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

Next time, Nairobi!

I am lying here on my bunk bed at Shalom House after four very intense days here in Nairobi. I am trying to make up my mind about what I think of what I have seen. So far, I don’t really know to be honest. There is a lot to digest.
I guess what you automatically do when you see things that you cannot relate to is to anyway compare it to what you know. Comparing it to Europe does not make any sense. Comparing it to South Africa where we were only a few months ago or to Indonesia, where I used to live, comes closer, but still does not really hit the mark. Both of these countries are more advanced than Kenya.


The main questions that keep popping up in my mind is: Why? Why is this country burdened with such heavy poverty and so great social problems? I have met so many smart and capable young people the last few days, so many souls hungry to learn and to improve. So why isn’t it happening?


HIV and AIDS is perhaps part of the answer because of the way it rips families and communities apart. Kenya has the same problems with crime, corruption and climate change (there is a severe drought at the moment) that many other developing countries face. But it still does not add up. There is something missing in the equation. This country should be doing better than it is! Why isn’t it?


Tomorrow we are leaving Nairobi again, but only for a while. We will be back in three weeks to continue our work. Hopefully the impressions will have had time to settle by then.

Thorsten


Monday: Stefano explains some of the things we have learned over the past few weeks to the Koinonia management team. Afterward Ruslana went on to explain the framework that we are working with.


We split the Koinonia managers in smaller groups and asked them to fill in the framework for their own social projects or business units. They took to the task with great enthusiasm and quickly learned the concepts. Here Eva is overseeing one of the groups.

Esther, Ann and Helen working on their frameworks. The Kenyan women seem to be very strong and with important roles in both Koinonia and in the Kenyan society in general. Esther is the day-to-day manager of Koinonia. Ann and Helen each run one of the children homes.

Tuesday we went around to visit the social initiatives in Koinonia. Ruslana and Gerald are here getting a tour of the dispensary.

Wednesday we went around to all the so-called IGA’s (Income Generating Activities), which is NGO terminology for ‘business unit’. Here Stefano and Ruslana are learning how Harrison runs the computer school Shalom IT.

Today Thursday we then visited four other organisations to learn how they do the same things that Koinonia does. This gave us a lot of very useful input. Here we are talking to Father Sebastian – an Indian Catholic priest – who has been working in Africa for 20 years and now runs the Bosco Boys home in Nairobi. The place is both a home and a school for 300 boys, who all have been saved from a life on the streets of Nairobi.

Let’s not forget why we are here. This is two of the girls at ‘Shelter Children Rescue Center’, which we also visited today.

And here are a couple of the boys at ‘St. Paul’s Children Home’. The new Karate Kid has been found.

Eva is making new friends in the process.


Lea Toto as part of the Nyumbani program delivers health services such as medication, nutrition and counselling to HIV patients. They have an impressive 5000 patients enrolled in their programs now.

Kenyan’s are not without humour. ‘CAUTION – Driving School - Driver under instruction – In god we trust…….’


Stefano and Gerald battling with the mosquito net. Quite an entertaining event!

Delivery and Celebration

It has been a long and intense day. I just made it back after the latino party arranged by all our South and Central American classmates. It was an evening full of good food, home made caipirinhas, great rhythm, swinging hips and most of all good fun! Thanks to all the Latinos for a great evening!!

Today was also the phase 1 delivery of our ICP project to our client. We have been over the presentation again and again this week and today was no different in that respect. Our project is somewhat different from the rest as our client is not a company, but last year's MBA class represented by a panel of 5-6 people. We felt that the presentation went well and that we are on track before we move into the next phase, albeit there still is tons of work awaiting us there.

The MBA classes of 2003 and 2008 are having their reunions in Lausanne this weekend. We will use this opportunity to have the final football match between the 2008 and 2009 classes. It will be a match of epic proportions. Each team has won a match each, so this third and last match is of the utmost importance. I will unfortunately be missing it as I in a few hours will be heading out on a weekend motorbike ride arranged by IMD staff member Christian Steiger. We will be going around the lake and into France. I have been looking forward to this trip for weeks. I can wait to cruise through the valleys and climb the mountain passes.


Misayo Matsumoto (Japan) and Albert Schultz (Germany) enjoying South American food and a Mexican beer.


