The universe supports action!
Updated: Apr 30, 2021
.Cocoon Founders Psychology Mentoring Event took place on 25-26 November online together with almost 30 people. The startup founders and mentors were put into 3 teams and MAD Challenge created partly online, partly outside game.
The teams needed to elect a CEO for the team and divide the tasks. Everybody got to work.
All teams had a board and each tile had a question or a task to get the answer. When the answer was correct the tile revealed a letter or number that all together gave the final clue. The questions and tasks were on a varying level of difficulty.
In the picture, you can see all team’s scores on the game’s 30th minute. After giving the wrong answer, the tile was blocked for some time.
For example, do you know if Kim Jong Un would decide to launch a rocket attack on the closest (to Pyongyang) Nato member capital, what city would it be? Or how many states were in the United States on November 5th in the year when Nintendo was founded?
Among the trivia questions, some members of the team needed to go outside. Somebody had to measure the head of a statue and figure out what is in common with street paintings under a bridge in Tartu.
After an hour the Team 3 was leading by points. But the winner could be only the one who figured out the final answer first.
When teams had enough right answers, they started to figure out the final clue - it was something to do with a code. Jüri from Team 1 was the first to figure out the right place and enter the code! And he was so excited to win that he said the wrong team’s number to the organizers! So this created a little bit of confusion and fake news but finally, the real winning team got their award.
Interestingly, Team 3 had the most points but Team 1 was the winning team because they took action faster and got to the right place first. The universe supports action, doesn’t it!
The final data looked like this. Maybe, knowing the most and having the clearest picture, isn’t the guarantee for a successful business?
Why was this team-building exercise necessary for teams where most people saw each other for the first time? To create stress and imitate life - you never know what will happen next and what challenges are thrown in your way. How will you react to stress? What role do you take in the team? What if leadership is lacking? What if you are the only one concerned about the big picture while everybody is focused on details?
"If there is a way to learn something new to perform better then I’m in," said Maido Janke, Co-founder & CEO of Eziil. "In the sharing group with other co-founders and mentors I understood that the personal struggles I have had or still have are not unique. Thinking that I’m the only person in the world with this bug makes life very lonely. Accepting that they are part of the co-founder’s journey to get to the next level makes everything else easier."
Since teams had startup founders and mentors together working as a team, the mentors had an additional task - to observe and write down the behaviors of the participants. This was necessary for the next day.
The second day was all about mentoring. Each founder got to share about his/her biggest business challenge and the mentors helped to see the link between the previous day’s behaviors and the business challenge. And of course, everybody got practical solutions on how to change the behavior and hack the challenge.
The group support and energy brought up a lot of emotions, tears, and laughs. The extremely open and honest environment helped founders to bring out the very core challenges, which in some cases they weren’t even been able to admit to their selves. Tackling challenges starts always being aware and admitting it, only after that it is possible to put one’s focus and intent into solving it.
“I joined the event because I needed an outside view of my own problems,” said Jüri Pruulmann, the CEO of Codelab. “I found out that by looking into other people's problems and trying to help them, I give advice to myself also. So in addition to others giving me advice, I get time and advice for myself also.”
And this is how self-hack works - you can either take situations from your everyday life and analyse it on your own, or you can come to the .Cocoon event with a safe environment and supportive team and get hacking! Both ways if you take time to search you will get answers.
If you’d like to join our next Training Days event, let’s talk and see if this is something that might benefit you!
Join the insiders!
Get notified about new advice and opportunities for founders. Join our newsletter: