After one week into the program I can honestly say it has been a great experience so far. This week of work flew by and felt like a fever dream. The team at Peakforce has been extremely welcoming and friendly, which made settling into the role a lot easier than expected. That being said, it is not without its own challenges. A lot of the office conversation happens in Czech, so there are definitely moments where I feel a little lost or left out of the loop. This comes with working abroad, but it is something I am actively getting used to. The role itself is fairly independent. I spend most of my time working through given tasks on my own and then presenting my findings or progress to my higher-ups. It is a different dynamic than I am used to, but I am enjoying having a level of ownership over my work.
Outside of the office, Prague is keeping me entertained. I stumbled across a soccer stadium and caught a concert happening nearby, which were two things I did not expect to see in the same week, let alone at the same time. I have also been building out a running list of places I want to explore, both around the city of Prague and outside of the Czech Republic entirely.
Time management looks very different when you are working in a startup environment abroad. There is no one hovering over your shoulder or consistently telling you what task to do next. This means you have to develop your own system quickly or you will fall behind. My approach has been pretty straightforward. Completing tasks in easily chewable chunks. Rather than trying to tackle everything at once, I break my work down into manageable pieces and focus on finishing one thing before moving to the next. This keeps me from feeling overwhelmed and helps me actually produce quality output instead of spreading myself across too many things at once.
This first week was largely centered around onboarding and getting up to speed on the company and the broader industry. That meant reviewing and revising my own global competitive landscape analysis: looking at competitors across different industries, identifying where my company sits in the market, and pulling out both the opportunities and the risks. It sounds straightforward but there is a lot to absorb when you are brand new to a company, industry, and a country where the business environment is different from what you are comfortable with back home. Breaking it into pieces made this far more manageable.
After I complete sections of work, I take the feedback I receive from my supervisor and use it to correct and update my work before moving forward. Rather than waiting until the end of a project to find out I was heading in the wrong direction, checking in periodically with supervisors and adjusting early has saved me a lot of time and produces better results. It has also been a good way to build my relationships with colleagues I am still getting to know. When there is downtime, I try not to waste it. Instead of sitting idle, I go back to what I have already done and look for ways to sharpen it. Whether that is cleaning up an analysis or thinking about a new angle I have not explored yet, staying productive in those gaps keeps the momentum going.
Overall the days have been flying by, which I think says a lot about the work. When you are genuinely engaged in what you are doing, you tend not to watch the clock, just like when you are having fun with friends. Working in a Czech startup has added a layer to all of this that I did not fully anticipate. Back home, work environments tend to be more structured and directive. Here, the expectation is that you figure things out and bring your results to the table. That kind of independence requires a different level of self-awareness and self-management. You have to know what you are working on, why it matters, and how to communicate it clearly, especially when language barriers mean you cannot always rely on others to fill in the gaps.
This experience is shaping how I think about global competency in a real way. It is one thing to read about working across cultures in a classroom, but it’s a whole other experience to sit in a room with the conversation being held in a language you cant even pick up keywords in. Finding a way to do my job well and add value to the company has been important to me so I’ve been focusing on my discipline and managing my time to stay fully focused on my tasks at hand.
