Rehumanizing Work and the Organism of Odetta

Newsletter Issue: September 2021

Dear?Reader,

The early summer months were challenging as we recovered from two of our largest customers’ "automating our workflows." This is an inherent tension in serving as the bridge between AI and repeatable work. We reshuffled our teams and shared the burden across the platform. Nonetheless, the organism of Odetta was sick. We took our extra capacity and invested our efforts in training every level of leadership, holding hundreds of “1-on-1s” to listen to our Odettians' needs. We raised the hourly rates of anyone we could, but we knew the cure was more business.

In August, our platform volume nearly doubled, and we were able to provide much-needed work and income to many in our network. With the intensity of this growth, our front-line team became over-stretched, and we lost some good people due to burnout. Again, we examined our wound. We realized that in our effort to meet our clients’ needs, we had become transactional in our communication. Our meetings lacked the usual mental health check-ins and the personal stories that connected us as a Sisterhood. Realizing our mistake, our leadership team started communicating with more emotion, deploying constructive feedback only after praise, and bringing more of our full selves to work. While the external world may only see the increased use of emojis on Slack, I believe that this type of holistic healing applied to our organizational organism will be what leads to our longevity.

In our early founding, as we nose-dived into the world of spreadsheets, robots, and AI, we knew our role was to rehumanize work. We actively shifted the model from an economically driven assembly line of work towards a more inclusive program, where we view ourselves as nurturing the living and breathing organism of Odetta. We view Odetta as a being that we must protect from internal and external disruption, and we believe that we cannot reach our potential as a community unless we allow Odettians to bring their authentic selves to work. Underneath it all is our shared purpose which allows us to be larger than the sum of ourselves.

We are reminded that it is our mission statement that allows us to weather the natural shocks of growth.

Katharine

Monthly Spotlight: Market Sizing Exercises

We received an interesting market sizing project this month, where we had to size a market, evaluate available statistics from publicly available data, and present our findings in word a presentation with a literature review of sources. At a price point of $300 for 20 hours of research, our client saved their internal team tons of time!

Customer Testimonial

“Odetta did a fantastic job with our market size research project — they were fast, on-budget and the end product was concise, high-value data and well-formatted with all source references footnoted for easy reference.”

—?Peter, VP of Product and Growth Marketing, DashProphet.com

Odettian Quote

“Despite being educated, I felt miserable after my marriage. My education and talent were not appreciated. I had to live on minimal pocket money. I was not allowed to work even though I had been awarded the Silver medal twice in my University. I had a good background but I had been degraded at every step.

Then out of nowhere, I found Odetta and it changed my perspective. I started earning and felt empowered. It has been 1.5 years and Odetta is like my only hope for my and my kids future. So thank you, Odetta. ??"?

—?An Odettian’s Quote from our Community Chat

Quote of the Month

“No matter where you're from, your dreams are valid.”

—?Lupita Nyong'o,?Actress, Activist