Enough is Enough — Year 2023 and 2022 in retrospect and some guidance for the year 2024
The new year is ahead of us and many of us (like me now) are making plans for the coming year. The dream of us — the planners of life — is that somehow we have learned from our mistakes and successes and become better versions of ourselves in the future. Reflection is the source of all learning.
My Reflection:
The path from 2022 and 2023 cannot continue as it is and a fundamental change is needed. Year 2024 for the Ministry of Good Spirit will be extremely focused and actions are limited to provide maximum impact with as little effort as possible. This is easy to say but hard to do especially for me so we need to take a look back to the history and analyze where the change for better actually needs to take place.
Bear with me a bit of a reflection from the past. The history will reveal arguments why the following year will be what it is.
Year 2022 — Ministry of Good Spirit is Shaping Up
The Ministry of Good Spirit is a Community
The community grew from 1 person to 80 people during the year 2022
Ministry of Good Spirit Has an Anthem
The full scale war by russia started and covid-19 was still very much in our minds and thoughts. Ministry of Good Spirit still was able to organise a get together at Vanha. Where the anthem — Hellempi Maailma was launched.
Ukraine Becomes a Focus For the Ministry
Right after the event Ministry of Good Spirit started its activities to support Ukraine. Thanks to Hannele Mennala and Vitalyi Lisovyi we were able to organise first start up competition for Ukrainian start ups. Ministry of Good Spirit gave a scholarship to Igor Klymenko (16 at that time) and Yaroslava Polyarkova (16 at that time.)
Impact Projects Are Growing — Still
The impact projects: Stories of the nation, Forest NGO and 113 took their first steps and in the Summer of 2022 Minstry of Good Spirit and Fornemus partnered with Apulanta to deliver birch seeds to the world.
I took a look at my journal reflections from the year 2022: the key insights of the year was for me that I have found an unique idea: Good spirit is a new way of thinking of life and business and perhaps it would be a great idea to experiment to scale the idea in the year 2023.
Year 2023 — The Growth (of everything) continues
Warning! Before you read on … try not to get exhausted. I have tried to keep the list of things as short as possible.
The community is getting bigger
The community of the good spirit people keeps on growing. The member count rose from 80 people to 200 by the end of year 2023. The growth happend not only in Finland but in Singapore and Ukraine.
Ukraine activities are getting serious
The aggression continued after the winter and it became very claer that the Ministry of Good Spirit needs to continue the efforts to support Ukraine and find multiple ways to do that.
Ministry of Good Spirit Launches its strategy
Like in 2022, 2023 had its main event in the spring. Almost 100 people gathered to Innovation Home Kamppi to hear the new strategy for the Ministry of Good Spirit, the keynote by Esa Saarinen, groupwork around Ukraine, Stories of the Nation and Forest.
Music is the answer
We need to fight the evil with all possible weapons. I am not a soldier or arms dealer so the Ministry of Good Spirit needs to find alternative ways to resist the evil — Therefore the music.
In the summer of 2023 Dalia Staveska and other partners gathered forces and we were able to bring in Inso-Lviv — a symphony orchestra from Ukraine to play to concerts in Finland.
Forests activities transformed towards art project
Forest in Finland grows slowly so there is no need to hurry. Speed is essential in Ukraina, but too much hurry creates distress in the finnish forests.
The Direction Towards 2024 Starts Shaping Up
The fall started with a second trip to Ukraine. This time ministry of good spirit was invited to speak at the IT Arena 2023 and be part of the jury. The trip was a success: not only I got to meet great people, but afterwards I was confirmed that we in EU and especially in Finland can and need to more to support our friends.
Stories of the Nation
Plenty of Ukraine, but other projects and work continued as well. Our project to gather stories of the nation reached its first milestone. Five beautiful and insightful stories were published in our website .
Going towards 2024
Year ended with a trip to dreamland. One the key projects trhoughout the year has been to think about how could we help Ukraine not only with money, weapons, humanitarian aide. The key idea has been already a year to use music as way to create connections. The first idea was to organize series of events and activities in the countries that shares borders with Russia.
Finally in December we took the first initiative and travelled to Los Angeles to explore how might we (Finns) be able to understand what does Ukraine mean. After gathering 20 Ukrainian heart — songs the creative team selected four to be recorded and translated to finnish.
What now?
Many things happened but my own reflection is that the ministry of good spirit has been able to grow its reach and increase the opportunities but it failed to deliver real impact to its members and failed to achieve its goals in time. The question is that were the plans and objectives too challenging or optimistic or was the work and activities focused on the wrong things. The answer is that both.
In order for me to plan for 2024 the radical truth is essential to understand — The planning and objectives of the ministry of good spirit has been too idealistic and unrealistic. The activities and resource allocation has been unfocused and lacking priorities.
The key is to translate the learnings from 2022 and 2023 in to wisdom that I can use in the year 2024.
Therefore the focus for 2024 is simply
- Finish the book of Ministry of Good Spirit
- Focus the energy in H1 to Ukraine — Plan to be announced
- Amplify the value to members by communication and good spirit ventures
It will be a challenge for a restless mind like me to stick to the plan, but I try.
Thank you.
