text: In today's post, Ignasi, Supply Excellence Team Lead, discusses the commonalities between his work at GetYourGuide and his training as a high-level non-professional runner.
  I joined GetYourGuide 2 years ago as a Supply Operations Specialist. Over the past two years, I’ve grown quickly and am now leading a team as the Supply Excellence Team Lead. In addition to the time I invest in growing as a manager, I also invest my time training as a high-level non-professional runner. I started running at 16 and my development as a runner has been constant since then. After 11 years, I’m still improving! My career and running are my two passions, and I strongly believe it’s possible to combine an ambitious professional career and running at a highly competitive level. In fact, it is the same principles that have made me successful in both.
  One principle clearly echoed in both of my passions is the importance of a growth mindset. A "growth mindset" is a concept put forth by psychologist Carol Dweck and is present when, “people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work.” When I read Dweck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, I realized I recognized this mindset from the early days of my training.
  Although I had no natural talent for running when I started, my first coach demonstrated a clear growth mindset and taught me I could improve as much as I wanted as long as I practiced. My talent as a runner was up to me to develop and was dependent upon the amount of time and effort I dedicated to the sport. He instilled this mindset in me, and now I try to do the same for my team when coaching them on their personal development. For example, even though some come from a linguistics background, they can still grow to be as good at analytics as they want to be as long as they put in the effort to learn.
  My favorite aspect of running is the objectivity of how performance is measured: time against distance. There are no juries, no scores, and no wrong referee decisions. In my daily work at GetYourGuide, we aim to measure performance objectively using an Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) framework. Working with OKRs, setting ambitious goals, and being measured according to these goals is something I am very accustomed to from my training. OKR planning prior to the start of each quarter is like the start of a season - very exciting. In fact, without challenging goals, I would find it difficult to have the commitment needed to go the extra mile at work or in practice. Then, at the end of the quarter or season, whether or not I achieved my goals or my team achieved each OKR, I come away with learnings that can be applied in the future.
  In my time at GYG, I’ve also had the chance to read Angela Duckworth’s Grit. In this book she discusses the 4 components of grit: interest, practice, purpose, and hope. Throughout my experience in the workplace and training for a race, I have only been successful when I demonstrated passion, I practiced many hours, and I had the conviction I would improve.
  In my work, there are stressful periods when I have a high volume of tasks and have to wait to see the results. This feels similar to the 7th kilometer of a 10k race, when I’m a few seconds off target and the finish line feels farther and farther away. These are the moments when I have to grit my teeth and keep going. The four components of grit make the difference between giving up and succeeding; they equip me with the resilience I need to keep giving 100%.
  Using the same guiding principles in my work and training helps me continuously improve in both of my passions. Learnings I gain through one endeavor can always be applied to the other. Maintaining this duality in interests is only possible in a working environment like GYG, where health and passion are so valued. I receive consistent support from my managers and team to find space for my training and achieve my running goals.
  My growth mindset, goal-setting, and grit recently helped me place third in the annual IKK BB Berliner Firmenlauf. This success was exciting for me, but the reaction of my colleagues was shocking. They were even happier than I was! The culture at GetYourGuide has helped me become a better manager and a better runner, and my community of colleagues cheered me on each step of the way.
  Thank you Ignasi for sharing these important principles. Does our culture sound like a fit for you? We're hiring.
  In the beginning of my collecting years after acquiring a tiny little collection consisting of one BB Dakota and one Billabong Hannah Jacket, I decided to set off and try to find SOMETHING that resembled that cute little button down shirt Bella wore in the beginning of Twilight. For some reason it was appealing to me in a way no other item was. I think it may have been the fact that every times I went to go see twilight in theaters (I counted 8 times) I became more and more infatuated with this whole story. When the opening began, I would get butterflies in my stomach and the second I saw Kristen Stewart on-screen, I knew I was back on the 2 hour ride through Twilight. I guess I had subconsciously roped together that feeling with this top. Obviously, I needed to have it.
  I hate to admit it but I was HORRIBLE at trying to find good alternatives. I found one such alt. in H&M. I was pretty bad, but on the right track. My lovely roommate back in the day modeling said alt
  Later on I would learn the top had been spotted as an H&M Plaid. Reading all the reviews and seeing none on ebay except for previous listings pretty much geared me up to except the fact that I would never in a million years own one.
  2 years later proved me wrong when I saw a listing on Ebay for quite the pretty penny. No one was touching it. Though it was expensive, the price wasnt unheard of. I had the extra cash, and I wish I could say I gracefully hit the Buy It Now button without a care in the world. Truth is, where I was had no internet connection, so I demanded my friend lend me his phone while I obsessed over the listing for about 5 minutes before I actually bought it, all the while my friend telling me I was crazy.
  I received the package just in enough time to take it to Forks with me for my first officially Stephenie Meyer Day as Bella Swan.
