The Winning Perspective for Business from an Olympic Perspective

In the Hot Seat

From podiums to businesses. Elite sports and high-performing businesses operate under the same unforgiving principles: driving performance requires inspired leadership, clear goals, strict planning, good team dynamics and a healthy serving of resilience. The question isn’t if you need all this but whether or not you have what it takes to implement it. The hot seat welcomes paralympic powerhouse Birgit Skarstein, Chief Inspiration Officer at Enfuce, to clear a path forward.

Key Takeaways.

• [0:00] Denise Johansson puts Birgit Skarstein, Paralympian gold medallist, world — and European — rowing and cross-country skiing champion, and Chief Inspiration Officer at Enfuce, in the hot seat.
• [3:46] Birgit breaks down how world champion and paralympic performance levels are built, bit by bit, with grit and determination.
• [6:38] Because nobody wants to train every single day, or go to work every single day, finding the strength to overcome your own mental barriers requires a solid plan.
• [9:11] The nordic traits — shared by Denise — that have propelled Birgit’s career!
• [13:20] Birgit explains how she fell in love with Enfuce during a keynote she delivered for the team.
• [16:54] How business and sports intersect in terms of achievement and pragmatic goal-setting.
• [21:59] Birgit speaks to the differences in performance depending on group dynamics and leadership and how leadership quality can affect people far deeper than their level of achievement.
• [27:13] Personal and team resilience work in tandem to promote personal growth and overall group performance.
• [29:08] Birgit’s definition of resilience and what she looks forward to in her role at Enfuce.
• [33:10] Denise signs out until the next time she puts an industry leader in the hot seat.

People.

• Guest Birgit Skarstein, Paralympian medalist, World champion and European champion rower and cross country skier as well as CInO of Enfuce, a female-founded fintech helping drive business growth, solve customer challenges, and extend financial inclusion.
• Host Denise Johansson, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Enfuce, a female-founded fintech helping drive business growth, solve customer challenges, and extend financial inclusion.

Links.

• Enfuce

Guest Quotes (edited).

• Doing a startup and then a scale up is so much hard work. There are so many people willing to tell you that it’s never gonna work out. Why not get a safer, better paid job in a big company. Why would you build it yourself? — Birgit Skarstein, Enfuce, InTheHotSeat
• In many ways, you are a startup as an athlete. You have to do a lot of the groundwork yourself and you really have to step up and get your hands dirty. — Birgit Skarstein, Enfuce, InTheHotSeat
• Reaching those really high performances, making it to the games, to the podium, then to the top of the podium. It requires grit and resilience, and the ability to work really hard. — Birgit Skarstein, Enfuce, InTheHotSeat
• You make the choice to go for those big goals, and then you break it down to what does that mean every quarter? What does it mean every month? What does it mean every week? What about every day? And what about every session? — Birgit Skarstein, Enfuce, InTheHotSeat
• Within the year every quarter would have a plan, and then every month, every week, every day. And then I'd be very honest and non-emotional about myself throughout the way. So I'd evaluate a lot and try to adapt if something came up. And if you'd have to change it, then you have to change it in a way that still is loyal towards the goal. — Birgit Skarstein, Enfuce, InTheHotSeat
• Resilience is about being flexible enough to change and adapt before you are changed. It's about taking control of the things that you can. It's not about not being defeated or not having setbacks or not going through rough times, but being able to stand through them and adapt. — Birgit Skarstein, Enfuce, InTheHotSeat

Denise Quotes (edited).

• We’ve been working with OKRs for a couple of years, but we realised that we really need to break it down further, it needs to go to all the individuals within the company so that they know what they come to do every day. It's taking them and us towards the goal where we wanna be at the end of the year. — Denise Johansson, InTheHotSeat
• It's not enough to put some values down on paper, you have to talk about what they mean to you and to the team so that they have a chance to show up as you want and give you the results that you expect. — Denise Johansson, InTheHotSeat
• With Enfuce, we want to challenge the norm of how businesses are being built and how success is being defined. We are daring to test new things and trying to do things differently. — Denise Johansson, InTheHotSeat