Working in a global team in Seoul

It’s always very special to work within a diverse team, even more in Seoul. When I say the BIC team is diverse, I truly mean it. We are a growing group led by our Team Leader Max (French), Market Researcher Mason (returning from the US), and Product Designer Sophie (Hungarian-born Chinese).

But what does BIC even mean?

BIC stands for Business Incubation Center, a new mission team within Buzzvil set out on product discovery in order to find new opportunities to expand Buzzvil services.

In our team, we work with team core values and quarterly OKRs to frame how we collaborate and to direct our focus on priorities that matter.

Core values that really work

Core values are only as powerful as the work put into up-keeping them. And that comes with truly understanding and resonating with what they mean. In the BIC Team, the core values are born from the collection of attitudes that each of our members strongly believes in.

Through a workshop session we developed 5 values that we think play key roles in our success as a team:

Problem-centric🤔, Go Beyond💥, Autonomous⚙️, Adventurous🧗‍♀️ and Lean Everything🧘‍♂️.

Let’s dive into what each one of them means to the BIC team.

Taking values into action

Problem-centric

We don’t focus on the solution but on the customer problem.

As a team aiming to discover new possibilities, where we put our focus can make or break the outcome. Listening closely to our customers and their needs guides us to the most urgent and challenging problems we can solve.

👉How we put this into actual action:

The team is stubborn about doing as many interviews and research on our customers as possible to make sure we are looking at the right problem space and coming up with the correct helpful solutions.

Go Beyond

We always aim to provide more than expected, going the extra mile for our customers.

We always list action items after meetings

Opportunities lie within opportunities. We do not stop at providing only the bare minimum that our customers request. Aiming beyond the expected results can often lead to unexpected opportunities.

👉How we put this into actual action:

For every meeting, we concretize our discussions into action items that have to be fulfilled within the deadline. Often times action items are planned one step or a few steps ahead of our current stage.

Autonomous

We work independently from other teams. We manage our tasks and time freely based on clear objectives.

In our team, we consider delivery the most important, as long as you can fulfill your tasks it does not matter where and how you work. Instead of waiting for tasks to be assigned to us we actively define our own tasks.

We have the freedom to move fast without having to wait for approval or feedback from other teams. We adhere to the company vision retaining ownership over our own team mission. BIC team essentially functions as “a startup inside a startup”.

👉How we put this into actual action:

We sync up every day during our daily scrum and share our daily tasks and objectives. This is to ensure everyone is on the same page and to have action items we need to complete for the day.

(We are free to leave the office to go to a coffee shop( there are so many pretty coffee shops around Buzzvil) to work.)

Adventurous

We fail often through bold leads and fast iterations. We are product discovery experts.

In this team, nothing is too outrageous and all ideas are welcome. Unprecedented ideas are seriously considered as we believe great ideas can come from anywhere.

We do not fear failure. We take on bold challenges and reach out of the box which naturally will result in unsatisfying results. As long as we can move fast and pivot to new directions, failing is just part of the process.

👉How we put this into actual action:

Every week we have an out-of-box time where we spend 2 hours ideating and iterating on some bold challenges.

Lean Everything

We communicate clearly and effectively. We don’t waste time with unnecessary meetings and processes. Discussing out-of-box ideas

Communication is always a danger zone. Delays in communication, error, and misunderstandings can cause a halt to projects. We put emphasis on fast and effective communication by responding fast and going straight to the point.

There are no forced meetings and we go straight to the point when discussing topics. We do not spend time on unnecessary formalities.

👉How we put this into actual action:

Meetings are always to the point, and we stick to the agenda and end them with either a decision or action item depending on the contents discussed. Meetings also never go overtime unless there is an urgent situation; if we book an hour-long meeting, we aim to finish all agendas within the hour.

Ever-growing BIC Team

All these core values are fundamental to how the BIC team works together. We want to evolve into a flexible team that can accommodate quick changes and pivots in direction.

If you would like to learn more about our members you can read about Max’s story here.