Learning? It’s just like riding a bike. We take a look at how we keep our brains constantly evolving at VanMoof.
A year into my journey at VanMoof someone asked me: “Merel, do you want to write something for our blog about talent development at VanMoof?"
Well, you’re reading this right now so of course I said yes – but what I really thought was: “I can’t do this.” “Are people waiting on me for this? “Who would be interested in reading this?”. You get the point. Yet here I am writing that same blog, because that’s what being at VanMoof is all about: we do things that scare us. Being fearless is in our DNA.
Time to unravel
Currently, all of us working at VanMoof are in the middle of our ‘Unravel your Ride’ cycle. What’s that? Twice a year everyone reflects on how their last six months have gone. And as I was writing my own review, I thought about one of my personal highlights: organizing our very first (virtual) summit called ‘Unlocking the Future’.
During the event, we asked our leaders to hit the brakes and think back. Why? We believe the only way to unlock the future is to learn and listen from the past. The risks that paid off. The experiments that went wrong. The wins that were celebrated. All of it.
We had a great lineup of keynote speakers and one speaker shared the following piece of advice that kept me thinking for a long time:
“When you look back in 30 to 40 years from now, the only thing that’ll stay with you is your interactions with individuals. It’s not just about getting the big contract or the numbers (they are part of it). What stands out is: who you are as a person and how you can inspire and create a team of people that like to work.”
New year, new start
A mantra we follow at VanMoof is: learning is like riding a bike. What does that mean? You don’t learn how to ride a bike without falling off a few times, and that’s just the same with learning. Don’t be afraid to fail, because from failing you learn how to succeed. And most importantly of all, you don’t learn how to ride a bike without stabilizers. Who are your stabilizers? You can’t succeed without the help of the people around you.
At VanMoof, we keep this at the front of our minds every day. We’ll continue to build our learning organization and infrastructure to set our teams and leaders up for success into the new year and beyond. Nobody should be afraid to fail, because risk takers are right at home here.
First blog, finito
So how did writing my first blog go in the end? It wasn’t half as scary as I imagined it would be. Overcoming fears is something the teams at VanMoof do every day. We speak up, we experiment, we fail, we adapt, we succeed. When you work at a company that’s grown from a team of 200 people to 800 people in just two years, you can’t be afraid of thinking fast and being fearless.
