The level of change in organizations outpaces the level of learning - Thomas Helgø (Society Lab)

Thomas I. Tveteraas Helgø - Founder Society Lab

Society Lab is a Norwegian digital learning agency that helps increase an organisation's ability to lead transformation.

The full transcript of the podcast can be found below for those who prefer reading rather than listening. The podcast is hosted by Frank Albert Coates.

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FC: Why did you end up in EdTech and why did you start up Society Lab?

TH: I do have a background that is split in two. I've been a consultant for a number of years, and we also have been working with driving various initiatives when it comes to education. Training young leaders in order to become innovators, transforming their industries and so on.

We kind of felt a little bit stuck at a certain point because at the one hand, being a consultant, we felt that we gave a lot of sound advice to big players about what's coming, what's around the bend that they needed to pay attention to, that they needed to strengthen their muscles when it came to transformation. And also be ready for what's around the bend.

At the same time, we also got frustrated with the school we were running, because we did it very well, we experimented a lot with how to teach people. But we didn't scale it very well. So at a certain point in time we sat down, took a step back and actually concluded some of the venture we had been part of and said, okay, if we were to do this with the blank papers in front of us, how should the education of tomorrow look like when it comes to helping companies understand what's around the bend for them, prepare for that future, build the competency and capacity to actually build for tomorrow and then we started Society Lab as this sandbox of understanding how we capture opportunities within the learning revolution and help companies become learning organizations that adapt to the environment that's constantly changing. Because we did see very fast that the level of change around them outpaced their level of learning.

And we set out and said, how can we help companies, learn as fast as the change that is going around them. So that's what we want to focus on in Society Lab. And yeah, we're really hopeful that our contribution will be a great one.

FC: And just to reflect on the couple of years since you started the company, have you seen a change in how clients needs have evolved and how you have had to adapt to that?

TH: I think there's two answers to that. Still the immaturity when it comes to understanding that they need to get out of the hamster wheel and actually balance focusing on the day-to-day business and what's around the bend, that's still kind of immature. And that's a constant struggle, management being so occupied with just delivering on what's on their plate today.

But, what has matured, which is the second part of the equation, is of course Covid helped tremendously. I think all EdTech companies will say that, but we started off doing pilots and testing before COVID came around. So we were kind early movers on that. And there's so many stories on how confused the customer was when they had to learn digitally.

We had clients and groups and leaders saying, this digital setup is great, but can we actually just sit in a classroom and digest the digital content together because, we want to learn the way we did. And we were just like, well that doesn't make sense at all. We tried to make this, you know not something you need to do at a certain time together with others, but have the flexibility. That's the strength of this. So I definitely think there has happened a lot. And of course our clients now, they don't want to move back to the way we used to work with them as like physical workshops all the time and them coming unprepared and what's not. Definitely we are in the beginning of the learning revolution, but customers, they're getting now used to working and experimenting with digital learning in quite a different way. And very hopeful for that.

FC: And to go a bit back to the company, could you say something more about the stage you're at right now, in terms of funding evolution of the company?

TH: We're actually now in the thick of testing out various hypothesis when it comes to our business model and our take on the essential deliverance of our business. And verifying the product market fit. And we have selected a range of pilots to test different hypothesis.

And heading now towards seed funding in late Q2 early Q3. And until now we've been self-financed and we are one of the odd ones out; we've been cash positive from day one because, our pilots, there's been a willingness to actually pay for the services when they're getting it. And they value it very much so we're able to get quite a lot of income to balance our spending. But, now we want to really ramp it up and get more speed, and then we need more hands involved. And that's where we are now.

FC: I guess you were in a fortunate situation compared to money. Many startups are more challenged with the current climate. And have you seen that on the client side as well, that it's been harder to get clients given this new economic climate?

TH: We've been pondering about this. Norway's maybe been a little bit protected. That's one. Second, we've seen a lot of studies around Norway, but also abroad that seed investment hasn't been hit as hard as later stages and bigger stages. And when it comes to our clients that we're talking to, potential and also existing clients, there's always two sides to the situation that we are in now.

It's like now everyone just wants to focus on their core, the business at it's very essence. But, we also experienced that a lot of our clients now are saying that more than ever we need to understand what's around the bend. We haven't really been hit hard at all. I think it's rather the opposite that more clients are getting more curious because they see this is a need. The changes that goes on around them will not disappear. It's cascading and then they need to invest also.

FC: Just talking a bit about the landscape; what do you see as your competitors in this space and why?

