A just do it mentality

After spending six years at two different companies in multiple countries, I decided I wanted to do more of what I had done so far but on a larger scale: managing an operation with at least 400 people. After my Google search I quickly found out about the role ‘Continuous Improvement & Operations Manager’ at Picnic. I heard about Picnic before, when I used Picnic as an example in a presentation about ‘new mobility’ in my last job in the Netherlands in 2016, but at that time the company was still in its infancy. By now they had gotten a lot bigger and proven that their business model is successful. I started to read about Picnic’s growth and vision and applied for the job one day later.

Being an operations manager in a young and (exponentially) growing company is something totally different from the corporate world I started my career in and the startup I worked for thereafter. Quick decision-making, a ‘just do it’ mentality, and the belief that it’s better to initiate and start 10 initiatives of which 2 or 3 will be a success instead of initiating 10, pitching 5, work on a plan for 3 and start with 1 is something I had to get used to. Over the last 4 months, I learned a lot about the Picnic way of working, and I am slowly getting used to the fact that we are running this FC with an exceptionally young and dynamic team.

So far I have been working on introducing new equipment; new training procedures; and initiatives related to the quality of picking; and information sharing across teams within our FC as well as across all Picnic locations. I am convinced we can make huge steps with more information sharing; standardising our fulfilment operations; and a bigger focus on employee development. Enough to do, and enough energy within the team of 744 people at my Fulfilment Center in Rotterdam, so I am in the right place and I cannot wait to use my experience to make a real impact! 

–Kim Knape, Continuous Improvement & Operations Manager