How can we bring the different Team Academy communities together? This question was raised 5 years ago in Amsterdam by people from different Team Academies in Europe. On that day the idea of Team 4 Learning began, creating and learning together by sharing what the different Team Academy labs learn. This year was the 4th time it was held and our friends in Lincoln made such an impression last year that they had the honour to organise this edition. For Team Academy Amsterdam Gabriel Faerstein (first-year team coach) and Stefan Buijsingh (community) had the opportunity to attend the event this year in Lincoln, here are 4 statements that they take back towards Amsterdam after their visit:
The Team Academy movement is becoming bigger and bigger.
Tiimiakatemia started over 25 years ago in Finland, and to see where the movement is now is something incredible. We were able to meet students and coaches from different labs such as; Germany (Bremerhaven), Switzerland (Sierre), France (Strasbourg), Peru (Lima), Finland (Tampere), UK (Lincoln / Bristol) and Romania (Bucharest). Next to existing labs we also met up with potential Team Academy labs that were looking into the possibility of starting in the USA, Brighton and Liverpool.
The great learning from this is that even though we follow the concept we all do things differently. We got inspiration around how different Team Academies use tools / read books / engage the community. With this inspiration, we want to look into our own program to see if we can find any possibilities to apply the cool initiatives of different Team Academies. In the future we expect more Labs to open, and finding a way next to T4L to share inspiration with each other can be of great value.
Team Academy Amsterdam is entrepreneurship oriented.
On the first day of the event we met a lot of new people and a lot of the student’s first reaction was to say Team Academy Amsterdam is entrepreneurial. We both met different people and this was a topic that came back a couple of times. We evaluated after the first night if this was something we believe defines us as Team Academy Amsterdam.
The conclusion that we got during the night is that we indeed focus on entrepreneurship. We see this coming back in a couple of ways: we are the only Team Academy that has a dedicated business mentor; our bachelor’s degree is called “BBA in Entrepreneurship” and set up more different companies within each team. We think it’s great that other Team Academies see us as an entrepreneurship orientated lab, even though we did also tell them that the biggest part of our curriculum is Team Performance.
The Team Academy Culture is different everywhere.
The roots of Team Academy culture will always touch on the importance of working in teams, learning together and getting projects off the ground. Seeing all these different labs, team entrepreneurs & coaches over those two days have shown us that even with the same roots, there’s a lot of difference between us.
The local culture, business ecosystem, space and infrastructure play a big role in how different we are. Some labs are more innovation-driven, some excel in learning together – even across years. Traditions that work really well in Finland, sometimes don’t translate well into the Swiss or UK systems and vice-versa.
Our big insight in relation to culture is that it’s extremely important to define it and put time and effort co-creating the type of community you want to be, together. Our communities grow and change over the years, and it is important to get everyone together to co-create our special way of doing things.
Get more students of Team Academy Amsterdam engaged in the international community.
After seeing a lot of students from Germany, Switzerland and the UK we both had a feeling that we should have gotten more students from Team Academy Amsterdam there with us. We got inspired during the weekend and it’s great to see that we are part of an international community. Also it’s a great opportunity for students to create an international network and to seek opportunities to start an international business.
After our weekend in Lincoln, we felt that we are proud of what we are doing in Team Academy Amsterdam and that we can show this off towards the international community more often. Having said this, we are welcoming the first-year team of Lincoln this week! Also, we want to look into creating more content about Team Academy Amsterdam to hopefully inspire people.
The next T4L will be held by Team Academy Strasbourg and Sierre, the first time two different Team Academies will be collaborating on the T4L event. We are already excited to attend next year and want to take more students with us so that they get the same feeling of inspiration that we had.
Hope you liked the read, want to get in contact with us?
Gabriel Faerstein (gabriel@teamacademy.nl)
Stefan Buijsingh (stefanbuijsingh@teamacademy.nl)