TH: Well, to be a little bit tongue in cheek on such a question, I think our competitor number one is business as usual. You know, that's what we compete against. So it's inaction, it's status quo. It's the hamster wheel that is our biggest competitor.

So when we're talking with potential new clients of us, they're so stuck in their current way of doing business. And so preoccupied with focusing on that. So we see that as maybe the main competitor to what we're trying to do. And of course, we try to be conscious of not pursuing clients that are too stuck in the hamster wheel, but that has a little bit of an extra power to become the market leader or to lean into the future and has established some kind of foundation that is solid both financially, but also organizationally.

So, we try to segment our market and go after potential collaborators that has a specific profile. Apart from that we do think that a lot of the clients we're talking to, they have been used to going to consultants when looking for the answers that we are providing. And we are trying to help them understand that when you go to consultants, you get a lot of good advice. Of course, a lot of great consultants out there. But, very often we also do find that the consultants giving advice that are kind of foreign language and it's not a part of the understanding in the organization. So the consultant usually brings around great answers like the fish, but we are trying to help the clients fish and through our pilots, we have really seen that this is a humongous strength that when the organization themselves build the capacity to handle transformation, innovation, getting the answers themselves, when implementing it's way stronger because it's invented here. It's something that they own themselves.

So, consultants are a kind of competitor because they either spend the money there or they see that why not build this understanding, this capacity, this competency within our own organization, because then we don't need to buy the fish every time. We can fish many places and we can get the fish ourselves. So that's what we wanna do.

Apart from that, of course, there's a lot of interesting EdTech players that we are inspired by and we are in awe of, there's a lot of them. There's a revolution going on. Velomas in Finland is really, really exciting what they're doing. Sana Labs in Sweden and also big players like Microsoft. Viva Learn, when they plug in they get all of the the content providers linked into the the entire Microsoft ecosystem. You know, that's gonna be a force as well as the LinkedIn learn and so on. So there's a lot of things we're inspired from, but also trying to get inspiration from elsewhere, not just within this industry, but trying to find out how has other players been approaching the problems that we are trying to solve that maybe thinks a little bit different.

FC: If we go a bit back to the team and the company, so how did you find the team? How did you put that together?

TH: Well, of course the team is the key to succeeding or not to succeed. Of course. Me and the other co-founder have been working together for a long time, so that is a kind of strength because we know each other's weaknesses and strength and we have that kind of trust as a foundation. But of course if you've been working with people for a long time, you also need to fill in new understanding and challenge the intuitive understanding, maybe two people have developed over years. So we also found people from other walks of the spectrum that we're talking with about EdTech. We wanted to have an international profile because we wanted to be an international company from day one.

So we sourced in a third partner from UK Tom Savigar. Great profile, great contributor. And he had been running a big agency in UK called Future Laboratory for a number of years. So, he tapped into the entire what's around the bend thinking. Also, been involved with clients around the globe. The A players so very, very good.

And of course we needed to also get the hands on deck when it came to actually building our product. And therefore we sourced a CPO. We got that through recruitment. Also wanted to recruit internationally there. So we got one from Atlanta, US. Much more tech background than than I and the other funding partner.

And we also pulled in a CCO, head of content that I have known for a number of years, but also challenge our assumption all the time.

So, in sum, we try to balance and have diversity when it comes to gender, but also when it comes to what you bring to the table, the diversity of ideas, background and have people that feel secure to challenge at all time. Because one of our values. We have four. We have trust. We have passion, but we also have radical and deliver impact. And the radicalness you don't get if you just pull together people that are just the same. So we are very conscious of building a team that knows each other, has the trust, has the passion, but also has the radicalness to challenge the assumption and all the time push the envelope, which we find very, very important.

FC: And on that why will you succeed and what's your secret sauce? And maybe that's a part of it already.

TH: Yeah, it is. So, we were part of a network just last week sitting down with a lot of startups in Norway, that was in a round table conversation. What's the pressures these days is, of course regarding funding, but the other pain that, or there were two pains that more or less all the different startups were talking about as the problem number one and two, is that a, it's so hard to build a culture that people fill into, and number two, it's so hard to establish the North Star or the story about what we actually want to fulfill and get people invested in that kind of journey. Since we've been working background wise, so much as a consultant, I've been building a number of businesses before, we were very adamant and very early in establishing a very strong culture, focusing on the values, focusing on behavior, focusing on getting to know each other, securing this kind of environment where people want to work and bring their passion in front of them at all times and giving them the opportunity to grow and to thrive, and also spending a lot of time and together understanding the vision and let everybody contribute to it. So, I think we will succeed because we have established a really good foundation, both when it comes to culture and also direction.

