Preparing the “Summer Community Meeting” in Finland was like preparing a road trip in the Himalaya. Let’s be honest, it was exhausting but fun.

Finnish people … where is the night?

On Wednesday the sun welcomed us at Hanasaari (Don’t forget to pronounce the H otherwise the taxi won’t understand) and it was time to go to CSC IT, whose CEO Kimmo Koski, one of our Finnish members never ends making us laugh.

After our ritual orientations: group chair, guest and new member orientation (we love orientations, just in case you get lost) Christian showed us the light with his “short” introduction; when passion brings him on stage we are thrilled to hear about CEO Collaborative Forum, the battle buddy community.  Our host, Kimmo, then took the stage with a nice presentation of his company and how to survive in Finland, let’s consider that it is the “hottest” country of Europe.

Typical meeting days: 5 Challenge presentations interrupted only by networking breaks with food and coffee. The community was – as always – fully committed to help each other to make their businesses better and improve as a leader.

The overall theme of the event was “Evolve to lead tomorrow’s companies”. The content sessions helped us further approach this goal. It is never easy to be a CEO experienced or not and take over a company or found it without tips.

First, you need to understand your team, and Eunice Zehnder, CEO of IPM shared with us how to better communicate and understand the people you are working with. Each person is unique. It is not because you don’t fit into a company that you will not fit in another one. The profiling proposed by IPM is helping leaders getting the most out of each employees whatever position they might have.

Besides the human part you have to update your business strategy to get the best out of it. Evolve or Die, will tell you Deep Parekh and Polo Looser, co-founders of Asteroidea, based in Switzerland helping businesses in their transition. Both members of the community, they know how important it is to be on top of the trend. It is time to understand what are the fundamental assumptions, the actual changes and how to adapt your business model to these new environments. Strategy is the most important thing to do when it gets to creating a company or transforming it.

Having a good strategy is a beginning but doesn’t make you a good leader. Enrique Nunes, professor of Strategy & Leadership at EM Business School Lyon shares his insights about how to grow our personality into future fast-changing environments. To evolve from a 2-dimensional organized leader to a 3-dimensional creative leader through Self-directedness, Cooperativeness and Self-Transcendence. This session was completed by Marcus Herold, Founder/CEO of MPS Enterprises who talked about different leadership styles and team management.

Stephen Schweich, Managing Partner at Mooreland Partners, completed the content sessions with an excellent presentation of Non-VC Funding for Startup Companies.

Don’t forget the fun part!

It started with a boat trip sponsored by Dell from the Hotel to Helsinki’s City Center – champagne and CEO-Issues spiced up the crossing. There we boarded a bus and Anders von Bonsdorff, CEO-CF member and Chairman of Unique Companies Ltd, transformed into the most hilarious tourist guide entertaining us with historical facts and amusing anecdotes about Helsinki.

We arrived at The Helsinki Distilling Company to learn about Finnish Whisky and over all – taste it! Famous.

The following dinner was delicious, joyful and allowed our members to connect in a very casual manner.

And because the ambiance was so perfect it was decided to pursue the fun at the hotel around the bottled gifts from the distillery…

2 great days at high speed, the next chapter to come at the Fall Meeting. More information contact Stephanie at stephanie.dargenlieu@ceo-cf.com