Just Thoughts #6: Consulting vs. Entrepreneurship
Reviewed an investor written poetry book that sparked a thought, watched Myrskyluodon Maija and learned quite a few things about Active Allyship.
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I am contemplating whether to publish on Sunday mornings or Monday mornings. Sunday’s have seemed relevant as you can discuss “the past week.” Also, assuming non-business-related content, the target audience of millennial professionals interested in professional development and entrepreneurship and some ties or interest in understanding the Finnish entrepreneurial scene would appreciate reading this content on Sundays.
I may be wrong, so here’s a poll. I don’t know how many missed having me in your inbox yesterday morning.
The Highlight of last week: was watching Myrskyluodon Maija. This is not to say all the highlights of my weeks are movie-related (second in a row); it just happened. It was just that good and told a powerful and well-told feminist story.
This week I review share a few thoughts from Timo Ahopeltos poetry book and reflect over the choice of being labeled a consultant. Additionally, I discuss active allyship through some personal experiences this week and conclude with a short review of the movie “Myrskyluodon Maija”.
Headlines this week:
Consulting vs. Entreprenourship
Practicing Learnings of Allyship
Movie Review: Myrskyluodon Maija
Consulting vs. Entrepreneurship
Timo Ahopelto is a revered Investor from the Helsinki entrepreneurial scene. A founder in health tech turned investor who has sat on multiple startup boards and several boards of organizations that influence the entrepreneurial scene in Finland and beyond.
He has a weekly podcast with another founder-turned-VC friend, Jyri Engeström, a partner at YesVC. The podcast is called “Startup Ministeriö,” which translates to “The Startup Ministers.” I’ve had the privilege of being featured in one of their episodes talking about Slush. The topics resonate, so I take the time to give them some feedback on the content on a sporadic basis, mainly as a mental exercise of trying to spot the gems in their thinking but also for spotting the biases the VC industry employs.
As far as I’ve come to understand, VC tends to employ flock thinking, even if everyone says they will employ independent thinking. My Dunning-Kruger effect knowledge of the DEIB field has made me quickly conclude that DEIB practitioners also employ flock thinking, even if everyone says they will employ independent thinking. If I start to bridge the gap between these two fields, I begin with this as a fact.
Don’t get me wrong. I study the greats to learn how it has been done and how to navigate the future more effectively. Our job is not to make those who we look up to proud. Our job is to make those who come after us look at us and be proud. Hence, I got myself one of Timo’s poetry books, and we’ve been reading it with my children. There is one that I’ve found very fitting when aiming to explain what my work currently entails. Here, we’re reading it as a bedtime story.
“Ohje Hyötyjien Varalle” is a poem about consultants who are wolves and foxes who see entrepreneurial endeavors as an opportunity to be exploited. Timo has a negative bias towards anybody who acts as a consultant or has “no skin in the game.” That is not to judge, as it is in the investor’s interest that all knowledge and expertise is accumulated within the organization to which they give their money.
However, when it comes to creating the needed change, not just within the entrepreneurial scene but in society at large, I don’t currently see how that could be with an endeavor that does not include those who have been advocating and educating the needed change for a long time.
I told my kids that if you’d believe what Timo believes about my work, you’d assume I’ve stopped helping those I’ve spent the past decade helping. That is not true. I just thought that the best way to help those who are building or contributing to building a better future is to educate them on matters of DEIB—starting with myself.
Without the people who work within the DEIB field or hold these matters necessary, the likes of Timo, give money to entrepreneurs to solve the trickiest challenges in society and the business world will almost always gives it to people with a specific background, regardless of the rightfulness of doing so.
My point is not to judge. Instead, it is to evoke the thought that if we want women to go to space, the suits need to be designed in different shapes, and if we’re building health tech with optic sensors, the fact that skin tone matters needs to be considered by the engineers. Furthermore, in more mundane challenges such as food delivery, it helps to understand there are currently vast amounts of people not eating lunch due to their religious beliefs. Regarding childcare, it helps to understand that not everyone works 9-to-5, but many work at odd hours.
It’s a lot easier to account for different factors necessary if one has life experiences reflecting the nuances needed when solving the challenge. It also pays off to work on understanding these oneself. Additionally, I’ve come to find that it’s imperative to act in a certain way for people to feel safe, express themselves, and endure the discomfort that comes from working with people whose reality in life is and has been very different from yours.
You cannot achieve this without educating yourself, the way you’d go about educating yourself in anything. If you’re not willing to buy the time of experts who can speed up your learning, please take the time to talk to individuals who have very different life experiences than you, who come from a different background. Don’t just listen to them online or read about them in books, spend time with them, and when you’ve learned to endure the uncomfortable invite them to work with you. Allow them to participate, to contribute.
I’ve been privilaged to have been included in spaces were I am the minority throught my life, and I am grateful for having people in my life who have different life experiences. However, I’m saddened to now learn how little I’ve understood about the reality they’ve had to endure, which makes the work I currently do that much more meaningful.