But apart from that of course there is also, the USP when it comes to the business and I think, what we bring to the table, maybe in the EdTech space is that a lot of the great competitors in our environment, they have a lot of great content. Our clients when they come to us, they say, we really like you out of two reasons. Point one, you're, you are helping us to really assess and prioritize what's the most important areas to upskill in and build capacity towards. So we don't just spend a lot of time learning, but we are learning in order to realize strategy and of course, when we can streamline and really get them to get the learning that is just what they mean.

That's a big strength. And not just doing a lot of learning, but very focused learning. And the other thing they usually say is that you guys have understood how to build culture and a culture for learning, a culture for innovation. So the understanding of how to build culture, not a lot of people know how to do that. And we have done it for 25 years. So I think that is also a part of our secret sauce, helping strategically upskill through like an assessment that prioritize what to focus on, and then actually helping them build the capacity to manage tomorrow as well as today.

FC: And looking back at the last year since you started the company, what's been your biggest challenge and how have you solved it?

TH: Well, as a startup you do that every day. You commit to a problem and then you tell yourself that we need to crack that problem. And then when you kind of cracked it as we feel we have, we know that the solution we hold at hand today is just the temporary one. We want to create at all times a better solution to the problem.

Maybe the two most important ones that the bigger, more high level ones has been for us to crack how to assess to understand how to make the companies we work with futureproof. Turning those kind of assessments into targeted training plans. How to do that. In concept or in theory, it's easy to say, yeah, we do some assessment in order to futureproof the company and then we turn that into training plans, but actually cracking that and finding a solution for how to do this today and then tomorrow and how we want to do it initially. When we succeeded on the first couple of levels and doing that, we were very, very happy in playing it out and seeing that it worked. Ongoing one is of course recruiting getting the right people on board, training them, developing them into great contributors that are not afraid of challenging the co-founders that, me being one of them having so much passion for this and so many opinions about things, building a team that gets room to challenge and develop and contributing. I think those are the, maybe the two most important ones.

FC: Since you've been on the journey have there been any specific resources or things that have really helped you to build the company?

TH: Yeah, so maybe not resources that is as in like a product or services, but what has really helped us along the way is at all times being open for having conversations, and especially one of my co-founders. He's just tremendous finding interesting people or companies, calling them and saying can we have a meeting? Presenting our thoughts, getting input, getting feedback. Using that feedback to strengthen our understanding. So at all times, reaching out. We are also of course establishing an advisory board. We have people around us that we talk to on a regular basis, but also going to people that we find doing really interesting stuff and picking their brains and letting them challenge us.

So I think the greatest resources are experts out there, people, great people that maybe are approaching things in a different manner, that are the odd ones out. And listening to them and letting them really step on whatever you've been thinking and like tearing it apart and feeling really vulnerable and that still thanking them for this really helped. That has maybe been the most helpful resources along the way.

FC: You've been part of this program, Kaospilots a while back as a part of your education, how much do you think that sort of radical, different type of thinking has shaped what you're doing now and what you have done?

TH: Yeah, I'm quite sure that we wouldn't have been doing what we're doing today if I hadn't had that kind of training because it was so radical when I took it. Now it's like 20 years, 25 years back, but, It was very radical when it started off, and it was quite unlike any other education. And what maybe one of the key takeaways that we also want to bring into Society Lab that is learning is much more of a mindset than actually learning specific topics.

Because this school, they didn't have a clue of what they were teaching when it came to topics. The topic understanding was kind of weak, but they were really radical in understanding that we need to let these students just be thrown out into the deep end of the pool. So we were just sent off to San Francisco, find a project, save the world, and we were like, but we cannot do that, you know? And they said, sure you can. And then you start learning to swim and you, after a while, actually start to appreciate it, being thrown out into the deep end. And then gets into your mindset that I cannot sit around just wait for people to give me whatever I need. I need to go out there and get it, learn it, get inspired, you know?

And so all the school initiatives that I've been a part of and all the training I've been a part of, we've been really like adamant focusing on that we shouldn't just give people whatever they need because then we'll just be the receivers. So we have always been very explicit about that if you're gonna be a part of our journey it's a co-journey, it's co-created. You need to take it, not receive it. You need to create it, not just be a part of it. Although that was 25 years ago, I think that's more relevant now than ever because we all need to become lifelong learners. And then you need to look out for that yourself. You need to become a learner.

