Delivery

Today was delivery day. Delivery of the projects we have been working on the past week. Judging from the many stories I have heard from my classmates South Africa have made an impact on us all and judging from the very same stories we made an impact on South Africa. Maybe not as a country, but for the entrepreneurs we have been working with. It is incredible how much you as a group can pick up, process and feed back in a week once you really set your mind to it.

The last two days we borrowed a room in the office of our host IDC, where we could digest and process the information we absorbed over the past week. For some reason, it did not feel much different than the dungeons back in Lausanne.

My concerns about us knowing absolutely nothing about hydraulic fittings evaporated already the first day and this week became an awesome demonstration of the power of a multi-skilled team. Eric – our financial genius – drew up a complete financial model from scratch and helped Peter sort some outstanding issues with his bank. Stone – our engineer – made a model that allows Peter to accurately calculate his production cost of each product, which ensures that the prices are set correctly. Stone also made suggestions to how Peter can make very significant improvements to the utilization of his machines. Shibu – our marketing wizard – draw up a plan for a more structured sales process than Peter has today. Myself, I got really good at getting coffee for everyone ☺ We wrapped it all up in a business plan that Peter can take to his bank to help him refinance his existing business and obtain new capital for his planned expansion. That was our deliverable and Peter seemed very happy with it.

Eric and Stone trying to get the financial and operational figures to match.

Delivery of the business plan took place at ‘The Mug & The Bean’ coffee shop. Here Shibu and Peter are discussing the marketing plan. Please note the huge cup of coffee in the front. This is on the menu as a so-called ‘Serious Cappuccino’ and consists of almost half a liter of warm milk and coffee. Not only in America!


What better way to end it all than with a team phoon in front of the Mandela statue on Mandela Square here in Sandton City. From left it is myself, our entrepreneur Peter, Stone, Eric, Shibu and our driver Sharl.








We had lunch at a Thai restaurant today. My teammates apparently thought I needed to relax and bought me a massage in the restaurant. For the equivalent of 5 dollars you get about 20 minutes of massage of neck, shoulders and arms before and after you eat. I could really get used to that. Although we were in a Thai restaurant the girl proved to be Chinese. As Stone and her started talking in their native tongue we learned that she was from a place in China not far from Stone’s and that she had migrated to South Africa a couple of years ago to work. Interesting, I thought, that someone would migrate to find work in a country with 25% unemployment. Stone explained that many Chinese go abroad these days, most of them to set up their own businesses, though.
We have also experienced the diversity of our group in a culinary way this week. Thursday Shibu treated us for Indian food, Friday Stone treated us for Chinese and today Eric took us out for Thai. There are unfortunately very few traditional Danish restaurants outside of Denmark, but I can always buy you a Carlsberg! ☺

South Africa is now seeing the rise of a new term: ‘White poverty’. This little exhibition was set up today across the street from our hotel.
The poster reads: ‘…poverty in South Africa no longer has an exclusively black face….. Poverty is becoming less of a racial issue and more of a South African problem…. Having been deprived of their previously ‘privileged’ position, the white poor are now seeking new ways to adapt or at least survive.’
In some bizarre way this is a good sign. Not that people get poor, but than when there is poverty, that it is evenly split among races. This is the precondition for eventually bringing South Africa out of the poverty!

Less than 50m from where the previous picture was taken we found this display of material wealth. Aston Martin, Lamborghini and Audi R8 in front of the posh Michelangelo Hotel reminds us that South Africa still is a country full of contrasts.

Umoja – The spirit of togetherness

What a weekend it has been! Apartheid museum Saturday afternoon and the Mandoza musical in the evening. Up early today to spend the day in Soweto, first attending a church ceremony, then visiting the museum for the Soweto uprising, Mandela’s house, lunch at a Soweto restaurant and finishing with a visit to the Cotlands hospice and orphanage.


The apartheid museum gave an almost too real description of the rise and the fall of the apartheid regime, the principles behind and the cruel and unjust measures that were required to maintain it. Afterwards you can only ask yourself how it was possible to justify and build such an inhuman system.


A quote that shows how the apartheid politicians saw their role. In a TV interview one of the politicians even argued that the apartheid model had proven its worth and that it should be used in other places in the world. Let us be very happy that this never happened!

