Former CEO of Schlumberger Indonesia and founder of Biru Peduli Foundation, Ir. Ahmad Yuniarto, shared his experiences with participants of Innovative Academy Batch 5 of UGM on Saturday (7/4) in the hall of Entrepreneurship Development Service (EDS) on UGM compound. The participants have been selected earlier from the entrepreneurial and incubation programme at the university level. They are further trained to run a startup.
The alumnus of Electrical Engineering of UGM in 1986 said there were four phases to go through in initiating a startup business. These are forming, storming, norming, and performing, all of which have to be experienced well. If not, a business would fall apart by itself.
When forming a team, he said, we bring people together, and this is called forming. After the team has been formed and starts working, it will go through a storming phase where conflicts usually arise. “In this phase, there is conflict or frictions that arises,” he said.
Conflicts happen due to the dynamics happening in the team related to the role of each team member and the common goal to achieve. If in this situation, team members are not solid or not able to resolve the conflict, they will find it difficult to go to the next phase.
If successful, the team may enter the next phase, which is norming. “This phase is experienced when members put aside problems and start to get close, devise standard operating procedures and process,” he explained.
After the norming phase, the team will start to make work achievements or performing. The success in managing the team dynamics, according to Yuniarto, is a success in the performing phase. “When we can bring the team to the norming phase, we can go to the level of performing,” he added.
To the participants of innovative academy, he asked them to have conviction and intention to run a startup. In his opinion, the most difficult thing in the business is not the technical matters, but the ability to establish relations, communication, and business process.
“If you come here just to learn and get experience, you wouldn’t achieve success from the startup,” he said.
For your information, Innovative Academy Batch 5 is joined by 10 teams that have built a startup. They are kalikesia, kreasibilitas, wonderbee, rekanbisnis, wozmi, caltyfarm, carenusa, edutania, datector, and eksporia. They have undergone training and mentoring for 10 weeks of the total 12 weeks. They will later be selected as potential startup groups to participate in the next business developments given by UGM and investors.