When the six of us selected a project to develop a sales strategy for an analytical devices multinational, we underestimated the complexity and scale of the change we were to implement.
10 days into the project, we were zipping off to 3 different continents (client sites in China, US, Germany) to meet sales personnel, managers, support teams and customers. We functioned on 3 different time zones trying to organize Skype meetings with each other. One or two of our group mates were in airplanes during most of these meetings.
Our key learnings both from a travel-intensive and change management ICP are below:
a) Be open and sensitive to cultural differences and findings from different regions
b) Develop appreciation for different organizational culture of the client in different regions
c) Be kind to team member’s jet lags!
Lastly, managing the ICP workload with the job search process and making the best of the 6 weeks we have left with the class – has made us all tremendously adept at managing our time. The learning never stops at IMD!
Team 10: Waki Tanaka, Tsubasa Ishiyama, Vedant Pathak, Saira Rajan, Nicolai Reimann and Jin Woo Song