First Five Weeks in Rove Mobile
So, I have been in OCRI’s Talent Bridge program for almost five weeks now. I thought I will take a few moments to speak about my experience with the program during this period. As an introduction, my name is Steven Robins and I am a student at University of Western Ontario where I am doing my undergraduate degree with a joint concentration in Business and Computer Science. I am an Ottawa native, having lived all my life in the Ottawa suburb of Barrhaven before I moved to London, Ontario, for my studies. TalentBridge happened at the opportune time for me. I was out looking for a challenging summer assignment which will have a flavor of something different, but would open my eyes to some new facets previously unknown to me. So what is it about TalentBridge that got me all excited and had me commit to spending 14 weeks of my summer with OCRI’s Entrepreneurship Centre and Rove Mobile in a program that I had not heard of before.
TalentBridge, for me, is an unique opportunity to apply what I’ve learned in the classroom, to the “real world.” I will share some of my thoughts/learnings from my first five weeks in the program. It has been very enlightening to see which parts of my business education are actually put into practice in the SME environment – and what pieces aren’t, either for lack of resources, or it simply doesn’t work. The most noticeable difference between the classroom and the SME is the time crunch. In the classroom, before making a decision, you take the time to collect all the information, analyze the alternatives, design an action plan, as well as a variety of exit strategies. At Rove, we simply don’t have the time to do all that. Working at Rove is teaching me that there isn’t always the time, or resources to work through that complete process, that in small business a company routinely stakes its future on the outcome of a single event – a tradeshow, a customer, a new hire.
The considerations that take place in making decisions are also different from those we experience or work with in the classroom. In the classroom, we make our decisions based on ROI, the fit between elements in the marketing plan, the fiscal ratios of the company, but we never think about the intricacies of people’s personalities – how you can get people to buy into a decision, and actually implement it in an effective way. Building an organizational culture is talked about in a classroom, but the numbers is what matters. I am increasingly finding out that in business it’s about developing your people. Through these few insights I thought I will highlight the best part of TalentBridge – as it applies to me in this moment of my own personal learning. We get to see every day the way that people with lots of experience in business make decisions, what they pay attention to, and how the carry themselves. It’s a chance to learn not just the what of business, but the how.
Stay tuned. I will be back with more Talent Bridge stories.
Steven Robins
Talent Bridge – Summer 2008
Tags: Business Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Sales and Marketing, Talent
