Iogen is the largest Finnish importer of ophthalmic surgical supplies. We operate with a consultative approach, which means that we understand our customers' needs and help them with them.

Because it is a small specialty, we have a reasonably small team. Pulling together is very important to us. In particular, good communication within our team is really important when we are serving expert clients.

We are open - which is both our strength and our challenge

We communicate openly. We work in surgery, so you always have to be fact-based. Sometimes, however, openness can mean being too blunt.

The challenges are crystallised in the personal characteristics of the individuals concerned. There is no single culture or set of rules for communication, we are individuals and have strong personalities in the house. When you have strong personalities, sometimes what happens is that you bring up and mostly find problems. The search for solutions can be less important. Sometimes we are very happy to bring out the negative aspects.

SmoothTeam helped to develop our partnership

Twice a year, we hold World Domination Days to develop our cooperation and activities and plan future directions. Some might call them a joint retreat or strategy meeting. In this case, we spent three days together developing Iogen. In SmoothTeam, we were looking for new tools for how to discuss issues.

How do I listen, how do we listen to each other in our team?

The discussion brought by SmoothTeam was startling. We had been through identically similar issues before. When we went through the simulation, the same people came up with completely different perspectives. The team members spoke openly in a completely different way.

I thought I had asked before, but I hadn't. It was a mirror for me to look at myself: facilitation, listening and interaction are not so strong for me. This nakedly brought the issue to the fore and I decided that this listening was something I really needed to start working on.

This has a big cumulative effect on everything. If you don't get real answers out of your own communication style, it rots the whole community and makes it impossible to function later.

It is important to be able to discuss things by their real names. It was terribly positive that SmoothTeam pointed out how much we need to improve. At the same time, the simulation confirmed that the tools are there. Not just diagnosing the disease, but finding ways to communicate better and understand each other.

To put it crudely: if one parent scolds their children and the other speaks gently and gently, you can speculate how the children will grow and develop. Which interactor do I want to be at work?

During the simulation, we found tools to work better together. We have already talked internally about continuing to use SmoothTeam in the future, the feedback was so excellent.

SmoothTeam helped us address our strategy

SmoothTeam helped us with our strategy. Our knowledge is incomplete and we have to make choices about where to take the company in certain product ranges and where to invest. This is another area where we have a new way of talking.

In particular, we made visible the hidden ideas of people that had not been expressed before. Everyone was asked for an honest opinion and given time and space to express their views on the topic - everyone was given time to reflect and feedback was collected, individually and in groups. However, during the SmoothTeam work, it became clear that people had a lot of ideas that they had not shared. There was a lack of effective leadership. With this tool, you can really see where you are going. 

We realised that we have only been playing around with asking for feedback. It was only now that people started to tell us when we asked in a better way. It was magical to watch the mental locks this opened. The phenomenon can be linked to psychological safety. With SmoothTeam, a human touch comes automatically. 

I recommend SmoothTeam without reservation

I have unreservedly recommended SmoothTeam to many. Life is easy: if I ask myself if I should shave, the answer is automatically yes. There are also those where the answer is automatically no. This use of SmoothTeam is one of those things in life where you should automatically say yes, if you even think about whether you might need it.

SmoothTeam works especially well for teams that are genuinely dependent on each other's input. There are also teams that are in the same unit but work more on an individual basis. When you're hunting mammoths, you need a team, an individual doesn't do anything. And this is for those teams that are dependent on each other, and want to bring down that mammoth.

Tero Rinne
Founder, Chairman of the Board
Iogen Oy

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