Balancing Order and Chaos When Building a Business by Linnéa Kornehed Falck

My name is Linnéa Kornehed Falck and I am the co-founder and CMO of Einride. Einride is a technology shipping company that provides digital, electric and autonomous transport. It sounds more complicated than it is. Basically we use new technology to provide sustainable transport to bluechip companies like Lidl, Elektrolux, SKF, Oatly and others.

As many can relate to, I grew up believing that keeping structure and order in my life would make me successful. By being a neurotic planner and checking off items on my to-do list I felt satisfied and happy with myself. So when we founded Einride I was thrown off by one very important piece of advice from a professor at Stanford. This professor had been studying start-ups in Europe and what made them less successful than US start-ups. The message was clear: “98% of startups from Scandinavia and Germany fail because they will spend too much time organizing and structuring instead of focusing on the output and delivery.” This simple yet powerful advice challenged my belief system and is still, to this day, the most important advice I have ever received. 

So what does focusing on output and delivery mean? It is a shift in mindset. Instead of focusing on a sequential number of events that will (hopefully) lead to desirable output, start to focus on the output. By visualizing the output and trying to see it in front of you, you will be able to skip a lot of the unnecessary planning and researching and go directly to creating and building. This way of working is a well-known method used by many start-ups and is believed to be the secret sauce of Silicon Valley. There is for example a famous quote saying “throw it on the wall and see what sticks,” meaning go directly to the output, launch it and see if people like it or not. The term MVP (minimum viable product) follows this kind of method as well. 

This way of thinking has changed how I structure my days. Today my days are centered around desired output. I start my morning at 7:30 AM by thinking about the most important thing of the day, and some days I write it down in my productivity planner. Then I check my mail to see if there is something that is urgent or needs my immediate attention, if yes I move it up on my output list, if not I prioritize only the most important and either forward or delete the rest. After that I am going through Slack (our internal communications tool) to check for urgent matters. I have a lot of meetings during the days and I like to be 100% focused in the meeting I am in. It is important to me that all meetings have a clear purpose and a desirable outcome at the end of the meeting. If the meeting is far off the most important output, I will cancel or postpone that meeting. We usually have business dinners, meetings or events in the evening so I try to leave the office around 4 or 5pm to get some time alone to think, reflect and wrap up the day. 

Shifting the mindset to always adapt to the most important thing is challenging as it requires flexibility of mind that is sometimes uncomfortable, especially if you are a person striving for perfection and control. I learned that the key to be able to work like this without all the pressure is to let go of control and the need to be “a good girl.” Building Einride has taught me so much about life and how order and chaos must co-exist for the most beautiful results.  

Contact

We are growing fast and are looking for kind-hearted and ambitious people to join the journey to sustainable transport. 

For open positions: https://www.einride.tech/careers/ or email us directly at hr@einride.tech. 

To get in contact with me, please me email at linnea.kornehed@einride.tech or DM me on Instagram. 

Good luck on your journey!