And that's maybe the most important thing I got from that education, which is also influencing Society Lab to this very day.

FC: When you look forwards in the next months and year, what's keeping you up at night?

TH: Well, I think first of all, it's very important as a startup, a leader of a startup CEO to sleep very well at night. So I do and you do that through being able to switch very well between intensive passion, being on at all times, but also have ways to switch off. And I think that's very, very important to sleep well and being able to switch off. And some people do that through meditation, through running. I do a lot of different stuff in order to sleep well, but that was not really the question. But, I think that's an important one for staying on in a start startup and enjoying it and having the surplus to give passion to people around you as well.

But, when it comes to what we need to handle in the next six to 12 months, what's critical for us now is getting our tech lead on board. So we have desperately been seeking that for a little while. We're getting a much closer now and I'm quite confident we will be able to land it.

But that's priority to number 1, 2, 3 I get from my co-founders and our board. I'm in charge of landing that now. And the other one is of course landing the right investor at the right time and with the right terms. So we're not just gonna get invested, but we want to go get the right lead investor in that fits our company, fits our vision, wants to do the same things that we want to do. So that will be a very important one also moving onwards.

FC: Exciting things ahead. And is there any specific advice that you would give the other EdTech startups that are just getting off the ground?

TH: Yeah, I think of course looking back now, I see that we could have been moving of course, much faster if you knew then what we know now. I think what really sped up everything quite a lot was when we onboarded our first pilot because we had been spending quite a lot of time conceptualizing what we wanted to do, but as soon as we onboarded a big pilot, a lot of people into our solution, then we needed to find those answers that we kind of been going around just talking ourselves around it. But when we needed to deliver a solution, what do we do on Monday and Tuesday?

So, that really sped up everything and there was so much learning involved and still we are learning every day from our pilot clients. So get out there, get pilots on board. As soon as you're ready, you will learn so fast. And you'll get the right input and feedback that will help you speed up your own learning.

Second one is, of course, starting building culture from day one. That is what will make you or break you. A lot of people just tend to not focusing on it, because the business is the most important one. But, building culture is business. It's what really will make you succeed at the end of the day.

And of course, maybe the last one is getting that unified belief in the vision of the company. Everyone at Society Lab is committed to a greater purpose. We want to fast track the scaling of tomorrow's economy that is sustainable and people that work in the team they have in their belly a burning desire to help realize that vision. And we all do. So we do the business. We handle all the bits and pieces of the everyday work, but at the end of the day, it's the burning passion in the stomach to actually make a difference when it comes to what we need to succeed within in the economy of tomorrow. And maybe the last one Frank, is of course to become a member of EdTech Garage sooner rather than later.

FC: I wanted just to dig into the culture piece. So we had Matteo from zick learn in the last episode also talk about how important culture was for his company. How do you build culture? Like what do you do actually?

TH: To make it very simplistic we needed to agree upon some cornerstones of why we are here. And there's there's a set of things that needs to be in place. Of course, there needs to be a vision that you really never compromise on. A direction and North Star. That defines what is okay and what is not okay to focus on. And then there should also be in place some values that defines the border of how are we handling our everyday decisions and how we're going about our business. So those things should be defined. And, of course, there's other aspects as well you need to define as a part of a culture.

But when you do that right, you don't need to tell people at every given time what to do or what not to do. You fail in the context. And of course there's two ways about building a company. It's telling the people what to do. For example, build a ship or making them long for the sea. And building culture is about helping people connect to the dream of the sea and culture does that really well, and then you have to find what's okay and what's not okay.

Then people can operate very independently and very fast, and you don't need to be involved at micro level at any given time. But culture is not something that is built. It's a process of building all the time. So at any given time, you need to focus on this and talk about it and build it into the systems of the company.

You need to build it into how you assess the people in the company. When you onboard people, it should be very clear what's the values, what's the vision, what we're all here about. So you need to build it into every aspect of your business and you need to be follow up on it. And there needs to actually also be consequences if you don't follow it. That doesn't mean that people are fired if they don't follow it, but if it's just like laissez-faire that everything goes, then you don't have a culture, then you just have a culture on paper.

So as a leader, you need to guard those things. All the time, and you need to talk about it sometimes informally. And sometimes you need to put it into the structures that you're having. And whenever we have offsites, when we talk about strategy or develop new stuff, we'll always have segments when we go into the values, when we go into how we now are connecting with our visions. All these things need to be a part of the agenda and need to be revisited and also matured and developed. So it's a very important thing that always needs to be there and needs to be a part of every day. And also the strategic discussions.