Stopping The Clock

Time waits for no one.

I’m home now. The best working experience of my career so far has come to an end. In previous posts I’ve reflected on some of the attributes that made it so good. I’ve talked about team-building, cultural awareness, focus on people and relationships, and taking a deep interest in your client. The other key factor here was time; and it wasn’t a variable, it was well and truly fixed.

This has been a fantastic experience for understanding how to work effectively in a time-boxed situation. I have been involved in I.T. projects for many years. Time slippage is something that I have seen far too frequently. Who hasn’t in this industry? On this project in Cuenca, we had no option to extend time; we were all booked on flights out  the day after the project was planned to conclude. The clock well and truly stopped on Friday 23rd March 2018, when we had a public event to present our outcomes to our clients. We had to show up with our job done and delivered (see my LinkedIn page for the video of my final presentation).

We started this engagement with only two certainties: we had exactly four weeks to deliver and we were each in a team of four IBM’ers who had never met in person before. Beyond that, there were some variables, the most important of which was our draft statement of work which had been prepared for us in advance of our arrival. Initially, we had no ability to comment as to whether the expected outputs could be successfully completed in the timeframe. We just had to trust that it was reasonable. Experience has proven that “trust”  in I.T. project planning is not always something to be relied upon!

The reality check soon set in. A fair chunk of week one would be spent scoping the project properly and finalising the statement of work. So this is when our collective experience and all the training we’d received pre-arrival kicked in. We had to form, storm, norm and perform all on the first day. We had to very quickly settle into operating relationships, build trust and rapport with each other and our client, understand what we each brought to the team and crack into it. Your mindset becomes really focused very quickly when you know the project end date absolutely cannot and will not move and, as individuals, you’re all on point to make it happen. Collective reputations were at stake, including the credibility of the IBM Corporate Service program for our client.

The approach for delivering on time to a project with a hard end date is often to minimise scope but this can lead to a compromise where something sub-standard is delivered. That would not be an acceptable outcome for us. In fact, once we got into the heart of week one and finalised our scope we actually increased what we had to do because we felt a critical pre-requisite was missing from the plans we inherited. This became a pattern later on, when we took our project a stage further and eventually significantly over-delivered to our agreed scope.

So how did we put ourselves in a position to be successful? I could use all sorts of industry jargon to explain what we did, but in reality it all came down to a few key things:

• a very high level of professionalism whereby meeting our clients’ expectations was the only possible acceptable outcome;
• a big dose of practical common sense in how we planned, tracked and executed our work, focusing only on the outcome and where value is derived;
• continuous daily communication and reviews with our client to ensure expectations were aligned at all stages and that there would be no negative surprises or misunderstandings;
• total elimination of politics, agendas, egos, individualism and distractions for the good of the holistic team and our client;
• putting our hearts into it, we were physically, mentally and emotionally entirely committed to deliver a great outcome;
• and through all of the above, we probably made our own luck.

Ultimately, by the early part of week 4, we found ourselves in an amazing place. Having taken our client through our recommendations and draft deliverables the feedback we got was “this is a dream come true, you have solved problems for us that we have had for many years“. It really doesn’t get much better than that.

To think that it’s possible to bring four people who have never worked together before to achieve that, all from different countries with different cultural biases, two of whom did not have English as their primary language, and for all of us, we were experiencing working with a new client, in a new country with a different language. And, all in a very tight time-box!

Image: Our team of four IBM’ers (Vania Doria, Brazil; Vikram Tiwari, India; myself and Lilian Wu, China) with a piece of art that we bought for our client SENDAS to thank them for their amazing hospitality to us – note that the Hummingbird is the national bird of Ecuador.

My biggest take-away here is that you really can achieve anything if you all, as a team, really put your heart into something and spend all your time and energy totally focused on the activities that get to an outcome of true value. To do this, you have to make sacrifices: you need to sacrifice the negative energy and loss of time that typically impacts projects due to politics, egos, agendas, commercial wranglings and slow decision-making. The two most important things are your outcome to be delivered and your end date by which you make it happen. Everything else is basically a distraction. Far too many project team members spend far too much time on distractions, and we wonder why so many projects fail.

