Working as brand manager for the Kungsörnen pancakes has proven both fun and challenging. Since my last blog post I have organized a pancake workshop, been on the last trainee training session and visited Kasper in Bydgoszcz!
During three days last week all trainees met up on a conference facility outside of Stockholm for our fourth and final training. Topics on the agenda included communication, culture and values, innovation and workshop methodologies among others. Niklas from Implement Consulting Group coached us through the days with lectures, exercises and role plays. In one of the exercises we were divided into two teams with the task to build an as high structure as possible in 20 minutes using spaghetti straws, a string, tape and a marshmallow. Here you see the winning structure created by Markus, Victoria and me:
Apart from good learnings it was also great to see all of the other trainees again and spend some time together. Right now we are all focused on finding jobs within Lantmännen from the end of the trainee program. We are employed by Lantmännen from the start of the trainee program, so we do have an employment also when the program is done, but we have to find new roles within the company. Even though we have gotten to know many parts of the organization, it can be hard to know what you want to do afterwards. Even if you do know where you would like to work, there has to be a suitable job opening that very time, looking for a profile that you match. Luckily, most of us have job leads already, but the process has been much harder than I imagined it would be.
As you might remember from my last blog post, I am currently at Lantmännen Cerealia, in a brand manager role for our Kungsörnen pancakes. Last week I organized a workshop for the team working with the pancakes, including product development, marketing and sales 
people. The purpose of the workshop was to brainstorm and prioritize ideas of how to make Kungsörnen the leading B2C brand within the pancake industry in the Nordics. The creativity flourished and a lot of great ideas surfaced for us to continue to work on and hopefully implement! Below you see my brilliant colleague Johanna pitching her ideas during the brainstorming part of the workshop:
This weekend several of us trainees visited Kasper at the Lantmännen subsidiary Scandagra in Poland. It was striking to experience how thriving and up-and-coming Poland is compared to my previous prejudices. Here is a groupie of us while sight-seeing in Bydgoszcz!
Until next time!
/Kajsa