Animal

What is there to tame about you?

The past few days, I have reflected quite a lot on the way I operate and how it can negatively affect people or put them in an unpleasant position.

I don’t think we change much but I believe we can find workarounds to make things work if we have genuine and sincere intentions, as long as it doesn't annihilate our singularity and inner balance.

When our most recent intern left a couple of weeks ago, I did an exit interview. The first thing he told me was “great to finally meet you in person…”

It was kind of a joke but not really. I mean the guy had been with us for six months and we had only connected through our weekly zoom calls.

The second thing he told me was that Alexis Robert, with whom I have now been working for almost 8 years at Kima Ventures, was an incredible manager. I was really happy to hear that because it’s a consistent feedback we get from the people who are working with us and also because on top of my absence, I really suck at management. I mean you can’t work with me if you don’t find your way through by yourself.

Don't get me wrong, I do open my calendar and let people jump in any meeting or ask me anything. The reality is that very few have done it, maybe because they fear the intrusion, or maybe because they are still trying to find an angle. I think it’s an extension of what I went through in the past. I’ve been rarely under any sort of management and every time I’ve attempted to manage anyone, it’s been as successful as my attempts to have an organised diary and notes during class, aka a complete failure during my entire schooling.

Just to give a short example, when I arrived at Kima Ventures, I had no guidelines besides “we’re making 100 deals a year” and while I met Xavier for the first time in March 2015, and joined Kima in September 2015, we met for the second time in March 2016… and in the meantime and most of the time after that actually, we’ve been mostly texting or emailing each other. And you know what… I fucking love it!

Recently I told the team at Kima that I should be more diligent and find a ritual, a time during which we would get together in person. I really mean it, but I said that in the past as well and didn’t really commit to it.

The paradoxical aspect of this whole “lone wolf” kind of behaviour is that I crave for recognition. I can go all in for an entire afternoon with six to eight meetings in a row while deploying the same energy every time. I’m an Inbox zero junkie. I love to solve problems. I’m very competitive when I decide to participate…etc. But I like things to be organic. I go with the flow, I try to make things fall in place as naturally as possible, I choose to believe, I choose to have a positive mindset even though I’ll get screwed and be wrong sometimes. I choose what I really care about and I just ignore the rest. I’m either all or nothing.

I go in a lot of one-to-one meetings, answering requests for help, looking at new opportunities, exploring things, but I fail at nurturing the relationships I’ve already got outside my home or if people don't reach out to me. It’s not that I don’t want it, it’s just that whenever I’m done with all the things I’ve committed to, I like to be on my own.

I like to say that I don’t attend conferences or events, the truth is that it makes me really tired quickly and I struggle to recover from them. That’s why I love an early diner the American style at like 6/6.30pm that allows me to be home super early :)

Anyway, I haven't found a solution to all my flaws but even more now I realise that I'm n animal and it's challenging for some people to deal with that.

It's 23:54, still on time for that Sunday note ;) What kind of animal are you?