Talita Lemes reflects on her first months at BlinkLane Consulting

After spending the first part of her professional career in homeland Brazil, Talita Lemes moved to the Netherlands six years ago to kickstart her next professional journey and follow an MBA. Now at BlinkLane Consulting, Talita helps clients with digital strategy design and transformation.

Can you tell us more about your background?

I grew up in Brazil and started my career at a global industrial gas company. I then worked in telecom and consulting before I moved to the Netherlands to start my MBA in Imagineering Business Innovation at the University of Applied Sciences in Breda.

Did you say Imagineering?

Yes indeed, the topic focuses on the engineering of our imagination. It is about how you ignite transformative process within organisations with an eye on the social environment. I was drawn to the topic because I was working within consultancy, focused on design thinking and digital transformation. Imagineering takes place at the intersection of the two domains.

What brought you to BlinkLane Consulting at the start of this year?

Prior to joining BlinkLane Consulting I was working for CM.com, a Dutch company that provides cloud software for marketing, sales and customer functions. The company is internationalising globally and that enabled me to work across different multicultural teams – I really enjoyed this part of the job as diversity brings a fresh perspective, new ways of doing things.

What I really enjoy is working on the design and execution of transformation, following a human-centred approach that combines the hard side of change with the people side. That is exactly what BlinkLane Consulting offers! I am determined to help companies tackle their transformation challenges such as becoming more agile, becoming more innovative or adopting datadriven ways of working.

How do you look back at your first five months?

As soon as I started, I immediately rolled on to a client project, where I helped the project team develop a new product development process. It was a very interesting engagement as the client was transitioning rapidly from start-up to scale up mode, which provided a dynamic context to the change process. Using design sprint sessions we helped the client develop the process and go to market.

Internally, I have received such as warm welcome by my colleagues. The culture is so friendly and family-like.

At BlinkLane Consulting, there is much room for being entrepreneurial – the firm and its team breathes an entrepreneurial spirit. If you have something in mind, if there is an initiative that you want to put in place, there is always the space to put forward that idea to someone. I think this is an excellent trait of the company’s culture, it fosters creativity and keeps people innovative.

Meanwhile, I am enjoying the mentorship program at BlinkLane Consulting, which helps you set personal development goals and then works with you to reflect on progress, and see what needs to be done to achieve the goals. This approach really helps you become a better professional (and person) – I’ve had much benefit from the first months.

Finally, what’s next on your agenda in terms of learning?

Next up is becoming a more rounded facilitator, a better communicator and knowing how to smoothly navigate within different levels in an organisation. In large companies, there are lots of different levels of hierarchy, seniority, expertise, and so on, and knowing how to approach and connect with all these levels is a key skill for anyone involved with strategy execution and making change happen.

Luckily, at BlinkLane Consulting (and parent Highberg) there are loads of opportunities for training & development, both in terms of formal training as well as on the job learning.