FIRST THINGS FIRST – TRAINING IN LONDON

It’s been a few years since I went to London, which was my first destination on my way to Manila. The co-worker who will be accompanying me on the study is also from the London office, so I got to meet him as well.

Aside from a great networking opportunity, training was in many ways an eye opener. We had people going to every imaginable place in the world (from Ghana, Kenya, India, Geneva, etc), and it was interesting to see how each of these nations had several common themes. We got a crash course in the issues that developing nations are facing: from trade barriers, to being saddled with debt by first world nations. We learned about how what might seem like progress is often times a destructive force in these fragile societies.

The case study we covered was how Coca Cola opened up operations in a developing nation which, to many brought the promise of reducing poverty by increasing jobs. After Coca Cola built their plant, the water table dropped by a third. Coca Cola was sucking the very resources that the farming community was so dependent on – water. We also got a crash course in how history shaped the “rules of the game” that the world plays by today. We learned about societies in these countries and how they are in a vicious cycle that is impossible to break out of.

Then, we challenged our own prejudices. How were we to be perceived in these countries, and how could we make recommendations without fully engaging and understanding the people in these countries. An interesting cultural exercise listed a few statements, and asked us to describe what we heard with an adjective (such as disgusting, interesting, exotic, normal, amusing, etc). Here’s a great example:

They eat a food from a paste made from the seeds of a type of grass, cooked once and then burnt near a flame, which is smeared with fat from an animal. They eat this with the albumen from a bird. Traditionally they eat it at certain times of day

What do you think of the statement above? Is it disgusting? Is it strange? Or is it describing toast, which we eat every morning!

We also learned about staying healthy in these countries, and understanding coping mechanisms. We learned about common diseases and how to spot the signs of them, and when to see a doctor. We learned about how to purity water, and how to cook our food.

We closed by learning about the challenges of the clients we would face in these societies, and how to deal with the complexity. Often times, what a head office dictates is very much different from how an organization is run on the ground. We did case studies on these. Here’s an interesting example we covered in class:

A Catholic organization is funding AIDS prevention work in sub-Saharan Africa. If you know anything about the Catholic faith, you know that they are against the use of contraceptives. As a consultant, you’re sent to the field to document their expenses and it’s clear to you that the head office suspects the field office of distributing condoms. As anyone in Africa knows, contraception saves more lives than alternative methods, and if the field office is using some of their funding to provide free contraception to the villages nearby, they are likely saving thousands of lives. The head office threatens serious repercussions if they discover the field is investing in these unapproved methods. As a consultant, what do you do? You’re bound by ethics on one hand to not lie on your report, and uphold the firm’s integrity. On the other hand, you have a moral obligation to do what you think is right, and allow the field
office to continue to distribute condoms. Should you lie about it? There is no right answer - just food for thought.

This type of an example isn’t really uncommon, and is an interesting take on how different the landscape is from headquarters to the field.

Training was a ton of fun, and after being in London for two days, it was time to fly to the Far East.