At the heart of our ICP was a mandate to develop and implement a customer focused culture in this large construction firm to foster greater market success in the US. An intriguing scope and one very different from our ICP1 scopes. How do you get people to change their habits to display more desirable traits especially now in a changing construction industry where the need to differentiate has never been greater?
And so off we went on a long distance flight to spend 4 weeks at the client’s office in Seattle. The original A-team comprised 5 guys - one cocky French-American, one singing Portuguese, one fiery Egyptian-American, one Lederhosen wearing German and one excellent Brit (it’s great being the author of the blog). However, with 5 high octane strong personality alpha males, the decision was undertaken to soften the group with the introduction of a girl. Who happened to be Nigerian. And who definitely wasn’t soft.
As the new A-Team, we were faced with an incredible 48 face to face interviews of 90 minutes each in Seattle, Portland, Oakland, Riverside, Los Angeles, Milpitas and two construction sites in the very first week alone. By successfully dividing and conquering, we conducted all 48 in all those locations in one week and obtained a rich real learning on implementing change in firms. Our virtual teams learning from our Organisational Behaviour classes helped keep us as one unit whilst apart.
We have also tasted culture shock ourselves here…especially the two members of the team who ordered chicken on waffle for lunch. Cooked chicken leg slapped on sweet waffle and sprinkled with sugar. One of these two members was also brave enough to order a “Kiddie Size Chocolate Cake slice”. Which was the same size as a small television, I kid ye not. God Bless America.
For me personally, this project completed the truly global trek. In one year at IMD, I have been as far east as Brisbane (Australia), as far south as Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) and now as far west as Seattle covering 5 of the 6 continents. Had I chosen the ICP1 based in Venezuela, it would have been all 6 continents in the one year at IMD.
Team 14: Bertrand Landel, Joao de Melo Alves, Nayef Mohyud-Din, Joseph Gruber, Tomas Gerges and Edikan Ekpu.
