The Collab Folks in 2021

Posted on by Michael Ong

Last year has certainly been a year where many individuals and teams face uncertainty and unplanned effects from a global pandemic. I hope you are keeping well and taking the time to consider the pandemic’s impact towards health, economies and individuals.

When The Collab Folks was first conceived as an idea in July 2015 to enhance product management, product design and agile ways of working capabilities in individuals and product teams, it was based on the belief that everyone has the potential to improve and increase their capacity to do more. Since then, we have been fortunate to work with you and clients across Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Australia, Denmark, Lithuania, Czech Republic and the United States.

As a cross-industry network of more than 20 individuals passionate about helping teams unleash their potential and thrive in the future of work and (serious) play, we have seen a shift in our businesses that interact with clients impacted by this uncertain year.

In our last update in 2017, we shared about our journey in sectors like Media, Energy, Banking and Global Resources.

Since then from 2017 to 2020,

  • We took part in a surge of capability development with clients in E-commerce, Software Development, Manufacturing, Property Development, Banking, Payments, Insurance, Telecommunications and Agriculture.
  • We achieved a micro-strategy of an Agile Facilitation and Coach development program with a client with ASEAN-wide reach to raise awareness about the role of coaching and team health. 
    • This was in part due to our partnership with Software Education (SoftEd) which provides one of the most comprehensive ICAgile learning and development roadmaps globally.
  • We had added to our collective network with established working relationships with nlevel (Technical Coaching), XOPO Design (Business Design), Red Airship (Product Development), Minitheory (User Experience & Interface Design), Pixelonion (Web Design and Drupal Development), Somia (Customer Experience & Service Design), Product Narrative (OKR Coaching)  and Future Work (Agile).

What the team had been up to 

  • Andre has realised the need to communicate even more with people in the design industry to better understand what has been good and bad. He has been relooking at how to be agile and ready to respond to the challenges of the economy.
  • Mul had a taste of his first 10-day silent meditation retreat and has been continuing the practice ever since. He likes to romanticize that his second sabbatical leave had led him to build a better Product Narrative.
  • Tze & Michael co-facilitated “Designing your own Agile Coaching Journey” at Agile Vietnam 2019. Both of them also engaged in speaking engagements at various community events with a memorable time at the recent Wild Card Conference 2020. They also organised and took part in retreats for Product People and Agile coaches in Bali, Yilan and Kuala Lumpur. 
  • Tze has embarked on the path of entrepreneurship by establishing an agile practice and has been recognized by the World Agility Forum 2020 when he won the  Agile Great Place Work award for his work in transforming Seek Asia (Jobstreet/JobsDB) to adopt agile ways of work.
  • Michael contributed to the Learning Village at Teewado, Burma with the construction of a school with a group of like-minded individuals and fund-raised for Baan Dada Children’s Home University Program via Ride for Baan Dada. He also cycled a memorable Pacific Coast Ride from Vancouver, Canada to San Diego, United States over 41 days in 2018.

Looking forward to 2021 and beyond,

  • We believe there is a need to create a space to facilitate powerful conversations for leaders who care deeply about values, the environment, challenges at work and mental health.
  • We  are ready to help our clients unlearn, learn and relearn how they could design teams to address wicked problems in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.
  • We are excited to bring our collective networks across communities of practices and clients towards societal challenges in quality education and people development. 

If you are open to have a conversation about how we might help facilitate your team to succeed in designing products for the larger whole, we would love to have a chat via https://calendly.com/thecollabfolks/30min

Warmly

Andre, Mul, Tze & Michael

The Collab Folks – Explore | Collab | Evaluate

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