My first hundred days with Rocsole.

This year is a special one.

 First of all, I stepped into the shoes of leading a fine amazing tech company, ROCSOLE, in a phase where we are growing strongly. Last years’ results showed that our solutions and service hit the right buttons and now both our and the customers appetite grew.

When scaling up a business it helps to have a market and a plan, but at the same time you don’t know exactly what you steer into. The plans are part of a mental processes and needs to be adaptable. I have a strong belief that it is really in this phase that the true innovation is born.

You need a fine mix of the right resources, a team of people that can not only function in a startup doing R&D projects, but now for real, delivering more consistently. The customer expectations move from “can it work” to that “it has to work”. The pressure is on as you have to support, manage and show leadership to enable the team that has delivered excellent results with technology development and early piloting to now having to deliver according to set standards, specifications and other requirements, and make the technology work in operational environments.

You also need to ensure that your processes are adequate and even establish new ones. Here I listen to my inner voice – “don’t do it by yourself, make sure that the team, who actually are more capable than you in terms of knowing what we do, what we should not do and how we could improve” to help building future company and combine this with the market needs and detected gaps. You have to listen to learn and be able to use your own capabilities in the best way. Based on close cooperation and the interactions between us we can efficiently build a new modus operandi, get rid of inefficiencies and waste, a first step towards a lean management process that can support flawless project execution and the right quality in every step of the value chain.

Certainly, there are hiccups and some "failures", but picking them up and learning from our sometimes not so perfect task deliveries makes us even better and stronger. Defining our processes actually also taps into our values - doing agile developments where we quickly learn new things also from our failures are important to coming up with really innovative solutions. The DNA of a startup carries so much energy, creativity and capabilities. It is about quick decision making, with continuous risk assessments of so many things in parallel and a drive to deliver excellent customer services.

Solidifying the startup values with how we grow up as a company becoming a trusted business partner to our clients requires a willing, a set of values along with processes that makes us that reliable force to count on. And we create this with the people we are and the new ones we bring in. At the same time I am impressed of the team and individuals in our group - very complimentary, knowledgeable and agile.

Secondly, this year has taken some critical turns; the COVID-19 virus affecting people, societies and countries severely. On top of that working in the oil & gas industry the big oil price drop has changed the dynamics in the industry totally. I believe that how we interact with each other, how business is done and what the markets and clients demand will look very different in the new normal life when we get back to that, hopefully sooner than later.

Even more digitalization, proper intelligent data and remote guidance and support will be in high demand. We should be in the right spot with our services and solutions for production optimization, at the same time we are also learning from the situation.

We have in the company run a variety of scenarios, stress testing our setup and capabilities to remain strong in this turbulent phase. Some people including myself are now working in a home office setting, clients not allowing 3rd parties to enter their sites, supply chain challenges – but all-in-all I see a picture of a strong company making itself heard. Our first quarter was very strong and we have a strong position into the second quarter despite the global situation, which I have recently also reported to the company board and the employees. I am also pleased to see how much attention and interest we are getting and the type of people and companies we attract.

It has been very helpful to talk with a large amount of our investors, clients, partners, advisors and network in general to find the right course in the scaleup phase when also the surrounding environment is changing dramatically. Important is to stay alert, hands-on and have a guiding star to steer towards the main goal.

I strongly believe in our team and in that we will be able to come a long way reaching our ambitious goals, without forgetting to find work exciting, fun and rewarding.

We have a vision of making industry a safer and better place to be and I hope you will let us show how that can be done.

 So this leads me to the next point, reaching out to you:

How is your scaleup company doing? What are the innovation needs in the industry the coming years? How to get hold of investor attention and adequate funding? How can we speed up digitalization? Please reach out to me if you have something you want to discuss or post a comment.

The team Rocsole is ready to help out with your process challenges for mapping, monitoring and predictions contributing to making the future of energy better.

Stay safe!

/Mika Tienhaara

NOTE: The author is in his 8th startup venture and has a track record of more than 20 successful technology commercialization projects. He has more than 15 years background from the upstream oil & gas industry and has more than 30 technical publications. The author has over 20 years of international industry experience, a career that has taken him to a variety of countries and rewarding work with multicultural teams and challenging projects. He is based in Oslo, Norway.