Ivo and Lenka met a long time ago when the CEO of Exponea suggested that Lenka, the company’s new DPO, contact Ivo, the company’s coach, “because it could be a valuable experience”.
It was and Lenka kept returning with fresh questions she had never hoped would be answered. Not only did she get the answers, she also liked how factual they were. Ivo could explain in plain language how people worked alone and together, analyze situations and influence outcomes with surprising precision without anyone noticing. A whole new world of possibilities opened to her. “Perfectly normal, just a few facts put together,” Ivo commented.
Then the roles changed. A co-founder of Exponea became intrigued about creating “an app to make Ivo’s know-how accessbile to masses”. A few months into the attempt and lost in the process, Ivo invited Lenka to one of the team’s meetings. By the time it was over, Lenka was irate at the inefficiency of the effort. Ivo, in his turn, was impressed at the sharpness of her observations and horrified at the implications for the project. It turned out Lenka also had her own system, and it was as reliable as his. It analyzed, predicted and influenced the performance of organizations. “Nothing to write home about, just facts and some common sense,” Lenka said.
As the two soon found out in random conversations, their two systems were highly complementary. Together, they could easily explain anything that was going on in the fast scaling-up organization. Where one ended, the other would pick up only to hand over to the former when it approached its limits. Ivo and Lenka lived the intellectual’s dream. Very soon they decided to try to merge the two systems into one perfect whole, just for the fun of it.
With hindsight, their early attempts were ridiculously naïve. They would recommend essential reading to each other only to discover the answers they were supposed to find in the texts were not there. While derived from bits and pieces in the texts, their systems existed only in their heads, thanks to years of experience in their respective fields. Before merging them, they had to re-create their systems outside of their minds.
Working together may have seemed frustrating at times, but always led to new realizations. The initially sluggish progress gathered speed as pieces of the puzzle clicked together. Most importantly, the system started to produce results, dramatically shortening their typical assignments, bringing clarity to messy situations, and opening doors to new types of challenges. GVsystems was born.
Since then, we have been proud to serve the Exponea crowd with all we have, individually and as a team, openly and anonymously. By visualizing the invisible and explaining the seemingly complex, we facilitate intended results, and prevent everyday small, localized, single events from turning into systemic failures or disasters.
P.S. Oh, we can help you too. Our capacity may be limited, but we will consider requests for interventions at various levels. Interested? Let’s talk.
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