Experiencing the InSites cocktail: a newbie's experience

And at the beginning of October, we will have our four-day congress with all our offices in Ibiza.” Speechless I was looking at Anita Peerdeman during my third interview. Yeah, right, I thought, the one who just started can probably not join. I have never been more wrong… And so we (Frances & Tom), the Dutch newbies, joined the amazing trip to Ibiza after being part of InSites Consulting for just one month. What an experience we had and what a cocktail we drank!

Ingredient 1: Robots

The robots are coming and there is nothing we can do about it”. This was a great opener, as we realized that many of our jobs as they are now probably will no longer exist in a few years’ time. So how can we make sure that we stay relevant? Is there a way to embrace robot technology and make it our strength in order to further develop our business?
We learned at the Congress that there is no need to worry and that we are part of a company which is thinking ahead and is already finding ways to adapt to these developments in order to remain relevant in the future. And in this case, being the first on the market to embrace this and to find the ultimate combination between machine and human touch can be very important.

Ingredient 2: Do good for society

While living in one of the most unstable times we have experienced in decades, a feeling arises that we want to do more by contributing to society. But how can we do this exactly? Can we already make a change by implementing small changes within our daily (working) life?
Many ideas were shared, from installing bicycles at the office to dedicating 4 hours per week to charity. It was inspiring to see that everyone was open to discuss different ideas, so we can create a certain mindset that will challenge every decision we make and see if we can do things differently in order to contribute more to society and the environment.

Ingredient 3: The right company culture

A company’s culture is greatly determined by the type of people who are hired to work for the company. The congress gave us the perfect opportunity to find out more about that culture and to have a better understanding of what it’s like to be a part of it as well. We rapidly came to the conclusion that we can be very proud to work with such a group of smart people who are dedicated to make the impossible possible, but who also know how to have fun. The Eureka pitches showed us that, if you strongly believe in something and work for it, InSites will give you the opportunity to make it happen. We realized the importance of humor and storytelling in a presentation in order to get your message across so people will talk about it afterwards. We saw many new faces, each of them open to starting a conversation in order to turn from colleagues into frolleagues.

Ingredient 4: Demanding clients

We haven’t been at InSites for two months yet, but we already worked on some great projects and experienced what it is like to work for several clients. It is clear that everyone is willing to go very far to deliver that wow factor to the client over and over again and working with a group of people who are so motivated to do so is very inspiring. But where is the limit? How far do you need to go to exceed the clients’ expectations? Does this mean accepting an impossible deadline for the next day so you end up working all night? Sometimes it does, but the stories shared in the Failosophies clearly showed that there is a fine line between wowing the customers and becoming their slave. Only time will tell how we will cope with that.

Ingredient 5: Innovation

The final ingredient was perhaps most present during this congress: innovation. All ingredients are strongly related or can be shared under this principle. Driven by the truly inspiring speech of Farrell Styers, the discussion became very lively. What is innovation? And how as a company but also as individuals can we embrace this principle? As a newbie, it was great to hear that Farrell’s presentation eventually concluded with that fact that this company does offer every individual the opportunity to think and be innovative. But still the question remained; what is innovation? Is it our third position in the GRIT ranking? Or is innovation when we will meet at our next congress and agree that we have overcome the challenges, which now seems hard to believe? The truth will be somewhere in the middle, but as a newbie it was very inspiring to see so many people speak about the concept of innovation and how we can become and remain an innovative company in every aspect.
Now that we have experienced our first InSites cocktail consisting of this unique mix of ingredients, we are thirsty for more and we hope that in 1.5 years’ time, we will be the ones who can teach the new newbies some interesting lessons!

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