In future, my contribution to projects will be to help teams better eliminate distractions to focus on delivering value and, importantly, to do it on time.

Image: All smiles across the collective SENDAS and IBM team at the end of a very successful project.

Over and out from the very very best project I have ever experienced.

#IBMCSC    #CSCECUADOR4

 

 

 

Progress Through People

It’s always the people.

Your inter-personal relationships on a team can make all the difference between success and failure. This engagement I’m on at SENDAS in Ecuador is THE BEST example I have personally ever experienced of a client and service provider team that have engaged and gelled with each other. This has made a huge difference to our progress and our productivity which, ultimately is for our client’s benefit. I’ll take some key learnings away.

So, what is different here to any other project?

• The client staff want us to be here. From their Director (Sponsor) to every other person we are interacting with, they all know they need our knowledge and skills to help solve their challenges. Nobody feels threatened by our presence. No one has a political agenda. Nobody is paying lip service to the boss. There are no points being scored by anyone. We feel totally at ease to take our seats, get on with our work and focus on adding the most value we possibly can. Their attitude towards us is positively motivational for us.

• The client has welcomed us into their environment as if we were family visitors. They have not treated us as arms-length third-party service providers. They have made us feel like we have known them and worked in their office for years. We are part of their team, part of their business. They really have applied the personal touch, from inviting us to meals in their homes, to laying on morning teas where we share food, to taking us on a shopping trip to the artisan market and more. We have responded in our commitment and dedication to understanding their challenges and in taking a personal interest in their mission.

Now, clearly, another difference here is that our work is pro bono, so SENDAS is not managing us to a budget or measuring value for money or validating invoices. That certainly makes our life a bit more straight forward and means they don’t have to check what we’re doing for each hour as they know there’s no bill coming for our services. Nevertheless, we still have a Statement of Work and are delivering to that as if it is any other commercial contract. In fact, we are doing all we can to exceed their expectations.

Image: The joint SENDAS & IBM team together with the IBM Ecuador Country GM and our local facilitator Digital Opportunity Trust.

The reality for me here confirms that by quickly building warm personal relationships, we are all motivated to help each other, to go the extra mile, to over-deliver and to make a difference. The big consideration then, is how can we take this kind of behaviour on a pro bono engagement and replicate it in the commercial world of contracts and formal procurement processes? How do we implement an environment where people and relationships take precedence over contracts and process? After all, it’s people that get things done!

In its simplest form, the learning for me is to work much harder in future at really getting to know my colleagues and client personnel so much more at a personal level. Take an interest in them as an individual, understand their family situation, eat with them, drink with them, do activities with them. Do this genuinely though, not artificially as if it’s a task on a schedule. The rewards can be immense at both a personal and professional level. For a start, you enjoy going to work! Secondly, you may make new long-term friends. But, at the macro level, you set your project up with so much greater chance of success as you build trust and can quickly get through issues and challenges with common goals in mind.

Working in a warm and friendly environment creates a virtuous circle where you want to help each other, you mutually want to succeed, you’re prepared to offer your goodwill and you’re ready to celebrate success together. Many years of being in lead positions owning contractual relationships and being “vendor-managed” by client procurement staff stands in stark comparison to the genuine teaming I have experienced here in Ecuador with SENDAS. The “stick” that procurement processes apply in the commercial world does not contribute to success anywhere near the levels of putting energy into building personal relationships, trust and rapport with the people around you.

Ecuadorian warmth, hospitality and teaming is hard to beat. Processes are nothing without people. People can choose to either work together or not. Great things can happen when they do!

#IBMCSC     #CSCECUADOR4

 

Niñas, no Madres (Girls, not Mothers)

8th March, International Women’s Day (el Dia Internacional de la Mujer).  I learnt a lot today.

For the first time I personally witnessed a march and series of activities promoting women’s rights. Here in Cuenca, Ecuador I observed the client for whom I am working, SENDAS, support in leading the event and I caught up with their Director, Mary, to get a deeper understanding of some of the real issues here.

