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Having begun her journey with RevoU in June 2020 as a student, Putri Ramadhani Saragih (Head of Learning Excellence) put her heart into RevoU and continued to give impacts to RevoU students by developing the Learning Excellence team from the beginning.
She and her team grew RevoU exponentially from 10 to 10,000+ students enrolled and maintained their high satisfaction rate!
For her, the Learning Excellence team is “The Core of RevoU,” where they pour out their passion for managing and innovating end-to-end student learning experiences.
They give their best to provide the best experience for RevoU students and other stakeholders, even if that means doing things that don't bring any profit to RevoU in the short term.
So, how do Putri and the team keep innovating the student learning experience in RevoU? What does it feel like to have an impact on RevoU through the Learning Excellence team?
Let’s take a closer look inside RevoU’s Learning Excellence team!
Putri’s Career Journey with RevoU
Before she became Head of Learning Excellenceat RevoU, Putri Ramadhani Saragih had a promising career in banking, especially in product management.
As she worked in product management, she knew she had to improve other domains to enhance her expertise continuously.
One of the domains that she needs to improve is digital marketing because she usually collaborates with the marketing communication team and is required to create products to meet their needs.
This was when she met RevoU, which offered intensive digital marketing learning from industrial experts. Not only theoretical knowledge but also to hone practical skills through various projects.
Just like other RevoU students, Putri had doubts about switching careers to digital marketing, and she’ll have to go back to entry-level.
“But here’s what convinced me to join RevoU. I was so amazed when I was approached directly by Matteo (Co-Founder & CEO of RevoU), and he answered all my concerns.
How RevoU approaches customers so dearly is what makes it unique. Because from my experience in banking, we rarely contact customers directly.
And I think this is how companies should interact with their customers.” Putri said.
As a student, she also experienced how RevoU is passionate about its students. Since that day, she decided to contribute all to RevoU!
Started as a part-time Digital Marketing Team Lead in June 2020, full-time Product Manager in September 2020, and continuously climbed her career ladder to Head of Learning Excellence until now!
Learning Excellence Team Contributions in RevoU
When Putri was asked about one sentence that can describe the Learning Excellence team, she said, “Learning Excellence is the core of RevoU.”
Meaning the RevoU Learning Excellence team does not only run RevoU’s products (programs).
But also empowering students—who came from the Admission Team, Content Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and other platforms—through the best learning experiences and make them succeed in their job-seeking process, even their career journey.
The Learning Excellence team also explores and innovates students' learning experience by improving Learning Management System (LMS) and class, and managing RevoU stakeholders (students, instructors, and career mentors).
Evolution of RevoU Learning Excellence Team
Since 2020, the RevoU Learning Excellence team has evolved gradually, both in the number of students and stakeholders and scope of work.
From 10 to 10,000 students enrolled.
From 1 program (Digital Marketing) to 4 programs (Digital Marketing, Data Analytics, Product Management, and Software Engineering), Kampus Merdeka, and B2B programs.
From 5 to 500 industry experts as instructors and career mentors.
These changes also shift how the RevoU Learning Excellence team works from running programs without interruption to maintaining North Star Metrics that will affect student outcome quality.
Adapting to RevoU students' growth, Putri also expanded her team. Hired new members and explored new systems to increase the quality of the team.
One thing she constantly does since 2020 is to create a team vision/theme.
"Values of the company are important to me. If you’re working in the company without knowing its values, it feels like you’re in a relationship without knowing the person well. It feels awkward, right?
That’s why I translated RevoU's vision and values to my team each year according to the current condition."
For example:
- In 2021, since we’re still in the early stage, we focused on transforming the Learning Excellence team to be better.
- In 2022, we had “Proud Inside to Make Others Amaze Outside” as our theme. Focusing on building self-confidence amongst the team that will be reflected in our work—resulting in the best student outcomes possible.
- In 2023, I’ve seen that our team members are happy, self-confident, and reflected it in their work. So, our focus this year is to mobilize positive energy to make the Learning Excellence team the best place to work for team members!
The Approach in Developing New Program
Started with only Digital Marketing Program, currently, RevoU has 4 programs: Digital Marketing, Data Analytics, Product Management, and Software Engineering.
This challenges Putri to lead different functions with different expertise across the programs, which might not be in her expertise.
She has 2 approaches to the team in developing new programs:
#1 Prepare the team
For Putri, the most important things to be prepared for are the mindset and how the team does it.
To prepare the team's mindset, each team member should know why they’re here, that is, to help RevoU students succeed. Putri will give various perspectives to the team on why there will be a new program/batch? What will the journey for this new program be like?
She will also prepare about how the team does it. She will encourage the team to think strategically. Not only to think about the present but take it further, to another quarter or even years (according to team members’ level).
The team will be much more prepared to adapt to new things or changes through these approaches.
#2 Encourage the team to do work with the highest standards
Aligned with RevoU’s culture, Putri also cares for her team by encouraging them to work with the highest standards. Be it for developing new programs or business as usual.
One of her methods is to move the due date/timeline forward. This is to get more preparation time to assess and implement experimental methods in new programs.
For example, when RevoU is preparing to launch a new program, the Learning Excellence team will try to adapt best practices from the existing program and add new methods/improvements.
