- Lady Loki goes through the same prisoner onboarding that Loki did, but she escapes during her trial
- Ravonna meets with the timekeepers to discuss what next steps should be with the Loki variants (1:1 meetings)
- Loki is placed in a bad memory prison and realizes how his actions affect people (fuckups and wins for insights)
- Mobius and Ravonna sign off on Loki variant case and “celebrate” (have fun)
Oh boy! My process brain is overloading watching these episodes, let alone trying to contemplate what’s going on and will happen in future episodes. So much to unravel.
Episode 4 was probably my favorite because we start to learn more about the TVA and finally meet the Timekeepers 😮
We are shown a glimpse of what happened to Lady Loki (aka Sylvie) and how she became a variant. Ravonna even played with her emotions by stating she didn’t remember why she was told to pluck Sylvie from her timeline (she totally remembered!).
By the end of the episode, it is revealed that someone – or something – else is behind the Timekeepers. I had already done some research after past episodes and have a strong inkling of who the villain may be. It also aligns well with the future releases of movies and their titles, such as the future Doctor Strange movie, and potentially even the next Spiderman installment. But I won’t mention who I think the big bad villain is – we’ll leave it as He Who Must Not Be Named (no, it’s not Voldemort. Yes, I’m a Harry Potter nerd, too 🧙).
Let’s unpack some more of the processes we see in episode 4.
More prisoner onboarding – in a flashback, we see that Sylvie went through the same prisoner onboarding that Loki did in episode 1, except she escaped before judgement. Check out my blog post here for more on that process.
1:1 meeting – We get to see Ravonna meeting up with the Timekeepers, which is our first real glimpse of them. She is discussing what the next steps should be to apprehend Loki and Sylvie. This is a great example of a 1:1 meeting – something that is ultra-important for your business. As much as it’s great to trust your team to do their best work and move your business forward, you need to have 1:1 meetings with your direct reports, and their direct reports (these are called skip-level meetings). I suggest booking 1:1 meetings on your calendar with your direct reports. This formalizes the meeting and forces you to you commit to it. It’s fine to have impromptu 1:1 “meetings” sometimes, to gauge how your direct reports are feeling, but it’s also important to schedule formalized times to meet. If you’re just starting out with 1:1 meetings, I would feel them out for how they best work in your day-to-day schedule.
If you’re looking for some excellent content on how to run a 1:1 meeting, I highly recommend checking out the fellow.app blog. They have excellent content on 1:1 meetings as well as a few small books you can utilize to prepare for and navigate these types of meetings. Check their blog out here and directly under the Resource section of their homepage.
“F*ckups and Wins” for insights and feedback – this is the name of an actual channel in the Blueprint Accounting Teams account. This idea came from the book Principles by Ray Dalio. My business partner, Scott , shared this with me, and we find it compelling as a way to share any f*ckups or wins by the team, across the team. The point of the channel isn’t to make anyone feel bad about a f*ckup, because any time someone adds one, they need to provide the lesson they learned. And that is how this channel provides real value to our team . As the team adds these f*ckups, they also provide the lesson learned so that we all can learn from each other by sharing our mistakes , we help each other learn what not to do. Sharing our f*ckups reminds everyone to reframe the way we look at mistakes; they are not the end of the world, they are lessons to learn from. This also helps keep us all humble. . Scott and I also share our f*ckups with the team because no one is perfect and we know we aren’t.
On the flip side we like to share our wins as a team as well. Whether that’s something you’re proud of or something a client has acknowledged you for, we like to hear about that and celebrate as a team. Scott and I have acknowledged team members directly in this channel when they do something outstanding for a client or the team. For example, when we’re able to increase our fees as a direct result of a team member overdelivering with a client, that’s something to celebrate in the F*ckups and Wins channel.
How does this relate to Loki you ask? Loki gets thrown into the bad memory prison where he relives his “f*ckup” with Lady Sif around the time he chopped her hair off in her sleep. A little bit of mischief from his past results in him reliving her reaction over and over, accompanied by a punch to the jaw and groin. I can feel the pain already! This bad memory prison allows Loki to reflect on his past wrongdoings, but also results in him helping Mobius realize something else more sinister within the TVA. A f*ckup with a lesson learned.
Celebrate the wins – this one is a toss in for this episode. Ravonna and Mobius celebrate the “win” of closing the Loki variant file. Clearly not actually in Mobius’ eyes as he questions Ravonna’s true intentions within the TVA. But they sipped what I assume is some whiskey and semi-celebrated.
As I mentioned above where Blueprint uses one mechanism to celebrate wins, sometimes it’s good to formalize a process on celebrating wins. Maybe your team has a specific way of celebrating with a team dinner, or party, or whatever else comes to mind. That can be the output of your process after you’ve measured your target and realized you’ve hit it. It’s all part of the process, even if it’s an output (IPO model anyone?).