The beauty of the South African solution is that it starts and ends with reconciliation. The South Africans (at least the ones I have met, both black, coloured and white) truly believes in the ‘Rainbow Nation’ - where all colours live together as one – as the only way to a better future. I think they have gotten it so right! This picture shows the exit from the Apartheid Museum.

In the van on the way back from the Apartheid Museum.

Saturday night we attend the Mandoza musical. Also this story was build up around the freedom struggle and the liberation. It showed how the music and dance evolved with the historic events from tribal life to today’s rock stars and it described the important role music played to keep morals high when times were tough. It was an incredible display of energy and joy! We have nothing like this in Europe! The buckets on the head of these ladies says ‘Umoja loves you’. Umoja means ‘The spirit of togetherness’ in one of South Africa’s 11 languages. Don’t ask me which one.

This morning started with a ceremony in the Grace Bible Church in Soweto. The church must be able to seat at least a couple of thousand people. The ceremony almost felt like a continuation of the musical the night before; full of energy and happiness! The speeches were both spiritual and very down to earth including both the current economic crisis and yesterday’s rugby game where South Africa beat New Zealand.

We met these two guys on our way.

Our two guides for the day, Thomas (left) and Ben. Born and raised in Soweto. Ben showed us how you in Soweto tell the minivan taxis where you are going only by the use of hand signs.

Do you need a new set of tires? You can get everything done on the streets of Soweto.

What surprised me the most was how developed Soweto was. There are shopping malls, stadiums, schools, hospitals, good roads, water and electricity. Here is the local Nissan dealer. It is, after all, also a city with four million people.
By the way, did you know that the name Soweto comes from ‘South West Township’, which again stems from the fact that Soweto lies south west of Johannesburg.

This picture shows the absolutely worst part of Soweto. This was actually what I expected all of it to look like, but according to Ben it is only 10% of the people in Soweto that lives like this. This number is even decreasing as the South African government makes progress on its Residential Development Program that has build houses for several million people.

How about a couple of nuclear reactors in your back yard? They are not active anymore, but you can get a bungee jump from the top for fifty dollars.

Our guide Ben in front of the monument for Hector Pieterson at the museum for the Soweto uprising in 1976. The uprising was a protest against the government’s decision that education must be done in Afrikaans, a language that neither teachers nor students amongst the black population understood. The police opened fire on the crowd and 69 people (officially) were killed. Hector Pieterson was the first one to fall. He was thirteen years old.
‘I have also been throwing rocks at the police around here’ Ben said at one point. Another reminder of how recent all this has happened.

We paid a quick visit to Mandela’s house. There is not much too see there other than it is very small.

Lunch at a restaurant in Soweto. They apparently got our name wrong, so here are the three IMC ladies Valeria [Russia], Misayo [Japan] and Yadira [Colombia].

The last stop on the road was the Cotlands hospice and orphanage. The children at Cotlands are mostly from families where the parents are either sick with or dead from AIDS. Most of the kids themselves are also HIV positive. Although the circumstances are so sad Cotlands is a wonderful place to visit. As everywhere else where you have kids around there is lots of energy and desire to play. The older kids (3-5 years) were ready to play when they saw 70 daddies and 20 mamas walking in. For more than an hour we all played around and had some good old childish fun.

In their worst year Cotlands had 87 deaths. Last year they had one. The difference is the treatments that now are available. The children live longer, which creates new problems as they now must have support for a much longer period. A ‘winners curse’ as our Economics Professor Ralf Boscheck would call it. Although a positive problem, it is still a problem.

Cotlands had an IMD ICP team working with them last year. They mentioned several time that the team had had a major impact on them and that they still were implementing the recommendations that the team had made. We had already heard about the IMD/Cotlands project from the IMD side, but we took this opportunity to get some input from Cotlands as well. We got some good ideas and suggestions that we will bring with us to this year’s similar project with Koinonia in Kenya.

The Spirit of South Africa!

Who would have thought it would be so cold in South Africa! Not me, that is for sure. We have hit the coldest period of the year on the Southern hemisphere and with Johannesburg being far inland the temperatures get quite low, around zero degrees Celsius at night and around 15 degrees during the day. That does not sound particularly cold, but in South Africa the houses do not have any heating!! The argument appears to be that this cold period is so short – max. 2 months – that it is not worth to put in heating. Most people therefore wear their jackets indoor these days. We have learned to adopt that fashion.