Chuks and Uche showed their daughter Isabella for the first time. Isabella was born only hours before Chuks got on the plan to South Africa with the rest of the class. Here they are flanked by Wouter Naessens (Belgium) and Natalie. Wouter and Natalie got married during the summer vacation.


So far this years IMD class have delivered nine babies and there is more on the way!



The partners entertained with a Brazilian dance.



Tonight was the birthday of Manisha Mediratta. According to Mexican traditions the birthday 'child' gets the first hit at a socalled pinata filled with candy. The only catch is that you have to hit it blindfolded. Alejandro Salcedo (Mexico) gives instructions to Manisha.

Rasmus Figenschou (Norway) ended up giving the Pinata the final blow with one of the tubes used for recycling paper cups. Then there was candy for everyone.

Ryo Abe (Japan), Oren Yehudai (Israel), Joost Mackor (The Netherlands), Yuri Vasilkov (Russia) and Valeria Pavlyukovskaya (Russia) under the empty Pinata

Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons, that was the name of a very popular game when I was a child. You could get it both as a role play and a computer game. Somehow those words are coming back to life, but with a very different meaning.

The dungeons are the dungeons, nothing new about that. Generations of IMD students have shed their blood, sweat and tears down there. And it is all still there, at least it smells that way some times. :-) We are spending the whole day in study room 7 these days, trying to squeeze some of all the ambiguity out of our ICP project on Street Children in Nairobi. We have built up a frame work to help us understand how NGOs work and we have now started calling other NGOs to plot them into the framework and get reference points. That way we can much better understand how our organization, Koinonia, operates. These days we even have some additional help as Daniel Brosseau from last years class helps us fill in the framework. Daniel spent six weeks with Koinonia back in April and May, so he has a lot of the information we need. Now that we have created the framework and understand the NGO 'industry' better, it has become much easier to understand the situation in Koinonia. When first introduced to the project in May it seemed a bit overwhelming.


And what about the Dragons? Well, I was talking about our internal ones. Such as the fear of needles. Here we are yesterday getting our vaccinations for Kenya. Gerald takes it pretty easy, though.


We kept the doctor busy for more than an hour. It was no easy task to put together the vaccination 'menu' for a Malaysian, a Romanian/Israeli and a Dane that were going to Kenya. In usual Swiss style it all worked like clockwork, though, but came with a steep price tag.



It is late August and 33 degrees in Lausanne. The picture is even taken at 5 in the afternoon, so it has undoubtedly been even warmer earlier in the day.

Thorsten

Rebound

rebound: a movement back from an impact

Now that we distanced ourselves a bit from last weeks exams it has become a little clearer what happened after the exams. Whether it was a reaction from the stress of the past 5 months or just the intensity of the last few weeks peaking with the exams, the energy level in the class had dropped to zero Monday morning. It was as if we all had made a deep exhale together and could not really start breathing again.

I walked around like a zombie most of Monday and Tuesday, like a spectator to my own life. I was going through the motions and I heard the words that were said, but nothing registered. The ship was sailing, but there was nobody at the rudder. I felt like I had not slept for a hundred years and I could not concentrate on anything for more than a minute at the time. If there is anyone out there that can describe what happened, please do let us know.

In retrospect it is probably good that we have been in the dungeons most of the week. Teaching us in the auditorium would have been a pure waste. The energy curve has been steadily rising over the past few days, but it is nowhere close to pre-exam levels.

Thursday we presented the first draft of our ICP industry analysis to each other. We taped our presentations on the walls in both the foyer and the auditorium and then walked around and gave each other feedback. My group harvested a lot of good comments and suggestions which we brought back down into the dungeons. The first big test on this project will be on Thursday where we will be showing our work to the executives visiting campus for the big OWP program that runs next week.

We ended the week this afternoon with an interview for our industry analysis. Jemilah Mahmoud and Manu Gupta have each built their own human aid organizations in Malaysia and India respectively. They were in Geneva for a conference and were kind enough to spend almost two full hours with us explaining the ins and outs of their 'industry'. The meeting was very conviniently held at Starbucks.


