Organizational Culture
„A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for."
William G.T. Shedd
This is one of the favorite quotes of Aleksandra Efimova, the founder of russian pointe. During my Summer School in Chicago at the Kendall College I got the chance to visit her in her office.
First of all we got presented the marketing area, in- and out-sales offices and photo-shooting area. After the brief tour through the rooms, Aleksandra presented us her products which are mainly high quality dancing shoes.
During the presentation I recognized that she still has a huge passion for her company - even after 17 years in the business. She explained that it is exactly this passion wo was the driver for her success.
Aleksandra founded her company in 1998. Before she had studied dance in St . Petersburg. During her study she wrote the planning for her Business. Her dream was to earn money with her hobby.
In 17 years russian points developed to a million dollar company with b2c and b2b relations and is now ready for the launch in Europe (Netherland).
In addition Aleksandra talked a lot about her life as an entrepreneur. She explained how important networking and a strong vision is. Furthermore to this vision it is important to act. Aleksandra mentioned that the effort you take in your actions in your business has huge significance to the business success. Another topic that came with the business success were the employees. Taking an own high effort and having the passion is the best base to motivate your employees. With motivated employees your business will run much better because new ideas and excellent work will push up the growth rate of the company.
The whole visit was very exciting for me and showed me again how challenging it is to run a start-up. Thats why it is so important to have a good business model that fit’s with the vision.
Eric, I really like your summary of our visit to the Russian Pointe. It is interesting, that you mention the passion of Aleksandra Efimova and that passion actually drives a leader to be successful. For my blogpost I did not go too much into detail with passion, so therefore I think it is very valuable to mention this aspect. In my opinion, you could have gone a bit more into detail with the actual importance of an overall strategy and the aspects that come with it. Furthermore, if you want to read more about passion and leadership, the following article might be interesting for you: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2012/06/11/passionate-leaders-arent-loud-theyre-deep/
ReplyDeletePeace,
Sonja
"With motivated employees your business will run much better because new ideas and excellent work will push up the growth rate of the company." I really agree with you. It made me thinking of how we are going to motivate our employees in the LIP Hotel.
ReplyDeleteMay this article can give us some further ideas.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/217801
„A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for" I really liked the way you started your blog. And I think that this quote is a great description for our current situation. Do you think that your idea is still in the save harbor or do you already set sails? I asked myself what we as founders-to-be can do to get us on the one hand as far away from the save harbor as possible, and on the other hand not letting us going down with our ship. I think that I find a great article that will show you some ideas regarding handling your risk as a start up. http://www.caycon.com/what-kills-startups.php
ReplyDeleteLena