Kenya calling

It has been a couple of long days as we have been preparing the end-of-phase-2-presentation and planned the work for Phase 3. Luckily, doing these two things is very much one-and-the-same process. Quite a heavy process, though. It entails the usual iterative discussions, post-it notes and drawing upon drawing on the white boards. Over and over again, a process that is so tiring when you are in the middle of it but which is the only way to bring the real problems to the surface and consensus to the group. It is always very nerving, because you constantly are up against a hard dead line. Afterward follows the relief from the pressure and the tiredness of having been going flat out for a period. It is all covered by a feeling of either joy or frustration depending on how it went. Today it went well, the clients (which is last year's MBA class) expressed their appreciation and we feel on the right track as we move on to the next phase.

Next phase is again called Kenya, starts Monday morning in Geneva airport and lasts for twelve days. We have planned the next rounds of workshops there. The focus is this time much less on digging up information and much more on finding solutions together with the people in the organization. It is three weeks since we left Nairobi and in that time Koinonia (the organisation we work with) has been working with the frameworks we gave them. We look forward to learning what they got out of those exercises.

We chose to order the abundance of information that we had obtained during our first Kenya voyage by first writing the information on post-it notes.....

....then ordering it in complete silence....

....until we arrived at a few overall groups.

Finally, we drew up how the different groups are interrelated and we had a good picture of how to approach the issues.

What does sun look like for a whale?

What does the sun look like for a whale?

This week the class divided in three. One group does Presentation Skills, another is working on their Negotiation Skills and the last is learning Advanced Finance. Each course is two days and then we swap. That makes the usual six day week.

I have been working on my presentation skills this first week. The course is run by the one-man army Steve Knight. Journalist by training and broadcaster by heart Steve has done broadcasting for many different people and institutions, amongst others the British Forces in Gibraltar and The Discovery Channel. The course in itself was excellent, but the presentations that people gave were intriguing themselves despite that the content was not the main aim. The course started with everyone delivering a one-minute presentation about a subject they were passionate about. I did my speech on motor biking in the Swiss mountains. The subjects otherwise included subjects such as
- making omelet with passion (courtesy of Peter Griesmayr, Germany),
- getting married on Bali with your whole family around you (Sylvain Cabalery, France),
- making a real Brazilian barbeque (Bruno Portnoi, Brazil),
- taking time to enjoy the local beverages when you visit new places (Ryo Abe, Japan),
- seeing the sun from the point of view of a whale (scuba diving) (Vladimir Korobkin, Russia) and several others.
Allegedly Brad Moldin (US) did a speech on the subject of 'Bullshit'. Unfortunately, I did not hear it myself, so I will have to get him to repeat it at the White Horse one of these days.

Second and third round presentations were done in groups and again included intriguing subjects such as 'France and the burka' and 'Swiss Banking secrecy laws under pressure'. Steve was cheering us along in his positive and energetic way, while improving the way we put the message across:
- 'Don't chase around like a tiger in a cage',
- 'You are standing like you are about to start a gun fight',
- 'Keep eye contact with a person in the audience for 5 to 8 words at a time',
- 'Don't turn your back to the audience, do the weather man instead',
- 'Slow down!'
- 'Speed up!'

It may sound harsh, but it was done in a very positive atmosphere and I think we all needed to hear these things. We have probably heard most of it before, but you forget once you are in front of the crowd and your heart starting pumping faster and your hands get sweaty. Of course everything was video taped for us to review.