I went back to school at 40
At the age of 40, I decided to reinvent and reskill myself after 13 years of work. This is my story of discovering a new passion as I always believe ‘I love what I do and I do what I love’
This is the story of Hyper Island and the tennis ball
Before Hyper Island
Before Hyper Island I had worked with motion media, communication, and films for around 13 years. I wanted to change careers because it was time for a new challenge.
I found the Hyper Islands business development program by accident while searching for ‘Business development and innovation courses in English’ and decided to apply and somehow got accepted after a fun and lengthy recruitment process.
Way week at Karlskrona
10 August 2020 on a sunny day in Karlskrona 45 strangers met for what Hyper Island calls the ‘Way Week’ and this is when the roller coaster journey of reskilling started for me.
Way week is all about introduction to Hypers methodology and different tools for unlocking one’s own hidden potential.
Just to say it out loud WAY WEEK IS INTENSE
During the way week, I was introduced to various tools and models which were completely new for me. I have used many of these methods since then. I can really see the impact these methods/tools have had and how I can use them to influence and improve my own actions and my collaboration with others.
I have started reflecting again which has been a great method for me to increase my self-awareness and that combined with a better understanding of the Johari window and how I can work on increasing my arena to have better self-awareness and become a better human being, leader, and a group member.
Learning by doing
Experiential learning is the best way to learn. Every module during the program we had a different industry leader and a project to focus on.
When we started with the first module “driving business” I got a teaser of things to come and wanted more but after a few days, I realized that Hyper Island only provides teasers of different subjects and methods.
That is when I remembered that Damian(Program manager) talked about the tennis ball theory i.e The harder you throw it, the better it bounces. Meaning the more effort you put in, the better results you get.
I started digging deeper into the topics I liked during each module and read around 30 books during my 1.5 years at Hyper Island, took many courses, and last but not least hassled Beatriz, Morten, and Damian whenever I needed some guidance, help, or just had some questions.
During each project, I tried different things. One project I was project manager, the next I dug deep into UX design, in the next I was designing workshops for ideation and team building, etc. I wanted to experiment and get an understanding of different career paths.
Hyper makes sure that every project offers unique briefs and learning opportunities with a new team that comes from diverse backgrounds and experiences. And at the end of every project, we presented our solution to the client and our classmates to get feedback.
What are my learnings?
Team is everything and leadership
A big part of the program was to explore leadership and effectively working in teams. I have worked with different groups during the course at Hyper Island, which has given me the opportunity to reflect back on different situations and happening within different teams. I have realized that a better understanding of the IMGD model by Susan Wheelan in combination with Situation based leadership has given me the nous to know which roles to take when for eg there are stages where a leader needs to be a facilitator or a coach instead of giving direction.
Having reflected a lot on how to improve well-being and the feeling of having a safe space in a group, I came to the conclusion that having empathy and giving space for everyone to express themselves is very vital.
I have used many different tools over the course of my Hyper journey, after reviewing and reflecting on them I have realized that some of the effective tools for communication are grounded in empathy and active listening, where you express yourself in terms of needs and feelings and the consequences when these are not met, to strive for collaboration and harmony. Non Violent Communication and Feedback are super helpful in achieving that and these two combined with some other tools can have a very powerful impact on our daily life situations also.
The Human element
During Hyper Island we learned a lot about human behavior. Everything from how we function in teams and how to develop them, organizational culture, structure, process, how to design user experiences and how to build a brand platform.
When I started Hyper I did not know anything about facilitation or designing a workshop but during the program, I developed a passion for it and tried doing it with different teams during the course to gain the skill and develop my competence.
During Hyper Island I learned how to put users/customers at the center and understood how to create value for them. This was done using design thinking methods and tools which led me to my current passion ‘Product Management’ and ‘Service Design’
Last but not least, Hyper emphasizes self-leadership, which I think is central to managing your own learning needs, not just during the program, but laying the foundations of life-long learning and continuous development. It made me rediscover my passion for learning, for which I will always be grateful.
Business Transformation, Innovation and Data
The name of the program was business development and naturally, business strategy was an important part of the program. We explored different methods and models for reinventing and redesigning a business model or strategy and learned to ask if what we are doing is adding any value to customers, users, and the business or not.
Innovation
This is a very important topic for me as it led me to explore different Innovation processes, especially design thinking that has become an important part of everything I do.
We worked hybrid agile throughout the program, which led me to dig deeper into different roles out in the job market such as Product Owner, Agile Coach, and Scrum Master to mention a few of them.
Because of this I decided to take Product Owner certification
Data
Data is something that cannot be emphasised enough. We learned why data analysis is very important to be able to make informed decisions about the reality instead of relying on assumptions. Since the data module was not very informative, I took 2 courses on Coursera to dig deeper into the subject and to develop my competence further.
Internship
I was fortunate to land an internship at IKEA as a learning developer. I decided to start early on 1st June 2021 instead of August as it meant having more time to onboard, learn and demonstrate my newly developed skills and competence. I was a part of the Learning and Development team and the main reason for the team to exist was to make upskilling and reskilling easily available for all co-workers at IKEA.
Since my first day at IKEA, I felt welcomed with open arms. Everyone on the team welcomed me in the best way possible being helpful, considerate and giving me the best possible onboarding.
I got my big break almost a month into my internship, a big reskilling project for senior management was approved and my manager decided to assign me to the project as a resource and that is when the real fun began.
I learned how to design playbooks and created learning scenarios. I have designed workshops, meanwhile juggling stakeholder management and expectations, managing Subject Matter Experts to create playbooks.
While creating the playbook I learned much more about Data and how to analyze it, I gained in-depth knowledge about customer experience, how customer activation works, and much more. I used and applied different methods and tools which I learned at Hyper on a regular basis during the internship
Since I had the whole IKEA learning platform to explore I ended up spending many hours during the weekends to continue developing professionally.
I went from being a student with the knowledge, skills to someone who developed the competence and confidence to use those in real-life situations.
Due to bouncing the tennis ball hard, I got a job at IKEA before finishing my internship and joined a product team. So it was time to say goodbye to my team who embraced me as their own and taught me a lot.
Setting a goal and achieving it
When I started the program my main aim was to get hired before the internship ends and I am very happy that all those extra hours of effort have given me the result I aimed for.
I am currently working in a product team and continuously evolving and learning new things every day. I have recently completed a Product analytics certification and now learning Python, SQL, and GCP in that order so I can understand the technical discussions better.
Reflection
Hyper has been an eye-opening experience. After over 13 plus years of a cutthroat work environment where delivery was always the main focus, I had not paid too much attention to my own self-development and awareness.
Hyper Island is roller coaster ride of self discovery and very intense
I have had conflicts in my groups, learned how to navigate these issues, and developed my leadership capability but the most important part is I now have loads of empathy for people around me i.e my colleagues, co-workers in the company, and family members. I am the first person to raise my hand if someone asks for help or I see someone struggling.
I am happy to say Hyper Island has made me a better human being