Image: Dr Mary Elizabeth Cabrera Paredes, SENDAS

For SENDAS, one of their primary focus areas is education; education of women all across the country as to their human rights. Many of the women attending today’s march had been educated by SENDAS and had become increasingly aware of rights they previously had lacked the knowledge or confidence to campaign for.

Today’s campaign was large, vocal, peaceful and celebratory. The image above translates to “Not a step behind, we go for all our rights”. Many males participated in the march too, hopefully showing a growth in awareness across local society.

When asked about the issues most pressing to Mary today, she talked to me about the relationship between the national Constitution and various laws and how there is some inconsistency and ineffectiveness in the laws which results in discrimination against women. A major example of this is visible in terms of the number of women in prison here as a result of the legal interpretation around the very difficult subject of abortion. In a country where abortion is illegal bar for some very specific circumstances, there is a complex relationship between sexual violence, women not seeking medical support for fear of being sent to prison, women suffering natural miscarriages and the risk women face of time in jail purely as the result of a doctor’s testimony.

Beyond this serious topic, SENDAS is constantly raising the awareness of women, not only with respect to their human rights, but also their role in society. At the front of today’s march, Mary’s colleague Carmen held up a slogan that translates to “Without the work of women, paid or not, the world stops”.

Image: Carmen Ortiz, SENDAS

The role of women in Ecuadorian society and the gender pay gap are real issues that SENDAS is focused on. Empowering women to earn income ultimately reduces family poverty. They also run programs and drive education across the country to promote this goal and to bring the gender issue to the forefront.

Nevertheless, as I was discussing with a colleague, all of these issues are actually inter-related. You need to start with basic human rights. This evolves into women having freedom of choice without recrimination, which ultimately supports their education and employment and eventually leads to economic development and alleviation from poverty. It sounds so simple, but as SENDAS has helped me understand better, transforming laws that are based on centuries of history and culture is a long tough campaign.

The work I’m doing here with my colleagues from IBM is ultimately set to help SENDAS improve its management of data and its ability to report the positive impact on society it is having to its various stakeholders. In this way it should receive more support, including financial donations, to continue with its strategic mission. It’s very rewarding to fully visualise the link between what we are doing and the goals our work is intended to support. I wish them luck in driving change for women in this truly amazing city of Cuenca and the wonderful country of Ecuador that I have the privilege to be working in.

Special thanks and acknowledgement to Dr Mary Elizabeth Cabrera Paredes, Carmen Ortiz and Andrea Idrovo from SENDAS for their support of this blog and their hospitality. For more information visit http://www.sendas.org.ec or like their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/sendasecuador/

#IBMCSC     #CSCECUADOR4

 

Respect, Relationship & Resolve

Our group flew in from all corners of the globe, from as close as Brazil and as far away as India, China, Egypt, Nigeria and more. My trip from New Zealand looked straight forward on the map though it still required 4 flights to get to Cuenca. We all compared stories of the routes we had flown, the cities we had stopped in on the way and our thoughts on the quality, or otherwise, of airline food. We had been gathering in small groups in various airports, some traveling through wintry snow, some dealing with canceled flights due to a strike, and we finally all came together for the first time at a boarding gate in Quito for our flight to Cuenca.

We didn’t know each other, but we already knew each other. After three months of various remote communication, it was like meeting up with long lost friends, knowing that over the month ahead we’d get to know each other even more. This really was a lesson in teaming. It really strikes you when you walk up to fifteen people that you have never met before but, without fail, you know each of their names and faces and you greet and hug them like you’ve known them for years.

It can’t be easy to bring such a diverse group of people together so effectively. But this is all part of the learning. The experience we have been taken through to build such a positive cross-cultural team is one we can all apply now as leaders when we form teams ourselves in the future. We all now know one thing for certain; you can’t just assign a bunch of people to a project and hope they all turn up as a well oiled machine.

When I reflect on how well IBM has taken us on a pathway to really hitting the ground running, three R’s come to mind. No, not the old school acronym, rather, in my own words, Respect, Relationship and Resolve. When I consider how we’ve got to where we are now without even meeting each other until around a week ago, these R’s have been so fundamental.