We have continued our work with Peter – the owner and manager of the company we work with. We visited three of his customers yesterday and have also had two meetings with his bank. Eric – our financial wizard - have been digging into the numbers, while Stone – our engineer – have had a look at the machines and the manufacturing processes. Meanwhile Shibu and I have been trying to combine input from the customers and Peter’s vision of where he wants to take the company into a coherent strategy with a very concrete action plan. The trick is now to bring all three pieces together into a package (in the form of a business plan) that Peter can use both for his own reference and to raise capital for further expansion.

Today we had our second guest speaker, Ivon Johnston, who has been working in and with the South African government for many years. She told some moving stories about what South Africa has gone through, but most of all she told the story about what all of us already have felt – the spirit of South Africa! It is a spirit of optimism and joy that will not let itself be held down by the many very serious problem the country is facing. It is a spirit of reconciliation and compassion, not about revenge, hatred or blame. It is a spirit that recognizes what happen in the past while insisting on focusing on the future.

There is one name in particular that embodies this spirit. We keep hearing it again and again. It is mentioned by our guest speakers, by the entrepreneurs and workers in the companies, by our drivers and by other people we meet. It is used to name everything from streets to shopping malls. The name is Nelson Mandela. He is nothing short of a prophet here. His birthday is a national holiday. Had it not been for his vision South Africa would not have achieved the tremendous improvements that it has over the past 15 years and it would not be heading in the positive direction that it is. I cannot imagine what South Africa will look like in 15 years, but it will for sure be an amazing place!

Thorsten

Shibu James [India] having Chicken Licken (the South African equivalent of KFC) for lunch.

Stone Gao [China] and Peter discussing the manufacturing process of a particular component.

Stone and Peter discussing manufacturing while Eric is crunching the financial numbers.

The modern version of the classic problem of ‘how to fit a square stick in a round hole?’ This one is called ‘how to fit a Swiss electrical plug into a South African socket?’

Yesterday our team had Indian food for lunch. From left it is our driver Sharl, Stone Gao [China], Thorsten Boeck [Denmark], Eric Vergara [Thailand], Peter and Shibu James [India].

One of the teams is working with a company that has developed a special x-ray machine. They had pictures taken of them selves and asked the class to guess who is who. A very entertaining exercise!

Ivon Johnston telling the story about Justice Beki-beki, who was given the death sentence, but saved by the fall of the apartheid regime. He later became a lawyer, a leader of the election process in the Northern Cape province and a member of the international body that monitored the elections in the US.

Tonight’s sunset over Johannesburg as it looked from our hotel. The sunsets are very dramatic and beautiful in the way they paint the whole sky red. The picture does not do reality justice at all.

Sawubona!

Two days ago I sat on my balcony in Lausanne. What a change of scenery there has been since then!

Sunday evening we met in Lausanne and via Geneva and Zurich we made it to Johannesburg by Monday morning. I asked for a seat by the emergency exit on the plane and was the lucky to get it! That is major deal breaker for me. It is the difference between sleep and no sleep. With enough space to stretch my legs I slept 7 of the 10 hours from Zurich to Johannesburg. I couldn’t have had a better start.

There was a lot of catching up to do on the way. The class has been spread around the world in the past three weeks. Combined we must have visited at least 50 countries. Around 25 people had gone to South Africa early, some individually and others in a trip organized by our native South African, Lisa Bridgett. Stories about cage diving with 4-meter sharks outside Cape Town were already spreading!


Chuks and Andres waiting to pass security in Zürich. Chuks had just become a dad less than 24 hours before the picture is taken!


Arrival in Johannesburg! Some more rested than others.


Our welcoming team. As the width of these two gentlemen indicates they are here for more than just driving us around. They are employed by a security company that takes care of all our transportation and security. All of them have a past in the army or the police.


Yesterday afternoon we met the companies that we will be working with. Here is the rest of my team Stone, Shibu and Eric with Peter [left] from Profast Hydraulics, the company we will be working with. Peter is a true entrepreneur and selfmade man who over the last 15 years has worked his company up from being just himself to employing 15 people and a number of advanced CNC machines. The company produces hydraulic fittings (primarily for the South African mining industry) and components for the construction industry.

Our stay in South Africa has come about as a result of the cooperation between IMD and the Internal Development Corporation (IDC). IDC is a government-owned but self-funded institution that provides financing for entrepreneurs in South Africa. Their aim is to stimulate the growth of the economy and to support the black economic empowerment.