They break the timeline into several milestones, such as D-2 months, they try to assess their plans, and D-1 month is to implement those plans and evaluate them before launching.
Learning Excellence Team’s Culture
#1 Kindness
Putri always starts the meeting by asking how’s everyone doing. She believes that openness about personal and professional life can build empathy, respect, and selflessness amongst Learning Excellence team members.
“In the RevoU Learning Excellence team, we are going through all the journey—ups and downs—together.
I don’t want to let my team feel alone in this journey. I always say that if my team has any problem, feel free to talk to me. We are not meant to carry our burdens alone!
Empathy can be built in our professional and personal lives through this practice. ” Putri said.
#2 Candor
At the end of the meeting, Putri will seek feedback from her team. She sees feedback as the best tool to improve herself, which will lead to the team's improvement as well.
Despite being a Manager herself, Putri isn't afraid to admit her mistakes. This inspires the team to be open to each other, fail safely, and improve together!
#3 Highest Standards
Putri encourages her team to do their work at the highest possible standards. She put her heart into building her team members to be high-value people.
For example, not jumping to conclusions before researching, validating, and analyzing the data.
Or if the person is leading a team, Putri will guide more in People Development: how to know their team members, how to help and build the team to meet the team & company goals, etc.
#4 Passion
Besides that, Putri also develops passion and ownership in the Learning Excellence team.
Ensure each team member is passionate about life and work—RevoU students, first and foremost.
“Will this task have a good impact on the student (directly or indirectly)?” is the question Putri asks Learning Excellence team members regarding prioritization.
By ensuring each task impacts the student, Learning Excellence team members will understand why they do what they do and why their work matters.
Passionate about RevoU students means Putri and her team will do everything possible to make RevoU students succeed. Even if it means they have to put off their work for a while or if it doesn’t bring profit to RevoU in the short term.
One of the moments that Putri is most proud of is when she’s still a Product Manager. Back then, a student didn’t join the class because she had a conflict with her group. But Putri saw her potential through her assignments!
She decided to set up a call with her, asked her what she felt, and gave her advice,
“I tell her, why do you have to give up due to external factors that you can’t even control? You have a huge dream to be a digital marketer. Too bad if you gave up your dreams. We can solve this problem together!”
The student finally continued her journey with RevoU, and she nailed it! She was hired at a unicorn startup in Indonesia as a digital marketer.
Approach to Excel Learning Excellence Team’s Performance
#1 As a leader, know yourself first
First, Putri told us to lead a team, she has to understand herself first. She loves assessing herself through methods such as MBTI, DISC, communication skills, etc.
She learned from her first-time manager to improve her leadership skills and read leadership-related books. Some of her recommended books for managers: Becoming A Manager by Linda A. Hill, The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch, and Start With Why by Simon Sinek.
#2 Know your team members well and coach them
When managing a team, each member might have different challenges & expectations in their work. Some might be okay, and others might struggle with getting things done.
Putri finds that knowing your team members well and coaching them is important to handle this.
- Ask why they feel that way. what are the blockers? If it’s because of a personal issue that requires them to take days off, it’s okay! But if it’s not, then Putri will try to find out the strength and weaknesses that can be improved.
- Give them related resources. Putri will usually point out feedback about the blockers and give illustration/guidance to help the team meet the standard.
- Ask what kind of help they need. Do they need help prioritizing their tasks? Do they need step-by-step instructions to help them get things done? Then, offer them help! Putri often gives a timeframe for this. For example, she’ll give step-by-step instructions for 2 weeks, and in week-3, the team should be able to do it.
#3 Be a great manager
According to Putri, compassion and coaching skills are two things that distinguish good vs great managers.
Good managers can manage their job and team, especially functional aspects. But they are not necessarily close with the team and can even find it hard to grow the team.
But great managers are close with the team and coach the team using a personal approach. Great managers will personalize their approach to each team member because every person has their uniqueness, background, strengths, and weaknesses.
Great managers should build empathy by knowing their team members. By having empathy, they can help guide the team to get out of the crisis by giving them personalized suggestions.
#4 Train new managers as the team grow
As the Learning Excellence team grows, Putri has promoted and coached Individual Contributors from her team to move into managerial roles.
But before promoting them, there are 2 things she evaluates:
- Capability to handle big projects that involved 2 or more functions. Managing other teams that are not his/her direct report will be more difficult. So, if he/she can make a clear direction, manage progress from each member, and hit the goals, he/she can be considered as ready to be promoted.
- Quality of his/her skill, attitude, and work, even the tedious one. Putri believes that if we don't maintain the highest standards in little things, then we won’t maintain it in greater responsibilities.
#5 Keep challenging the team & thrive for better
Putri said that if we want better results, we must do it with better strategies. Never settle for a status quo.
One thing that she always does with her team is to ask them to think long-term.
Keep asking:
- What is the status quo?
- What are/might be problems in the current condition? Why?
- What are the challenges we face in implementing the strategy?
- What are the goals we want to achieve? How do we get there?
- What if we do something to improve this? What will we try?
Those are 5 approaches from Putri to excel the Learning Excellence team’s performance that will impact to RevoU’s growth!
If you want to work with Putri in our Learning Excellenceteam, you can apply by clicking here or the "Explore Roles" button below.