Respect – as a cross-cultural team, we come from a huge diversity of backgrounds, with people from Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia and both North and South America. We did a considerable amount of work before arriving in preparing us to understand how culture impacts behaviour and how we need to respect and understand each other’s differences yet use those differences to bring so much more to our team.

Relationship – a great team maintains inter-personal relationships among its members; this builds trust, builds rapport and builds empathy and support when everyone needs to chip in to achieve an outcome. We built our initial relationships remotely. We joined video calls and conference calls at all times of the day and night and made the effort to get to know each other, not just in terms of our professional backgrounds, but also in terms of our families and our personal interests. We’re both colleagues and friends and operating entirely as peers. There’s no hierarchy, no cliques and no politics.

Resolve – this assignment is very challenging. We’ve stepped into client engagements in a foreign country that none of us have worked in before, we have demanding deliverables due within a tight time-boxed period, and we’re all working in an environment where our clients do not speak English. None of this is a surprise to us though. The methodology applied to prepare us helped ensure that we had the resolve to make sure we’ll be able to get the job done and done well. With this resolve in mind we truly can be agile and take each new discussion point or issue in our stride.

It’s impressive to see a methodology that aims to build high-performing teams in action. There are so many lessons we can take and use ourselves in the future. It all comes down to preparation, with a focus on respecting your colleagues’ differences, building genuine personal relationships with them and turning up focused, willing to adapt and having the resolve to make something great happen!

#IBMCSC    #CSCECUADOR4

 

 

Cultivating Multi-Cultural Diversity

Looking through the microscope, I can see the culture of our group forming. It has been growing for over three months now and is about to really come to life.

I’m not talking about some microorganisms in a laboratory here. Rather this is a view of culture that is a representation of a group’s behavioural norms. But, more than that, it’s the blending of people from a myriad of different backgrounds into one new modus operandi.

I was brought up in England and emigrated to New Zealand fourteen years ago. I’m British with a dose of Kiwi, though most of my friends would say I’m stereotypical British. It’s so easy to label people based on their cultural traits yet that really is a simplification. Once you start thinking about it more deeply you then get into the whole nature vs nurture discussion plus there’s also the concept of an individual’s personality to consider.

We’re a team of sixteen IBM’ers from eleven different countries, all of us expected to be high-performing on day one in Ecuador, a country none of us has worked in before. We’ll only physically meet each other for the first time around forty-eight hours before we start working with our clients. We’re expected to be a reasonably well-oiled machine working in harmony with each other and with our client personnel from the outset.

On reflection, it’s no surprise that the biggest emphasis in our preparation for our Corporate Services assignment was to prepare us to work in a multi-cultural team. There are so many things for us to consider, for example, from the way of doing business in Ecuador, to how individual people from different cultures relate to each other, to how decisions will be made, to how best to communicate effectively, to how our team will self regulate our work, to how deadlines will be treated, to how we’ll deal with pressure or conflict etc. Perhaps the most important consideration for the early interactions is how we’ll build trust, both with each other and with our client. Trust is such a key ingredient in any group setting.

I’m writing this on the plane heading into Ecuador. My mind is spinning thinking about the immediate work ahead. But one thing I’m certain about, is that if we embrace our differences as positive attributes in a multi-cultural team, we can deliver so much more value. Not only that, we can learn and grow as individuals, being so much more aware that our diversity actually gives us more to offer. There is no need to homogenize us, that would just dilute who we all are.

When I think about how I personally need to behave or adjust to do my bit in a multi-cultural team, the two most important considerations that come to mind are patience and listening. These will be critical. We’ll be working in an environment where timeliness and deadline management may be quite different to what I’m used to. We’ll also be working through a translator, so communication will take twice as long and nuances may be missed.

The risk of misunderstanding is high. This can lead to re-work, missed milestones, stress or even conflict. Going in with my eyes wide open and using patience and increased listening skills as a mitigation approach, for me, has to be how I adapt from the beginning. I naturally tend to want to take the lead and push things along. I’ll probably still bring those traits into our work, but they’ll be tempered by a deliberate emphasis on listening and thinking more before speaking.

