Roleplaying Convention and a Good Corporate Culture !

I just read a good blog article of how the young men are made into a functional team in the Finnish army. How they build the team during the basic training period, and get a group of young men from very different backgrounds into trusting each other and functioning as a team. For me that sounds like one of my favorit subjects : Corporal Culture. How is a healthy and productive Culture created and what can it achieve ?

My military training is over ten years ago, so I cannot recall it too well any more... But I have experience of a bit similar group-building and team creation excercise, namely building Roleplaying Convention - RopeCon - with voluntary workers.

Ropecon is a guite big event, it gathers some 4000 people yearly for three days to play roleplaying games, live action roleplays (LARP), tabletop games and whatnot. There are no paid employees for the event, everything from the logistics to security to programs is created by volunteers. There's a team called Conitea which is in charge of the event and then a lot of people working under it. Conitea is formed every year, with some having previous experience and some not. Ropecon has been arranged for over 20 years, and few of the people that were involved in the first events are still around to arrange it. Conitea 2014 looked like this :

My first prejudice when taking a position in Conitea three years ago (I only did it once, so I'm not a part of Conitea at the moment) was that it's probably going to be very chaotic an unefficient to arrange anything with a bunch of artistic, extrovert alternative people with elf ears and flower diadems and from various backgrounds. I have some experience of leading expert organization, and I was very suspicious how something that big can be done by non-engineers...

I couldn't have been more wrong.

There was a very strong Culture in the Conitea and in Ropecon ry. This convention has been arranged for over 20 years, and it is known what needs to be done and how. First surprise came in the starting meeting, where we had to agree on the theme for year 2014 Ropecon. The meeting used hand signals for supporting or disagreeing suggestions, there was a strict control of speech times, and generally decisions were both super smooth and democratic. And the rules were quickly teached to us new guys. A group of people previously mostly unfamiliar to each other could function together very well. Conitea consists of experts for different aspects of the Ropecon event, so there was a need to get various expertises being heard and decisions being made. And it was done more efficiently than I've ever seen in business meetings ! Of course all the Conitea members have been arranging a lot of different events from LARPs and games to Scifi & Anime Cons, Assembly and other big events, so they have "professional experience" in arranging events.

In the months preceding the actual event we made plans, had team-building overnight sessions and made tough choises and decisions and a lot of work for the common goal. With the Conitea and within our subteams below the Conitea. It's easy to make a bond when You share a common passion and interest. I lead the miniature wargaming part and arranged tournaments for some 200 people in about 10-20 different games plus our Guest of Honour Games designer :

So, everything went smoothly. There was an infrastructure of tools and meetings to store and share information, knowledge database for checking how things have been done before. There was good spirit among people to help each other and make sure that things was progressing. And in the end we held the event for 4000 people from Friday to Sunday, an event that is the years highlight for a lot of people. We succeeded, and there was never any doubt of it. We also had a great time preparing the event. In the actual event all the Conitea members went three days with little or no sleep and in a haze.

What has this to do with Culture ?

Everything. There was a Goal - a Vision - that everyone understood and worked towards. Things had been done before and the good practises were teached to new-comers. There were existing procesedures, resources and experienced seniors. There was leading by example in how to do things smoothly. And there was a happy, enthusiastic feeling of getting something important and meaningful done - bringing happiness to a lot of people.

The Ropecon organization has completely changed from beginning to this day, it takes in a lot of new people every year, nothing is paid for anyone, it has been able to move the event from Otaniemi to Messukeskus and it's just rocking from year to another. And that is all thanks to a Culture that lives, remains and grows even when the people in Conitea gradually change. The good practises are transferred to new guys, and they are also accepted. The Culture also survived a really big change, namely moving from Otaniemi to Messukeskus, so it has capability for growth also.

What can be learned in business life from this volunteer organization that creates a recreational and a bit strange or excentric event yearly ?

If you have a Vision worth seeking, if You act according to Your organizations values, if You take the steps to store and teach the best practises to new people, if the people can work on what is really important to them - Great things will happen.

Surely, some pure hearted Knights in a full-plate armour are still needed in any organization !

Integration is like building an Empire ?

Dear blog (and readers), it's been a while. I haven't had time to write anything for a year. Not that there hasn't been subjects, quite the opposite. My employer Espotel was acquired by Etteplan a year ago, and this has been a busy, busy year. Maybe it's now time to look back a bit and see what has happened.

How are Empires created and big corporations done ? Can it succeed ?

Espotel was a medium sized company in Finland, about 300+ people, in about 7 locations around Finland, and an office in Poland Wroclaw of roughly 50 people. Espotel has a good reputation in Electronics and Software design fields, we've done projects for most of the major brand owners in Finland having something to do with embedded products. There's a huge list of products that we've been proudly a part of in making them to happen.

A year ago Espotel was owned by an investment company, the founders had already moved out of the company's daily life, and it was known that there will one day come a change in the company's structure. Still, the news that Espotel was acquired by Etteplan came as a surprise. And, not immediately as a nice surprise - at least to me. You know, we've been competitors for a long time, so the immediate reaction to being bought by the competitor is not necessarily a feeling of a major victory...

So, the "enemy" broke through the lines a year ago and started making it's intentions known. It's one thing to make a conquest, and another to make something permanently good out of it. Etteplan has grown by acquisitions for a long time, so this was not a new operation for them. Turned out, that Etteplan wasn't really so much buying a competitor than making a big strategic move into making itself a substantially more relevant player in the field of Embedded Systems design and Internet of Things field. Espotel, especially combined with Soikea that came into Etteplan with the same door opening, was actually much stronger in the software design and project deliveries than the bigger competitor and current owner (for Embedded products).

In the end that meant that the result of this integrations wasn't so much Espotel integrating into Etteplan than Etteplan's Embedded Design parts integrating into Espotel, forming a new Service Area within Etteplan. One that starts looking way stronger now than Espotel or Etteplan combined previously (for the embedded systems parts). Why's that ? Something has actually gone right and well this time, even if not everything... So, what has actually happened this last year in big picture ? Let's see :

First of all, a new Service Area within Etteplan was formed around previous Espotel, and it's management. Soikea and the related parts from Etteplan's Vantaa and Hyvinkää organizations were combined into it, giving the whole operation both more volume and muscle, but also two new stronger competence areas, namely Test Automation design and Mobile/Backend Software development. So, Etteplan Embedded Systems and IoT Service Area now has a full stack of services for any IoT project, were normally there is embedded device developed, some way to arrange connectivity to Cloud and Backend and Mobile SW, including Test Automation. It is a strong asset also, that Etteplan can offer much more mechanics designers for projects when needed as well.

On a more personal level, it's been really nice to get collegues from Etteplan, and being able to exapand my personal connections within Etteplan. Towards Customers it's really good to be able to provide a wider range of services. There's little that our 2600 designers cannot do.

Of course there are downsides also. A big company has it's practices (hour reporting and invoicing system : I'm talking bout You!), there are differencies in corporate cultures, benefits and whatknot. And that won't change or converge over night.  But, and this is a big but : In daily life the focus is still in making the project deliveries succeed, and for this the new integrated Etteplan Empire is much stronger than Espotel, Soikea or Etteplan were previously on their own. Nothing has really made any of us perform worse than before.

So :  drummers, beat the rhytm, we have this area secured and can start marching to new conquests !