P.S. If you're wondering if Timo's book is worth buying, I say yes. The single reason that those who fancied themselves as poetry publishers told him his poetry was crap, and he published it regardless of the opinions of the poetry publishers. When it comes to understanding the essence of entrepreneurship, Timo couldn't have summarized the act of entrepreneurship better than with that simple act. Don't care what others think, be you. Just do it.
Practical Learnings of Allyship
I’ve been reading the book The Art of Active Allyship: 7 Behaviours to Empower You to Push The Pendulum Towards Inclusion At Work. It has some good excersices, even if others are not as useful, especially when you have to imagine things opposed to excersices that directly highlight your biases and privilages. I’m almost through it, but instead of discussing the book I’ll give a few real life reflections from the past weeks.
I was having lunch at the office with some colleagues, and our Muslim colleague did not eat as it was Ramadan. A former colleague who had worked with all of us and knew our Muslim colleague well showed up. She said hello, and we told her we were having team lunch. She turned to our Muslim friend and said, “You didn’t get any lunch?” being utterly oblivious at the moment to the fact that it was a choice not to eat. Our Muslim friend did not correct her; he just said, “No, no, I didn’t,” as he wasn’t offended. After all, it “happens all the time.”
I have just learned that when it comes to active allyship, the problem in society is that everyone sees something happening and doesn’t say anything. I stayed pretty at that moment, but I asked my Muslim friend afterward, “What do you think I should’ve done? She didn’t acknowledge your religion”. He said he was very grateful of me even coming back to the fact as the gesture made him feel I had his needs in consideration. He also said I could’ve just made the remark in the moment, but reflected over the fact that I might make the person being oblivious feel uncomfortable or embarressed in the moment and he didn’t necessarily want to cause that.
However, her embarrassment happened regardless, as I let her know afterward. She reverted back to our Muslim friend to apologize for the inconsiderate as she was oblivious. Everyone learned something through that interaction.
Contemplating this incident, I found myself later that same day at a board meeting of a restaurant business. There, I made a remark that it would likely be good marketing to acknowledge Ramadan in a takeaway discount or the like. After all, in the restaurant's area, there is no one else doing it, with quite a few who practice the religion.
The first reaction from another advisor you could label as someone far from having that background reacted by saying, "That is a nice gesture, but it is likely not a very lucrative endeavor." All I could think of at that moment was that I didn't believe the sportswear industry made this gesture based on only it being a "nice gesture."
Finally, I was at dinner organized by Remode a company dedicated to help business expand beyonds borders. With a very diverse set of participants over a fine dining dinner we where asked to introduce ourselves. I’ve been practicing being an ally by introducing myself as a “cisgender heterosexual white male, born and raised in Finland, being part of the most spoiled minority of the world by being a Swedish speaking Finn”.
To my surprise, what followed was that the individuals falling in the category of "being like Timo," as in white male venture capitalists operating in their country of birth, also tried to do the same. Additionally, a professionally successful woman of African descent approached me, saying I should continue speaking up like that. It made her feel seen by the gesture alone.
I'm not trying to give myself a pat on the back, as I still have much to learn. Still, it feels nice that the effort to endure the comfortable constantly creates a change, mainly as this week's national newspaper covered a front-page piece on how the highly talented Somali man left Finland because the racist and apathetic environment here made him mentally sick.
We're advocating for more foreign talent to come to Finland, but we need more regarding the legwork necessary for foreigners to feel welcome here. Attracting foreigners to Finland is not a chicken and egg problem. Marketing-wise, as a country, we're covered by being the world's happiest country for the 7th year. However, based on the experience of the marginalized, not everyone feels that happiness.
Make DEIB work part of the organizational operating mantra, the same way no one questions whether people welcome health insurance in organizational design, and start with the assumption that we need to work constantly to manage bias. It's not about accepting people who are different from us; it's about enduring the fact that we will feel uncomfortable when we start trying to understand others by understanding how we are different from others.
Movie Review: Myrskyluodon Maija
A movie based on a drama book series that first appeared in the late sixties, Myrskyluodon Maija is a story about a woman and her family living in the Finnish archipelago in the late 19th century. I went into this movie without reservation and with no background info. The only notion was, “One should see this one”. The first 20 minutes made me think this was yet another Finnish drama, and for the rest of the movie, I barely had time to gather all the emotions. Yes, I cried a lot.
If you want a crash course in understanding the backbone of Finnish society, you watch this movie. Finland is built by strong women who don’t know if they will survive the winter, who are not afraid to be different, who are determined, who can enjoy life, who raise children to be better than themselves, who dare question the gender norms, who face tremendous loss, but still find the strength to continue and even when faced with the inhumanities of war, give humanity hope.
It’s a good story, and even if you can’t follow the spoken tongue of the movie, the actors make you feel what the characters are feeling. The critics will give this movie something less than 5/5, but I’m not a critic. I’m a fan. The movie is a 6/5. Between this movie and going to watch my friends Ida & Kalle, whom I also am a fan of, perform for the 10th + time. The movie was the better choice. Sorry, Ida & Kalle, but it was.
Until next week! Remember to subscribe for more thoughts every Sunday (or Monday?) and get access to an exclusive community of daily “Just Thoughts”!
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