IDC welcomed us with a great dinner with lots of traditional South African music and dance. That got everybody out of their chairs so we could dance along. Great fun!


Wendy Luhabe has been the person bringing IDC and IMD together. She is chairman of IDC and on the IMD board of directors. Here she bids us welcome at the dinner.


On the way out to the Profast factory today we drove by this billboard. Notice Wendu Luhabe on the far left. According to our driver, Sharl, Wendy is a well-known and very public character in South Africa. Please also note Sir Richard Branson (third from the left). Apparently they are having a leadership summit on South African entrepreneurship in Sandton – which is where our hotel is – tomorrow. I guess this just proves the relevance of what we are doing.


We spent all day today with Peter and Sharl. They took us around to the different sites where Profast operates.


We saw the machines and the products and we spent the whole days asking questions in order to understand Peter’s business and the concerns he has. Here it is Hendrik by one of the CNC machines.
We have tried to combine today’s learning with the skills we have amongst the four of us in order to find out where we can do our deep-dive over the next three days. With only a week to complete the whole project we need to take a very pragmatic and realistic approach to where we can add value. It means prioritizing, thinking on our feet and acting quickly. The great thing about this short time frame is that it gives you a bit of a kick. This is not a project that will drag on for months and where you have to collect vast amounts of information. Every hour counts and there is not a moment to waste if you want to do an impact by next Tuesday. Well, the impact may only happen over the coming months, but the frame for it must be set by Tuesday. The keyword is ‘impact’, doing something that really makes a difference. I am very excited and feel we are off to a good start, but there is still 6 days to go – and at the same time ONLY 6 days to go.

Every evening we will be sharing the day’s learning with the class. Judging from today’s session it sounds like everybody are working with companies just as exciting as ours. The companies covers such diverse products as restaurants, construction, pharmaceuticals, diamonds, public toilets in Soweto and a lot more that I haven’t had the chance to hear about yet.


This week have we replaced the White Horse with the bar in our hotel, but it is just as cosy. From left it is Richard Dove [UK], Albert Schultz [Germany], Ope [Nigeria] and Rasmus Figenschou [Norway].

And in case you were wondering: ‘Sawubona’ is the South African version of ‘hello’. Directly translated it means ‘I see you’.

In Transit

I am back on the balcony, back in Lausanne. Thinking, thinking, thinking. I feel much better than when I left Lausanne three weeks ago. The batteries are recharged and the connection to the outside world has been reestablished. At the same time it is also clear that mentally I never managed to leave Lausanne and IMD behind. Questions about what actually happened during the first half of the year kept swirling in my mind. The feedback from peers and professors - received the day before we went on vacation - kept popping up. Some of it was encouraging, some of it was not. And why was that? What situation was behind each message. Are there any regrets? Yes, definitely! It is clear that I have missed out on some obvious opportunities. That cannot be redone - that time will not come back - but I can make sure that I find a better path for the second half. I have boiled it all down to a few points that I want to improve on. A few goals that I want to reach.

I arrived in Lausanne yesterday after a week on Malta with my family. It was very hot and humid on this little island in the Mediterranean, so I have enjoyed the chill of Switzerland for a change. The last 24 hours have been spent unpacking, doing laundry and catching up on emails, so I am ready for the next trip. We are leaving for South Africa in a couple of hours.

In Johannesburg I will be working with Eric, Shibu and Stone in a small company (10 employees) that produces hydraulic hose fittings!!!! I wonder how a trader of financial derivatives (Eric), a sales guy from Procter & Gamble (Shibu) and a shipping guy (myself) will get our hands around that subject. We will probably be relying quite a bit on our only engineer (Stone).

This complete lack of knowledge of what awaits us is also what thrills me. We will just go and see what hits us and then take it as it comes. This is an experiment, a first ever for a business school as far as we know. I hope it becomes a huge success and one that can be developed further in the years to come. I can not wait to take the plunge!

I better start packing.

The Spanish Bird

The display above the door says ‘Velocidad 301 km/h, Temperatura 28C’. We are onboard the AVE – Alta Velocidad Espanola – the Spanish high speed train. AVE is also the Spanish for ‘bird’. We are on our way back to Barcelona from Madrid, where we have paid a quick visit to Susana’s family and friends.