What an opportunity this is to experience working with people from such globally diverse backgrounds and to learn to be agile and responsive in situations where people think and act quite differently and then use the power of the group to achieve great things. One thing is for sure, we all want to be here. We’re all self-motivated and excited. We’ve built working relationships remotely already. We’re culturally aware and can use our diversity to create a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts.

#IBMCSC   #CSCECUADOR4

My Eyes Are Opening

Am I typical of most males in not really spending time or paying much attention in the past to gender equality? Possibly. And if I wasn’t about to go off on my IBM Corporate Services assignment to do some work in this field, it’s quite possible that I may never have given this issue due consideration. Shame on me.

My eyes are really beginning to open now though. An issue that would pass me by before is now right in my line of sight. I’m only really blinking at the moment in terms of my personal understanding and awareness, but the more I understand, the more I can focus.

Clearly, gender issues are not unique to Ecuador. This is a global set of challenges. The client I will be working for, SENDAS, runs projects, among various initiatives, that help empower women on the premise that will help reduce the amount of poverty in Ecuadorian families. One of the key stakeholders for SENDAS is UN Women, the United Nations organisation that focuses on gender equality and female empowerment across the world. A good resource for helping me open my eyes a bit further as I prepare for my assignment.

On the UN Women’s web site it states that gender equality is a basic human right. Yes, I always would have agreed with that but I would never have realised the extent to which that basic human right is not a given everywhere. Their web-site puts the macro issue in the spotlight for us all to see so succinctly:

“Empowering women fuels thriving economies, spurring productivity and growth. Yet gender inequalities remain deeply entrenched in every society. Women lack access to decent work and face occupational segregation and gender wage gaps. They are too often denied access to basic education and health care. Women in all parts of the world suffer violence and discrimination. They are under-represented in political and economic decision-making processes.”

I hope that I can do my job in Ecuador better if I have a deeper understanding of what my client is striving to achieve. That UN paragraph above on its own makes me stop and think long and hard. That’s more than I’ve done before. I’m invested now and I’m keen to do my bit, however tiny it is in the grander scheme. Cynics may think I’ve become a feminist overnight. That would be an immature view. I’m beginning to learn that there’s a real issue here that affects families all over the world, including husbands, fathers and sons just like me. To be open-minded you sometimes need your eyes to be open too.

For further reading go to http://www.unwomen.org

As for me now, one week until I fly out!

#IBMCSC    #CSCECUADOR4

 

It’s Time to Stop Being a Passenger

You’re on the bus once the email has arrived that confirms your IBM Corporate Service Corps (CSC) assignment. It’s a bus ride that is extremely well organised and planned out for you. All you really need to do is be there in your seat and be mentally engaged on the journey. It’s easy to forget that a point in time will come when the bus will stop and you need to take control of the rest of your journey and lead your client. The time for me to stop being a passenger has just passed.

The journey so far has been enlightening and educational. We’re a bus full of 16 people from 11 different countries. And it’s not just IBM driving the bus. There’s a navigator too, in the form of an entity called the Digital Opportunities Trust (DOT), a partner of IBM’s on the ground in numerous developing countries. DOT (www.dotrust.org) is there in Ecuador, liaising with our clients, organising the scope of our projects and preparing logistics.

It’s been so interesting being a passenger so far. The trip has focused on giving us the skills to be confident and collaborative leaders once we get off the bus. By far the biggest focus area has been culture. How do you get 16 people from so many different backgrounds to hit the ground running and be high performing together in a country and culture that is unfamiliar to them? We’ve spent three months working on this together on video calls as well as other pre-arrival matters. For me, those calls have all been at 1-2am due to global time zone challenges, but despite it being during the night, I’m no longer in the dark. Excuse the pun.

But it really is time for me to stop being a passenger now. As one of the teams of 4, we had our introductory video call with SENDAS, our team’s client, yesterday. We’ve broken the ice and found out more about their mission and their challenges. We’ve learnt a little more about their work, especially their focus on empowering women to help reduce poverty, supporting the environment, and their focus in the area of sexual and reproductive rights. We’ve been introduced to their relationship with the Ecuadorian government. We’ve heard about their work with and for the education sector, especially the local universities.

