Baking buns

I arrived in Kenya late Sunday night just in time for me to start the new week together with the team. They had done a fantastic job last week. Most of all they had brought together the Executive Council of the organization and with them defined the high level issues and the 'operational' vision and mission statements for the organization. A grand achievement that will provide a lot of clarity and guidance to the organization in the future and to the rest of our work here. It is important to note the word 'operational', meaning that it is separate from the 'spiritual' vision that Koinonia has a Christian community. One of the most interesting things about this project has been the question on how to bridge this gap between spirituality and day-to-day work. They don't teach you that at school!

Having established the overall objectives for the organization we prepared a workshop that should align the many initiatives with the overall vision. We made some adjustments to the framework that we had used during our first visit here......

...and asked the managers of the individual units to fill it in again. This time the objectives came from the overall organization, not from the units themselves.

A couple of them shared their filled-in framework. It became much clearer how both Social Initiatives and Income Generating Activities can pull in the same direction in support of the overall Koinonia vision.

Last night we met MBA2008 Jesper Hornberg and his friend Petter, who are in Kenya on a project of their own.

Early morning at Baraza Café where we have our breakfast every morning. Baraza is one of the Income Generating Activities under the Koinonia umbrella that serves the purpose of generating income for the social initiatives such as the children's homes.

Today Wednesday we took the next step in bringing the overall vision down to the level of the daily work. We did that by conducting a workshop on process mapping. The objective of the workshop was two-fold: To teach process mapping as a tool and to help Koinonia understand some of their own key processes better.
We needed a simple and recognizable process as an example to teach the very basics of process mapping. Inspired by my dad, who frequently surprises his family with freshly baked buns, we used the process of 'baking buns' as example. That proved excellent to get the points across.

We then split the Koinonia people in smaller teams and asked them to do a process map of a restaurant visit. Each of them were given roles such as host, waiter, cook and manager in order to spice up the discussion. The objective was to teach how to do an integrated flow chart for a process that involves multiple parties.

Next step was then to map Koinonia's own processes. Here Eva and Evelyn are working with the managers on the HR process 'Hiring-to-retiring'.

Helen from the Kivuli Centre - one of the children's homes - took the lead on mapping perhaps the most core of all processes in Koinonia, the reason for their existence, how to 'Integrate a child'.

The 'Integrate a child' process became center of an intense debate, which immediately pin-pointed some of the key issues that the organization is facing with its integration process. This is where the real power of processing mapping lies: Bring people from different parts of a process together and ask them to map their own work and you will be amazed about the understanding it creates. The issues with the process will unavoidable show up.

We were (again) amazed about the passion with which the Koinonia people speak of helping the children in Nairobi. This is much, much more than just a job for them. This is what they live for!

Monday evening I received the sad news that my grandma passed away. In the middle of these sad circumstances, I am so relieved that I made it home last week and managed to see her alive for the last time. When we left her on Saturday I said 'See you later, grandma'. I could not make myself say 'Goodbye', neither did I believe it was the last time. The funeral will be on Saturday, so when the rest of the team goes to Lausanne on Friday I will be heading back home to Denmark.

Thorsten