ICP Team Koinonia getting first-hand input from Jemilah Mahmoud and Manu Gupta on how NGOs work. (NGO = Non-Government Organization)

Stefano Giussani [Italy] teaching Corinne Avelines [France] the NGO value chain.

The auditorium was buzzing with presentations and candid feedback.

Simon Brunner [Switzerland] presenting the first draft of their industry analysis.

Myriam Vacher [France] explaining industry trends and drivers.


Shibu James [India] gives his feedback to one of the industries.

Koinonia

Ups, it is the middle of the night and I just woke up on the couch. I did not intend to take that 3 hour 'nap'. The upside is that I feel more fresh now than when I came home a few hours ago.

No two days are the same at IMD, but today was more different than most! Like many other teams we met we the client for our International Consulting Project (ICP). Whereas the majority of the 18 ICP clients are large corporations our team will be working with Koinonia, a relatively small NGO that amongst others runs a number of homes for street children in Nairobi, Kenya.

In the MBA Diary on 21 November 2008 Asier Sinde [Basque] from last year's class was quoted for saying:
"Our visit to Kenya was an eye opening experience that has had a strong impact not only on our year at IMD but also on our individual lives. As a result, we have recently started an initiative to create a fund that will aim at rehabilitating deprived and abused children from the streets and sponsoring them into high school and college in Kenya. This initiative will be implemented through Koinonia, a local NGO which some of us met in Kenya and that is already operating in Nairobi."

The 2008 class decided to help Koinonia by funding a 2009 ICP project for them and today they took another step in fulfilling this promise as they came to hand over the torch to the 2009 class. We are both humbled and honored to be given this task and opportunity and we look forward to getting started. It will be our largest opportunity to date to make a difference in a lot of people's lives.

The 2008's were represented by Daniel Brosseau, Max Sorokin and Svetlana Korshunova. It was obvious from the stories they told that last year's discovery trip to Kenya had made a huge impression on the class collectively. Daniel has just returned from a six week trip to Kenya, where he has been working withKoinonia on preparing our ICP project. He has obviously collected A LOT of information where there was little information to get. This will undoubtedly prove invaluable to get us off to a running start.

The afternoon was a huge information download from Daniel, Max and Svetlana. I think this was what wore me out so badly. The last week have been full of thoughts about our final startup presentations and classes on Financial Derivatives, so it is quite a switch to suddenly start thinking about improving life in the slums of East Africa.

The birds have started singing outside. I think they are telling me to go to bed!



Hand-over from the 2008 class to the 2009 class!
From left: Stefano Giussani [Italian], Max Sorokin [Russian - 2008 class], Daniel Brosseau [Canada - 2008 class], Svetlana Korshunova [Russia - 2008 class], Thorsten Boeck [Denmark], Gerald Lo [Malaysia], Ruslana Zbagerska [Canada/Ukraine], Eva Hubsman [Israel/Romania].

Phooning

Yesterday I was still taking it easy back home in Denmark. Today we are back in the pressure cooker and yesterday is only a faint memory. I barely landed in Lausanne yesterday before I went to work on the pile of emails that I use as my to-do list. It was in the early ours of the morning before I felt that I was just reasonable up to speed and could go to sleep. Today was the usual full speed schedule and the next four days are packed to the brim as well. Assignments, startup projects, carreer coaching, personal development initiative (PDI) and the regular class preparation. You name it and we have got it at the moment.

Professor James Henderson introduced the International Consulting Projects (ICP) today and asked us to state our preferences for the project. It was a bucket of very varied projects that was presented. Different industries, different tasks and different parts of the world, some very far away and others just around the corner. The ICP is the part of the year that I look most forward to.

The morning started in celebration, though. Rasmus Figenschou from Norway turned 30 on Monday and the class had prepared a special gift for him. Rasmus is a fan of 'phooning'. To phoon means to have your picture taken as you strike a pose like a runner in special places or under a particular set of circumstances. Here Rasmus shows how it should be done.



Rasmus has previously declared that his biggest 'phooning' dream is to have all 90 students phooning on the tables in the auditorium. So last week, while Vahid Khamsi lured Rasmus away, Henry Low [Singaporean] snapped the below picture. You can probably imagine Rasmus' reaction when the picture popped up on the screen in the auditorium today. It was great to kick off this period of heavy workload on a less serious note.