There’s so much more to understand, but it’s clear SENDAS would like our help to improve their project monitoring and evaluation processes. We have our purpose. It’s time for us to take the lead and be the drivers now. Two weeks to go until we’re on the ground there driving.

#IBMCSC    #CSCECUADOR4

Putting Things Into Perspective

There’s nothing like a true sense of purpose to help put things into perspective.

Being selected for an IBM Corporate Service Corps (CSC) assignment is one thing. Finding out which country you’re being sent to is another. But understanding the work you are being asked to do takes the assignment to a whole different level. It adds purpose and meaning. In this case, the meaning is in gender-related issues and their relationship to poverty. Something, to be brutally honest, that I have not given much consideration to in the past. That’s changing now.

SENDAS is a small not-for-profit organisation in the south of Ecuador that implements programs and projects that are gender oriented and with a focus on human rights and sustainability. Its vision is to be recognized at local, national, and international levels as an organistion that enhances and leads programs of change that contribute to social justice and gender equality. Simply speaking, the empowerment of women allows them to increase the economic income of their families, thereby reducing poverty. I’m part of a small team that will be working with SENDAS for a month.

There’s a lot I need to learn over the next few weeks about gender and societal challenges in Ecuador and their correlation with family poverty. Our team of four from IBM (Vania, an IT Specialist from Brazil; Lilian, a Technical Services Manager from China; Vikram, an Attorney from India; and myself) are charged with helping SENDAS improve its project monitoring and evaluation systems so that it can better report to its stakeholders and get more support to do more work that delivers to its worthy causes.  That’s a virtuous circle.

To be involved in something like this, to help an entity in a developing country in even just a tiny way to do something that tries to face into issues about poverty feels important and very meaningful. I’m honoured to be part of such an initiative. It is not something I envisaged doing with IBM, but that was before I had heard of CSC. It makes me realise that Corporate Responsibility is real, not just some words in an annual report.

#IBMCSC    #CSCECUADOR4

 

 

 

Ecuador Beckons – It All Begins With An Email

So this is how my story begins.

On 16th August 2016 I received an email at work. Well, I received a few emails at work that day, a bunch of them not worth opening. A typical day. But not so typical, because there was one very unique and special email that arrived.

“Dear Stephen:

Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the Corporate Service Corps (CSC) program!

The CSC provides the opportunity for you to transform yourself and hone your global leadership skills, while making a strategic contribution to a community on behalf of IBM. You will join the ranks of over 3,000 IBMers who have described their experiences as life-changing…..”

My story actually started a few months earlier when I chose to apply for CSC, but, given the fact that typically only 15% of applicants are accepted, it wasn’t real for me until that email arrived.

Well, approximately 18 months after the email arrived (i.e. in 4 weeks from now) I’ll be part of an international IBM team that heads to Cuenca, Ecuador for a month. I’ll be working on a project that will support empowering women in Southern Ecuador in order to help reduce poverty in families there. But more about that next time. First of all, let me use today’s post to tell you a little about the IBM Corporate Service Corps (CSC).

Some things in life can be win-win or lose-lose or win-lose. CSC is different: it’s win-win-win. The whole premise of CSC is to perform philanthropic community-driven economic development projects, working at the intersection of business, technology, and society. It’s win for the community that receives the benefit of the pro bono work. It’s win for IBM in building its profile in developing countries. And it’s win for those of us who get selected to participate in terms of the professional and personal development experience it offers.

Launched ten years ago, the IBM CSC program has sent over 3000 participants on over 275 teams to nearly 40 countries around the developing world, executing over 1000 projects. As a member of a team of 16 IBMers from 11 different countries who will be delivering 4 projects in small teams of 4, I’m very excited to be part of the next team to go. We’ll be the 4th group to go and work in Ecuador since the program began and we have some very meaningful and valuable work to do. I’ll tell you much more about that in due course.

In the meantime, if you stay connected with this blog you can follow my story as it evolves over the coming weeks. I’m very excited and I’m keen to share it.

Hasta pronto

Stephen

#IBMCSC