  The actual fabric itself is actually really soft. Though soft, there is no give. It feels delicate, but is actually very strong. The color of the fabric as a whole could be considered a bit muted, but when you study it up close, the greens and reds really pop.
  A) The shoulder straps. For some reason I just love any shirt or jacket that does that! I feel like it kind of achieves the look crazy shoulder pads were trying to achieve.
  Speaking of buttons, this unique plaid pattern allows you to wear the top buttoned or unbuttoned due to the slight curves in the vertical lines. When you have it buttoned, it gives your figure the look of a slim slightly longer torso. When its unbuttoned, the curves in the lines gives the fabric the illusion it’s still hugging your figure.
  Whether you are a company or an individual wishing to familiarize you with this new ecosystem, our experts offer three types of training tailored to your needs:
  As health care systems aspire to improve the quality and value for the consumers they serve, quality outcomes must be at the forefront of this value equation. As organizations implement evidence-based practices, electronic records to standardize processes, and quality improvement initiatives, many tactics are deployed to accelerate improvement and care outcomes. This article describes how one organization utilized a formal clinical audit process to identify gaps and/or barriers that may be contributing to underperforming measures and outcomes. This partnership between quality and audit can be a powerful tool and produce insights that can be scaled across a large health care system.
  Where does personal, expressive writing fit with our college and career requirements for deeper and deeper analysis of real world problems?
  I dictated that question to myself driving to work the other morning. Students I encounter, along with every opportunity to think with teachers about writing instruction, fuel more questions but fewer answers for me. But blog tonight is to do a think aloud.
  This recorded morning thought is maybe more about trying to understand why there is a chasm between “creative” writing and “academic” writing. Is it an imaginary or real dichotomy as in versus? Is it similar to our cultural belief that art is merely “creative” while other endeavors, such as science and math are pure and “academic?” Or maybe just a hardening of the categories?
  Several weeks ago, visiting author and teacher Tom Romano,(Fearless Writing) said to a group of us at SJAWP:
  Teachers feel great pressure. They’re conscientious. This thing about academic writing…It is that. My article in English Journal is academic: It’s in a peer-reviewed journal. We have a skewed notion of what ‘academic’ means.
  I’d like more college teachers and professional writers to help public school teachers understand what academic means.
  In my little world, if I move students to write more personally and help them loosen up to be more expressive, that clearly motivates most of them. I get more writing. Working from their own experiences, they have start-up material then can go research. Mentors can help them try out moves to improve their writing style. Comparing their drafts and thinking about various genres and formats they could use, as well as monitoring their goals as a writer, lifts the level of their thinking. But, should I rather be having them do lots of close reading of a passage and another passage and analyze, and analyze and analyze it, then write a response? Will that better prepare them for academia or for the writing they need to do in their careers or the “real world.?” (thought for another blog: what is the real world? money? being? hm…)
  Is there valid “school writing” that I ought to be teaching? I missed it. Wasn’t taught in my day. Is our main concern rightly to prep students to respond to the CAASP ELA performance task and their other exams? Is that where “academic” comes from?
  Is there a plan to get students to deep analytical writing without going through the processes that professional, published authors describe? Which seem to be deeply personal and creative…
  Last week I stumbled on the Harvard Nieman Foundation website LINK It exists “To promote and elevate the standards of journalism.” This held me strongly, because I saw the film, “The Post,” which reminded me that basically I believe the reason we need to teach students to think and write well is so that they can tell the truth. Truth to power even in the face of corruption, which will alway be where there is power.
  The rich current articles featured in The Narrative News on the Nieman Story Board amazed me, as did their commentary on “why is this good?” Narrative nonfiction from news writers unpacked thinking and experience on all the current issues. “Wow,” I thought. “I’ll bet college teachers would love for their students to write like this.” I was amazed to read, too, that most future newscasts predictably will be video, so composing a video will be a different kind of writing than the rules high school students use to write an analytical essay, won’t they?
  Maybe another problem I don’t understand is that some academic writing is academic only. Literary criticism for its own sake? It is deeper and deeper analysis of other people’s literature and, while the thinking and aesthetic exercise contributes to the mind and development of the young writer, does it get close to “real world problems?” I follow high school teacher blogs, like Moving Writers because they clearly are trying to keep their AP students using “mentors in the wild” — meaning the prolific kinds of digital texts. I think the main thing is that good writing is about deep thinking.
  Why I am infatuated with investigative reporting and the narrative nonfiction I read referenced on the Nieman Story Board? I suspect it is because I found writing there that begins with personal, up close powerful story – elegantly written with sophisticated thinking and information about the issue the reporter covered.
  If nothing else, I want to know how to help students write for the real world. If they can do that, then I won’t be worried about what they do with a few machine-score performance tasks. They’ll be more than ready.