And our way is on the road again….

I don’t really feel the joy of traveling embedded in this song but it is apropos for the next few weeks. I write this entry sitting in a hotel room in Falls Church Virginia, half way back from half way around the world. I am here for a week of meetings with the folks from Stratford University. I get back just in time to head off again the following weekend to Dahej to speak to the management association there and to meet with our group of MBA students. I then am in Delhi for two weeks (well ten days) and then I am OFF TO PORTLAND, YEAH! The last trip is definitely one I am looking forward to.

This trip was one I was really dreading: coach without any upgrades – not even to economy plus with its delicious extra 4” of leg room. For those of you not 6’4”, in economy my knees are already flush against the seat in front of me prior to the person in front of me reclining. And of course with my unnecessary extra girth, I don’t have any room side to side either. To make it better, I had small kids in front, to the side, and behind me. To make it even more special, when I put on my noise cancelling headphones, the battery was dead. I was all set for a crap-tastic flight. In reality it wasn’t that bad. I took an Ambien and drifted off into some form of unconsciousness. I can’t really say I was comfortable but all in all I had about four or five hours which I don’t remember, so there’s that.

I am traveling on this trip with Deepak Mehta, our Admissions Manager (you may remember Deepak from such hits as his wedding [spoken in the voice of Troy McClure]). It is his first trip to the United States and it is interesting to see it through his eyes. Born and raised in India, the only other places he has been in the world are Dubai and Singapore. Both are nice places but as Deepak keeps mentioning, they are no United States. He comments about how clean everything is; how beautiful all the trees, grass, and blossoms are; and how controlled/organized the traffic is. I told him the traffic on the freeways in and around Washington DC can get bad, but the truth of that matter is compared to India, it may get slow (even stopped) but it never gets bad. Not India bad, anyway.

Last week at work our focus has been on totally redesigning our webpage. This has been a somewhat brutal process. The manager in charge of the process has not done a very good job of ensuring things get done. As a consequence we are three months into the remodel and about where we were at the beginning. Charu has now taken this on as a pet project and with that has come clarity of vision and lots of extra work. I have had to edit every page as well as writing several sections from scratch. This in addition to my regular work has added another level of pressure and time requirement. It will be worth it if we actually finish everything up this next week as our plan calls for. If I have to get involved in the details when I get back in addition to my other activities, I won’t be thrilled.

Speaking of what else I have to do, I won’t go into all of it A) because in order to understand it all, I would have to write more detail than you care to read; 2) I don’t want to sound like I am whining; and III) I know you really don’t care. I will discuss one of the hotter fires. At the strong recommendation/insistance of our US partner we created an International Student Office (ISO) two months ago. The vision (simplified) is the ISO will be a one stop shop that will so satisfy our international students that even more of them will come. They selected Mr Ramdas to head it. I hope you realize from previous comments the high esteem I hold for him. However he is not a salesman or a sales manager. ISO was designed as solid line to our VP for International Relations and dotted line to me. It became clear to me a couple of weeks ago, I needed to be more involved. He is just not getting the support he needs from the US to make the changes in behavior he needs to make to be successful. So one of my key tasks while I am here this week is to put together a plan/process to ensure he gets the support he needs.

Our success this year relies on three key initiatives. A quarter of the way through the year (now almost a third) we have not made the progress we need. Making the changes in processes, and more importantly the culture, needed to achieve our calls is more difficult than I had anticipated. And I had anticipated it would be hard. There are times I wonder if I have made any difference in my year here. It reminds me of the situation with career bureaucrats and elected/appointed officials. Career bureaucrats often ignore or give lip service to elected/appointed officials. They know in a few years the elected/appointed official will be gone along with their initiative and someone new will come in, but the bureaucrat will outlast them all. Two years from now will we have been able to make the changes we want or will we be essentially the same organization, just two years older? Hmm. I don’t think I should think too long about that. That way madness lies.

I do need to discuss two typical India experiences. We mentioned months ago about our half bath being out of commission because they found the drainage pipe from the sink had never been connected and the water was just pooling under the floor (at least the toilet seems to have been connected correctly. Well it has been weeks since the basic plumbing work was done, but we were left with a huge hole in the tile floor and no sink (they were going to replace the sink because the existing one had been cracked and kind of poorly mended). Every day or so we would ask when the flooring would be done and invariably we would be told it would be done "for sure in a few days." Well that finally actually happened and the floor looks great. However, the sink was not connected, so for the last three weeks we have been following the same process with it. "When will the sink be connected?" “Two days perhaps three days” but nothing got done. Finally this week I got a text from Christina. The workmen were there installing the sink. Huzzah! When I got home I rushed into see the new sink. Yup. There it was. The old sink. Gotta love it. What took so long?

The next thing is Thursday, Christina called and said, “They delivered the couch. Where shall they put it?” Wait, what? Apparently there was a chaise that was part of the living room set the landlord put in our flat. He had had all the pieces reupholstered but for some reason the chaise was not done until now. Over a year later, since all the other pieces were there when we first looked at our flat. We didn’t know it even existed but now it’s part of our living room. It’s not a bad thing, actually. It looks nice and is comfortable, but we had no idea it was coming and when they delivered it they seemed surprised that we were surprised. Anyway, just so you say we never include pictures anymore, here is our new chaise.

As Yakov Smirnoff used to say, "And I thought, ‘What a country!'"

Until next week….

Namaste.