Business Trips Worldwide - Tricks to Swing Time and really Know Places

Washington Avenue, Minneapolis - MI - USA

Lack of Time to know the Surroundings During Business Trips on Global Projects

Have you notest how often do you have time to leave the hotel room after a very busy day of training, workshopping on managing activities on a global project, travelling abroad...

Sometimes it can really be painfull, to not say sad, being around such beautifull places without getting even a good time to sleep, rest and recover for the next day of work.

I do have some tips for the travelers, based on my experience: please do not try to see as much as possible from the country you are visiting, do not loose sleep hours just by visiting touristic places, locations where everybody goes , etc.

My first tip is to advise you to try to find some neighbor or street view that you like, stop by, have a coffee or a drink on the local cafetteria, try to talk to locals, real "feel" the ambiance of the place.

    Amsterdam nearby some Caffes Downtown  

You'll probably notest that sometimes great and unike things happens just out of the blue, like you hearing a great song played by some street musicians at NY Metropolitan Museum sidewalk on a freezing tuesday afternoon (as I have testimonied months ago), or even watch the sun goes down in an Amsterdam Caffé, listening to the tonging sounds of the beautifull Dutch language all around you...

     North Sea watched from my hotel room window on a kickoff of a global project in Sweden (no time to sail at all.....)

During also some kind of business trips, you can get really very tired, mostly if you are travelling for a way different time zone. My advise in those cases is to try to really enter into the local timezone, and do not go to bed as soon as you hit the hotel room. Get out, go walking, try to take pictures, but do not sleep until it is the right time on the local time zone to do so.

Open your mind and heart to the amazing experience of being surrounded by another culture, language, mindness, air....try to "breathe" the local way to see and feel things, try to understand how it is up (or down) there. Imagine all the history and past behind every street. Try not to judge people based on your standards...remember..."everyone is perfect...God makes no mistakes"

Of couse, if you can and your agenda allows you, schedule a free day or free weekend on the city downtown, go to the popular market at the center of the city (pretty much every city has it, with small variations)...order an expresso, sit and watch people....read the local news, etc....

Ouro Preto City - Minas Gerais State - Brazil

These are some of the tips and moments I share with you my friends. I hope you can have some of these experiences I simply love to have from time to time.

Cheers,


Rodrigo Montagner

Global SAP Project Management Through Different Cultures : a Real Challenge

Global SAP Project Management Through Different Cultures: a Real Challenge

We have recently passed through an SAP Rollout regionally in four different countries in Latin America and now is the time where we usually start to write, document or even sometimes just store in our minds the lessons learned, gains, losses, victories and failures, thinking about ways it could have been done differently.

One of the greatest lessons and outcomes of such kind of project is that you always can learn ways to communicate better and better, and sometimes no matter how hard you try, you have to communicate again and again ideas, project phases, new information, all kinds of subjects, in order to make people really understand the root meaning of each phrase, phase, area and task of a global project.

It was no surprise having to address the same problem several times throughout the teams, and even though sometimes it seems that you are communicating less (or more) than expected, some people are really not used to global projects, in a sense that it is not every day that they have a project that deals and change their business processes and day to day activities for good and in an expected timeframe. Sometimes the management of change hurts a little.

It has also been of immeasurably value the cross cultural environment we get involved to, with mixtures of cultures, impressions, opinions, and such different mindnesses sometimes...enriching the moments and energizing everyone with good discussions.

When you have to make people understand that things are changing, and it is actually for good reasons, and above all in the end they are the ones who'll be valuated and helped by its evolution, is when the hard times really comes on a project like ours. The argue, the frustration and the expectable lack of visibility upon the outcomes in the near future sometimes causes sorrow, depressing attitudes and aggressive mood and rejection to everything related to such project activities.

But in the end and as the systems evolves, everyone can foresee that the future will be really good, smoothly processed and with standardized solutions throughout the countries, integrating reports, visibility, traceability and enhancing the overall quality of the business processes.

All in all, it was and still is a challenge to have such great opportunities like this to revaluate your own ways of thinking and cooperate on a global environment system, making more and more closer cultures, people and the systems, all together to run a successful business like ours.

IS and IT service across borders

The management and control of IT, networks and equipment is becoming increasingly globalized within our companies . The development and improving security of technology is creating new opportunities for greater cooperation within our growth regions – like South America. But it is not unusual for a region like this to have IS/IT problems or challenges that do not exist, or are different, in other regions.

Better IS/IT cooperation on a global level will advance both dialog and understanding between central and local organizations – helping us to improve global IS/IT services at our company.

We are seeing fantastic growth in South America, but we know from experience that the IT infrastructure in the region may not keep up. So, the increasingly global solutions implemented by our compoanies may need some local adaptations.

Whether it is a problem with a data communication link in Jundiaí, Brazil or an application in Maracay, Venezuela that needs to be integrated with another application in Cali, Colombia, creating global, standardized solutions within our companies, sometimes we have to overcome the limited infrastructure available in some regions as well as geographical and cultural obstacles.

Still, we are finding partnership opportunities in South America and through these, we can influence and improve the global supply of communication links; global ERP solutions; purchasing of standardized hardware and software; and even service level agreements on IS/IT services to South American countries.

Increased coordination and synchronization will also enable us to learn from one another and so continue to improve the quality of our IS/IT solutions in the region.


Rodrigo Montagner
BU IT/IS Manager

Published on the Eka Chemicals Information Management - Online Global Newsletter. November 2009.

Why Blue Ocean Entrepeneurship...

Welcome to my fresh start blog versing about what is like to be in global jobs, global companies, global projects, global mindnesses and everyday becoming more and more integrated and how to deal with cultural and regional differences in a smooth manner.

I have called this blog Blue Ocean Entrepeneurship because I believe every global executive has an underpinning mask of an entrepeneurship from the inside. And of course the powerfull image of a big blue ocean ahead of us means the infinity of possibilities and richness in this path to our professional and personal achievements.

Welcome all!!!!