ELIA ND Vienna in review

This was a short trip – Wednesday afternoon flight to Vienna and Friday evening flight back!

Short but intense, with five theme tracks and many interesting speakers!

Amongst our personal favorites were the business success stories and the soft skills tracks. Also, for the first time, we saw dedicated IT and Interpreting tracks which we think are a great addition to the ELIA ND arsenal!

Day 1 in the business success stories track was all about self-awareness!

The kick start was stimulating with the Kaleidoscope team, Annita and Klaus, and Bob Donaldson presenting the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) model and how it is being implemented in the Viennese LSC. Well, therapists have been discussing the importance of self-awareness and acceptance (of self and others) for years, but ‘therapy’ seems to be more easily implemented at a business level (smirk). What Annita, Klaus and Bob taught us is that Visionaries need to accept their creative but chaotic self and look for consistency and accountability through execution in their Integrator counterpart. Well, it is a lengthy process but Annita and Klaus seem to have found their match, thanks to Bob!

As if that was not therapeutic enough for the first day, Industry Expert Roberto Ganzerli shared the 50+ mistakes he did in LSC management from day one of founding his company to the day of signing its sale. The most important lessons learnt: take a good look at the mirror, acknowledge what you can and cannot do, ask for help and delegate to people that can do it better than you. That sounds like a true leader, don’t you think?

In the IT department, Konstantin Dranch talked about the “Connector Game” and how LSCs can take advantage of some IT tweaks, connecting TMS with client CMS and gain a competitive advantage.

Which brings us to Day 2.

Luiza Szafrańska from Argos Multilingual introduced us the eight Melbin team roles and shared some rather interesting insights on the impact each can have in team allocation. While Luiza was presenting the characteristics of each, it was fascinating how we, attendees, were profiling not only ourselves but also our colleagues and peers. And only a few hours later, we all had a déjà vu moment at Paul McManus session on competence-based management and the DiSC^® approach.

The presentation by Andrew Hickson, Ludejo’s Marketing Manager, was a riveting story from Ireland to the Netherlands, from childhood to adulthood, from pub owner to marketing manager in a loc agency, and from loc employee to leader!

Last but not least, keeping in line with Day 1 therapy, the session hosted by Gabriela Lemoine and Jesper Sandberg can certainly be categorized under an “LSC Anonymous” track. Both hosts – and many attendees – shared their personal/family stories regarding their businesses but “what’s shared in Vienna, stays in Vienna”!

And it all comes together once again to testify to and validate that we are a people industry!

We definitely look forward to meeting our shrinks friends and colleagues next year somewhere in the Netherlands!