#54 - Is your bag light?

That was one of my first weeks in a new job. Pretty much everything was new; new company, new role, new colleagues and new bosses. As you know, first impression is important. I am sure that I managed to give a special first impression. How did it all happen?

That was on my first business trip to San Francisco bay area with the new company. The daily schedule was busy and there was no time for tourist excitement. However, there was time to enjoy nice dinners in a good company, as well as early morning running sessions at the hotel gym.  

Once the meetings were over and I was in a hurry to catch the flight from SFO back to home. I said goodbye to my colleagues, packed my stuff and hurried to the local Bart metro station. I had relaxing feeling as I was happily on a trip back to home. 

My phone rang while I was on my way to the airport. It was a colleague of mine asking a straight question; “Is your bag light?” The question hit me in a second. I left my laptop on a table at the meeting room. For a second I thought about my options. There was no way to get my laptop if I wanted to catch the flight. How could I work the next week without laptop? Fedex delivery would be too slow in this case. My colleagues were going to stay another week in California. No good options were left, until I remembered that one of our company executives was flying back to Finland one day later. That is my opportunity, I though.

I called to the executive. Hello, this is Mr SneakerTraveller. I am on my way back to home and I want you to carry my laptop while you fly back to home tomorrow. I thought it is lighter to travel without my laptop, so I left it for you to bring it back to Tampere. Okay, it did not go exactly like that, but this was how I felt about it.

That was a relaxing weekend at home. For a reason or another, I did not work at all that weekend. The next Monday I was a humble when I met the executive at the office. At the same time I was happy to see my laptop again. Since then, I have heard a couple of times my colleagues reminding about the light bag.

Lessons learnt:

Have courage to admit your mistake, carry on the consequences and go on living full speed.

The art of delegation.

#53 - I have been in [Heaven]

After my visit to Paradise, I decided to aim at Heaven. It is important to aim high.

If you are aiming to get to Heaven, there is one place between Sweden and Denmark that is almost there. The difference is very small, literally only two letters. I know that because I have been there. Take a ferry from Landskrona and you are soon in a small island called Hven.

The place is very idyllic Swedish countryside with beautiful fields and houses. People interested in natural sciences familiarize themselves to the history of the local scientist Tycho Brahe. The best way to get familiar with the island is to rent a bike and ride through the island. However, do not forget to taste the Spirit of Hven, especially the services the local distillery and hotel. In addition to a tasty dinner, the restaurant offers the broadest list of whiskies I have ever seen.

Lessons learnt:

If you are looking for personal success, set your targets high enough.

Made in H(ea)ven

Whiskey menu at Hven

#52 - First class standing seat

Tampere people are used to regular business travel between Tampere and Helsinki. The most convenient way to travel is by train. It takes only one hour twenty five minutes and you can work, read newspapers or relax. Some people travel daily, the others weekly or monthly. When you are a real professional traveler on that route, you have serial tickets and you do not need to reserve seats in advance, because you know which places cannot be reserved for seating. I like it, because, as usual, I can optimise my time. Just jump into the train and join the other passengers which you pretty much learn to know quickly. In the first class there are couple of your current or earlier colleagues, some members of parliament, and maybe couple of person you do not know.

Some time ago I was driving to railway station, while I heard from radio news that the railway between Helsinki and Tampere is partially broken due to an accident. Some of the trains were cancelled, but not the one I was heading at. I caught the train, but all the seats were double booked due to earlier train that was cancelled. As usual, I had no seat reservation, so I was in the worst position compared to all the other participants. I needed to stand at the corridor almost the whole trip. The problem was that I was heading to a meeting and had still some contribution to write during the trip. I found it impossible to work with laptop while standing at the corridor.  The only way to make my deliverable was to write the document with my mobile phone. It was painful, but I managed to do it. Finally at Pasila I got a seat for the last five minutes.

That was a trip with a first class standing seat.

Lessons learnt:

Remember to consider risks.

#51 - Size does matter

I am one of those persons who are worried about Finland copying one by one the unhealthy things from U.S. We used to have small bottles of lemonade and now the usual size is two liters. Potato chips used to be in small bags, but now the size is gigantic. You cannot find small candy bags anymore, because now everything is sold in Mega bags. Mega now, Giga soon.

I was once travelling with my family. Because we were busy and hungry, we stopped at the McDonald’s drive-in lane. Once I had ordered the "tasty" fast food, the sales person asked if I would like to take the meal with bigger drink and bigger chips. It would cost only 1 € more per meal. I made a counter offer; If you sell each meal 1 € cheaper, then I will take the bigger size. My children were really ashamed. No deal, but everyone were happy. Maybe I had accidentally got happy a set of meals.

PS. McDonald’s does not offer three liter Coca Cola mugs yet in Finland. This is a free tip for business innovation.

Lessons learnt:

The bigger, the better – not always.

#50 - Obstacles of buying

As a Finn I am happy to have a local airline that carries me back to home by the evening (evening if I need to stretch the limit between evening and night when the home is in Tampere region). However, once I lost my nerves to the bad online service of the local airline.

Some time ago we decided to purchase flight tickets to our next vacation. Five persons from Helsinki to Miami and back. The date was agreed and flight selected, so only online shopping was left. We entered into Finnair online store and started to enter the required information. It was a tough job to enter in the details of five persons. First there were some minor complaints about typos in names and membership card numbers. However, once the right information was entered, the timer of the session was exceeded couple of times. There was no way to buy our tickets from the Finnair online store, even if we started six times from the beginning, used several different computers and tried at least two hours to complete the purchase. We solved the problem switching to Ebookers and the purchase of exactly the same flights was successfully completed in couple of minutes. This is a good example what can go wrong in online store, even if that plays a significant importance in the current business.

Lessons Learnt:

Consider customer’s obstacles of buying your product.

#49 - Almost never lost

Once again I was visiting Palo Alto, California. It was Saturday morning when I realized that San Jose Sharks was playing against Vancouver Canucks the same night. I went online and bought tickets to the game. At the evening I was heading to HP Pavillion, the home of Sharks. I knew the address of the arena, 525 West Santa Clara Street. Unfortunately the Herz Neverlost allowed me to enter only part of the address without specifying the Western part of the address. It was completely dark when I arrived, according to Neverlost. However, the place was a small bar, far from the arena. Nobody in the bar knew anything about ice hockey, San Jose Sharks, or anything else that was useful to me. Seems that there are only couple of fans who know ice hockey. Anyway, the game was supposed to start soon and I was lost far away from the place where I was supposed to be. As an innovative guy I was trying to figure out a solution how to get to the right place. Then I realized to check from a paper map the name of the street close by the ice hockey arena, entered that to the Neverlost and arrived just in time to the game. The arena was nice, even better than Hakametsä in Tampere. The audience was rather calm. However, when the first fight started, the audience started to get anxious. Also during the Canucks penalties the audience got anxious to eat the opponents like sharks.

Lessons learnt:

Technology is supposed to help you, but it often fails doing that.

Canucks vs  Sharks