Scheduling on a printer sheet for each day, WhatsApp for team communications and no pre-scheduled team meetings or check-ins...

My family has been in the supermarket business for decades and there is no one else I'm more inspired by than them. They built this business from the ground up, the growth in my lifetime alone is impressive beyond compare. But it's 2022, and the whole team is bootstrapped for time. The entire office operates on borrowed time, every conversation is in reaction to a problem, and top management has virtually no full days off.

I've been pulled into this environment and tasked with digitising this reactive ticking time bomb into a proactive, toxic-free work culture.

How I Plan to Convert General Food's Work Culture

General Food is a business with over 140 staff members and a lot of disjointed but well-functioning systems in place. The movements toward more robust organisation and management began before I came, but are limited because of the technology gap. My aim is to convert their systems to a new tech stack that is interconnected and automated.

I'll be using Notion+Discord+Google Suite as the core of the system.

The Challenges

The team is certainly not used to using technology in the way I envision them doing so. That means I will have to make the UI impeccable, and create training videos and workshops separate and apart from building the systems themselves.

I will also have to consider the limitations of access to technology for certain departments that won't necessarily have the gear necessary.

I'm excited about this journey and everything I will learn about Systems Engineering and API integrations!

**Follow along if you want to see the progress I make with this project as a new systems engineer in this capacity.