The AVE is a show of brutal force and extreme elegance at the same time. Stick your head close to the window and you get an immediate feel for the speed and the power of this machine. Lean back and have a quiet conversation, watch the James Bond movie on the screens or walk down to the canteen car for a Bocadillo (a Spanish sandwich) or cup of coffee. I know Kornelius, the BMW engineer in our class, would have loved this ride. Technology at its edge!

The train does the 621km in 2 hours and 43 minutes. We fly by the major cities of Zaragoza and Tarragona – no time to stop, we have a schedule to meet. And it will be met. If we are as much as a second delayed we will get 30% of our ticket refunded, if we are more than 5 minutes late we will get all of it back. How is that for reliability? Not even the Swiss can beat that!

It brings thoughts of the Danish rail system to my mind. Many of the tracks are more than 50 years old and as soon as the temperature creeps above 25C they have to reduce the speed to 40km/h in some places because the tracks expand too much in the heat. In comparison, the AVE still runs at 300+ when the temperature is 45C. Obama came for a ride not long ago and concluded that the US needed something similar. May I should ask Danish Prime Minister – Mister Rasmussen – to do the same. We could definitely learn a thing or two.

It will be the last night in Spain. Tomorrow morning we are off to Denmark to visit my friends and family. We will also be meeting up with my Indian classmate Ajay Lakhwani and his wife Kanika, who are touring Scandinavia these days. They have just arrived in Copenhagen after taking the beautiful overnight ferry trip from Oslo.

It is 21.30 and we are rolling into Barcelona. It does not look like we will get any money back this time either.

Hasta luego!


The AVE upon arrival i Madrid. A mean machine!

Sun, Sombrilla and Sun Screen

Todays was the first day I really felt fresh when I got up. I had slept eight hours and got out of bed without the alarm. Until now I have been sleeping at least 10 hours everynight plus a couple of hours for siesta. I hope this means that I now have caught up and can return to a normal sleeping pattern.

Wednesday my girlfriend Susana and I met with classmate Juan Benitez [Columbia] and his girlfriend Tatiana. Tatiana is also Columbian, but is studying in Barcelona. We met in the nearby town of Sitges, which is renowned for its fine beaches. The heat wave that is covering the rest of Europe is also felt here, so it quickly became too warm for the 'Giri' (Spanish slang for a foreigner, in this case referring to me) on the beach. We strolled around the beautiful old town before we sat down and enjoyed a real Catalonian paella in one of the street restaurants.

Juan and Tatiana by the old church in Sitges.


Paella Marinera, the way it is done in its home country.
Heave stuff on a warm day, but very 'deliciosa' as they say around here.

Yesterday Susana and I went to the beach again. This time the 'giri' (still me) covered himself in a thick layer of factor 50+ sun screen (others would probably call it sun BLOCK) and hid in the shade under the 'Sombrilla' (beach umbrella) that we had brought along. Being on the beach and under the sun this far south (compared to Denmark, of course) is a somewhat delicate matter for me. I turn red like a boiled lobster in a matter of minutes, then I spend several nights sleeping on my stomach because my back is all sore. Then it all peals off and I am more pale than when I started. So better to overdo it a bit with the protection.

Siestas, not power naps

To be honest I have not done much over the past couple of days. I have just been enjoying the warm humid Mediterranean air that encourages you to just hang around in shorts and flip-flops and keep yourself in a vertical position to the extent possible. I have swapped power naps with siestas. Same concept, but very different execution! I am trying to fall into the rhythm of my little pueblo here. As they say in Spain, there are more people on the streets at 3 in the morning than at 3 in the afternoon. All the shops close during the middle of the day, so why not siesta your way through those hours. Great concept.

I went for a run today at 8pm when the temperature had dropped sufficiently for a Scandinavian to venture out. I went down to the river bed that runs at the outskirts of the town. It is completely dried out at this time of the year, so it is a great place to run. It took me out under the highway and into mountains on the other side. 'Mountains' may be a relative word here. The locals would probably just call them 'hills', but being from Denmark I insist that they indeed are mountains. I found a dirt trail that took me up-hill (because you cannot say 'up-mountain') and after about 20 minutes I found myself standing on a ridge looking into the next valley. Here was another little pueblo with white houses and what from the distance appeared to be a church. The sun was setting and it looked so quiet and peaceful. I had not met anyone on my way and there was not a single person to be seen anywhere. It became one of those few quiet moments, where you remind yourself that life is more than the fast lane on the information-superhighway. Next time I will make sure I bring a camera.