons this challenge was really successful. At first, I thought team dynamic was just about how well you work together, but I learned that it’s more than just that.
It’s about holding each other accountable. It’s about communication. It’s about having aligned values/goals. It’s about being valued, inspired & productive together.
I’m really grateful for my entire team, these 4 weeks, we went to hell and back, but we pulled through. One thing that really helped us get through these weeks is establishing our final outcomes before hand. We had an idea of what we all want to get out of this challenge and this went a long way in creating a solid final solution. I want to give a huge shoutout to my team for being some of the greatest people that I’ve worked with and we were pretty proud of our final solution as well :)
Feedback + Validation is Vital
Telling a billion dollar company how to run their business seems daunting. And I’m going to be completely honest, it is. Coming up with solutions was hard as it is, but you know what’s even more demoralizing, when someone looks at your solution and says it won’t work. As much as I wish I was joking, but 2 weeks into our challenge, we had a set of 4 solutions that we thought would work. We asked a couple industry feedback for honest feedback. They basically said this:
Your idea sucks, no one is going to use it.
This was hard to take for us, but it was exactly what we needed to hear. We didn’t want to propose a solution that didn’t work and by getting feedback and validation from experts, we were able to broaden our scope of understanding. We were a bunch of naive teenagers that have potential ideas, but we were unaware of how feasible they were. Talking to these industry experts, they gave us insights into information that isn’t found on the web, they told us what will work, what won’t work, but more importantly, they explained the why. After hearing from these industry experts, we made iterations and went back. We continued this process until we reached a point where we started to get more validation than feedback.
This was when we knew we made it
This was an important lesson for my entire team and this lesson expands beyond just working with IKEA. Feedback is the best way to improve on things and that includes myself. Incorporating this into my everyday life will help me continue to grow and learn.
Don’t be afraid to restart
Being told to restart something after putting in lots of time towards it is a bit disheartening. But it’s in human nature, when we put in a lot of time towards someone or something, it’s hard to leave or completely restart. This was an important lesson that I learned through this challenge:
Don’t get attached.
15 days into this challenge, we had over 80 hours of research, we brainstormed idea and we had a couple potential solutions. We went to industry experts to get an insiders perspective, they told us to restart completely because our solution simply isn’t feasible. This was disheartening to hear, but we knew that we couldn’t get attached to this one solution. Regardless of how much time we put into a single solution, we learned that we couldn’t just go with a solution because we committed so many hours to it.
Be open-minded.
Having an open mind went a long way in coming up with a final solution, we were able to take the constructive criticism we received and incorporate it into our final product. I’m really grateful for learning this lesson during this consulting experience, I’ve been trying to actively apply it into my day to day life. It’s natural human quality to get attached to things since they’re representations of our life experience and we want to cherish these things — our way of doing this is by being attached.
Adopting a Global Perspective
This was by far the most important lesson I learned while working alongside IKEA. Our initial thoughts that come to mind are ones that are based off of our own experiences. This was the case while we were brainstorming potential solutions for IKEA. We would come up with solutions that would work with us, but this doesn’t mean that it’ll work for everyone in the world. This is because of one main reason:
“The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever”
This is a quote by David Foster Wallace, but it explains really well why our initial solutions/thoughts would pertain to us, but not an outside audience. We often make assumptions about other people or the situation of others. However, the assumptions we make are most likely going to be wrong because we’ll never fully understand the gravity of certain situations.
The enemy of perspective is assumption
A couple weeks into our challenge, we noticed that we didn’t really understand what life is like outside of North America. We started to seek perspective from that lived in foreign continents by asking them questions about their life styles. Getting an understanding of the demographics in places outside of North America was key to coming up with a good solution. This helped us understand the culture, values and learn about living styles outside of my continent. This helped us build perspective.
Key Takeaways
I’m going to be brutally honest, this challenge was a pain in the ass. 4 whole weeks of constant work, but we made it to the end. I could look at it from a negative lens and talk about how burned out I am, but I’m more grateful for this entire experience than I am burnt out. I saw myself go from this naive individual who thought businesses were perfect to a person who is traumatized from entering IKEA😭. I’m kidding, but I saw myself grow in more ways than one. I learned a lot, I got to work alongside a billion dollar company at the age of 17 and I was able to develop meaningful relationships with my group.
I’m extremely grateful for this entire opportunity and I’m excited to see the turnout of this experience. Thank you for reading my article, see you soon :)
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