Aug 27, 2009 - Moving on from the Euphoria phase

Dear Friends,

I have never blogged before in my life. This experience is one of many 'firsts' that I am realizing this assignment will bring for me.

I will probably never forget the euphoria I felt when I got the call from New York indicating that I had been accepted into IBM's Corporate Services Corp Program. When IBM first announced this program a few years ago, I had an instantaneous response knowing that one day I simply had to participate. I enthusiastically submitted my application, excitedly calling the people I did volunteer work with to request their support as a reference. Alas, it was not meant to be - my discouragement was intense when I was not selected. But failure has never prevented me from trying again, so I applied again in the next cycle...and wasn't selected again. By now, I started to feel that maybe there was something fundamentally missing in my application and experience that made me unsuitable to participate in this program. I usually don't give up in the face of failure, but after two failures, I tend to conclude that my energy is better focused elsewhere. So it was with a rather un-engaged and almost 'stubborn' mindset that I submitted my application for the 3rd time. Hence the euphoria...I had not been expecting that call.

In the weeks following, I began to appreciate and understand what an excellent growth opportunity this program is providing for me. I thought this was about helping people in developing countries...so I had not realized the amount of personal development this program is 'making me' go through!

The very first thing was effective use of technology for virtual teaming. I have listened to many replays of meetings and participated in webinars. But I've never had to record a meeting myself. I don't consider myself technically savvy, but I want to contribute so I offered to record all the team status meetings. Easy, right? Apparently not so...recording is relatively easy, but sharing huge multi-media files is not so easy, even with IBM's wonderful collaboration technologies. It took me two meetings before I figured out how to get the process working smoothly. Thanks to my team member, Albert, who had experience with this and shadowed me with the recording exercise, until I was confident enough to do it on my own. Excited with my newly developed skills, I facilitated a meeting for another project using the technology and impressed all my co-workers with my knowledge of how to do things they didn't realize could be done!

Some of my client assignments have given me the opportunity to explore cultural differences as we increasingly work on global teams. I thought I had a more than average understanding of cultural difference concepts...after all, for the last two years, I've been conducting 'Communicating Across Cultures' training sessions for my clients. The most fascinating thing that was new to me was the Country Navigator profile tool that we had to run that would help us understand the cultural gap between us and general Vietnam Culture. This serves to prepare us for coping with the culture shock we will invariably experience when we arrive in-country. Being naturally inquisitive about cultural issues, I explored the tool further and found a 'Top Ten most compatible country cultures' and 'Top Ten least compatible country cultures'. One click of a button and I discovered that Canada is in my top ten compatible countries (thank god for that!!!), but that India, my country of birth, is among the top ten least compatible. Those of you that know me well would probably not be surprised by this result at all, but it was fascinating that an objective tool could come up with this conclusion.

So now it's down to the wire...I still have so much to do as I prepare to leave in the next few weeks. Finishing the training plan; handing over all my active project work to other co-workers; preparing my home for a long-term absence; spending some time with loved ones who I won't see now for a long time; spending money on new things for the trip (e.g. a new external hard-drive, a new digital camcorder). I won't really rest now until I'm sitting on the airplane.

This trip won't be all work. Once I realized that my flight was through Hong Kong, I decided to go a few days early and spend some time with my friend, John. John worked with me at IBM years ago when I had just joined IBM. He moved back to Hong Kong some years ago, but we have remained in touch and had been discussing a visit at some point. So a short visit now is an excellent opportunity - plus, John has offered to ease my adjustment to Asia...could I ask for more? I'm obviously not hooked into the right places, because my thoughts about Hong Kong were all centered around visiting John. But when even my doctor said that I must be planning to carry an empty suitcase for all the shopping I was going to do in Hong Kong, I began to realize that my credit card better start planning for some high speed 'rubber-burning'. I still have no idea what it is that makes Hong Kong shoppers' paradise, but EVERYONE is saying it, so it must be true. And having a personal guide like John will ensure it is a pleasurable experience. All the people John used to work with have asked me to convey their heartiest greetings to John...he is fondly remembered by all his co-workers in IBM Canada.

Okay...so are blogs supposed to be this long? I have no clue...all I know is I'd better stop this now and get all the mountain of work done before I run out of time!!!!

I will try to post blogs regularly....I know many of my friends want to follow me on this once-in-a-lifetime experience...