Settling down and looking into the future

Hello dear readers!

I am sorry for letting you wait so long for a new post. I guess my lack of creativity and drive for writing comes from me starting to settle down with life over here and not having too many new exciting things and experiences to write about. Some interesting things have been happening, but I am afraid I have to confess to all of you that I am applying some censorship to my writings since there are local people here following my blogging and everyone might not enjoy being put up for public display! For curious people you can always catch me online for more in depth sharing of what is happening over here! ;-)

Since the battle of figuring out the basics of how to live here is over I have lifted my eyes from the surroundings to the horizon. The last few weeks I have been reflecting a lot on where I see my life heading and where I want to go next. The problem is not that I have a hard time figuring out what I think I would enjoy doing, its rather the opposite. There are so many things that I think I would both love to do and be good at, so the hard part is to decide what not to do. Its like standing at a buffet table with all my favourite dishes from all around the world, and only one stomach to fill. Things that have crossed my mind is everything from entrepreneur within renewable energy & energy efficiency or training & leadership development, to becoming the prime minister. From becoming a hardcore intrepreneur within the public sector, to becoming a professor in science or theology. From becoming a management consultant in change management to becoming a reseacher in space science. From becoming an author to becoming a teacher. I am not sure if I would succeed in all of that but there are many interesting things to do out there! Bottom line is to find the place where I feel that my contribution to life on this planet (and beyond) would be the greatest. Good thing is that I have my whole life to make the decision. What I have decided though is that I want to continue to explore and develop my leadership potential in the most fantastic organization in the world, AIESEC. I have started to prepare for applying for the AIESEC International team for the coming year!

OK, back to earth. I got carried away a bit there. My colleague Jackie says that I am thinking too much... ;-) What else happened recently is that I bought a guitar. It feels great to have a great way to express myself besides blogging again. :P I was also sick for a few days. I was going to go to get tested for swine flu just in case, but after spending an infinity getting passed around from one line to another, from one hospital to another, and waiting in lines my health improved so much that I felt I was at full health again and I gave up and went back to work. The escape could also have been due to me not wanting to go to a place specialized for swine flu testing standing a few hours in line with some people that definitely got the flu. It felt like a statistically more healthy option to just get the hell out of there!

Work has been a little bit slow. All these companies I have been talking to about LED exports are so slow to take any decisions. My "to-do list" contains about 90% "Waiting for" entries. Local sales is still a bit of a question mark as a foreigner, so I managed to talk myself to get GO to a bunch of suggestions for how to improve some internal things. I am learning a lot about international trade and supply chains & distribution channels here so the experience is definitely very valuable even if it is not as challenging as last year's President job of AIESEC Sweden.

I received some questions about what books I bought at the Indian bookfair I was at few weeks ago, so I thought I would share my latest additions to my library with you all. When I think of it I realize that I never shared about the bookfair here, I only did it as a facebook feed. Sorry!

So, the latest addition to the library (In order (or non-order) of standing on the shelf)
The Holy Bible
The monk who sold his Ferrari – Robin Sharma
The future of India – Bimal Jalan
Strategies for real estate – Donald Trump
The theory of everything – Stephen Hawkin
Memoirs of a geisha – Arthur Golden
The art of happiness – Dalai Lama
Brida – Paulo Coelho
Awaken the giant within – Anthony Robbins
The Bhagavad Gita
Winning – Jack Welch
The End of Poverty – Jeffrey Sachs
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Hot Flat and Crowded – Thomas Friedman
How to become a rainmaker- Jeffrey J. Fox

All in all I think I did not pay more than 100 euros! More like 70 but I don't remember exactly. Any other book recommendations are welcome! I am interested in most things. :-)

See you soon!

Integrating to India - Behind the scenes

Hey guys!

As I mentioned in my last post I will not post some of my reflection on my integration to the Indian society and culture. I will try to outline some differences to what I am used to in Sweden, challenges I have had and thoughts that have been provoked. This will be a purely reflective post so for those of you who want to hear stories of what I am doing and to see some more pictures; you have to wait until the next week! :)

First of all I have to mention that my current integration experience is not just about changing country from Sweden to India, but also from being a student and active member of AIESEC to post-studies life. In AIESEC we often speak about the post-AIESEC "crash", meaning that people that spent a long time in the organization can have a hard time adjusting expectations about things when entering normal working life. I have spent the last six years in various leadership roles in an organization that attracts many of the most talented and ambitious young people in the world. During half of these years I was in the highest responsible role in the entity I was part of, meaning that I had control over everything, insight into everything, and indirectly the authority to shape the world around me according to my own view of how things should be. For this reason many of the frustrations I experience might not be right to blame on India, but rather on me having to adjust to others to a greater extent than I am used to.

So what are the differences I have experienced here?

First and foremost is how people relate to time and order. In the parts of India I have seen time would be considered as relative rather than absolute, even in AIESEC, so its not just about change of organization. If there is an agenda or schedule very little emphasis is put on actually trying to stick to it. Things take the time they take and no one really bothers if things go off track. It took me a while to adjust to this. I was facilitating an AIESEC conference soon after I arrived to India, which put this issue to  a real test. For the first few days I was really stressed since timings changed all the time and since things got messy I felt that I could not live up to the expectations of the people around me. After a while I realized that people did not really expect that things should be on time and in super order, so I managed to start feeling relaxed in the to me perceived chaos.

A connected phenomenon is planning ahead and preparing for things. It does not really happen.  When booking sales appointments here you normally get a meeting the same day as you are calling, or the day after. Even with very senior people. The time you get is often not that specific either, and being on time or not doesn't make a big difference. Sometimes meetings are a few hours late, but everyone involved adapts around the circumstances and do not make a big deal out of it. I don't think I would judge this as something negative about the system here though, even if it feels like it spontaneously. It is just different. Things get less predictable and harder to plan, but at the same time more flexible. I am sure stress is a much less occurring problem in India than in Sweden for this reason.  In the beginning I was quite frustrated when getting asked to do things without getting any time to prepare for them, such as being asked to run a very important sales meeting five seconds before entering the door to it during my first week in the country. I still do but I am getting used to it! ;-)

Two connected things I have experienced is less effort spent on organization/structure and communication.  Many times it is not clear who is responsible for what, instructions are poor, there are no clear communicated goals or plans and there is low consistency between different things. This has been very challenging for me to cope with since my brain is wired in the way that I want to connect the dots. I constantly have to challenge myself by keeping to work in what seems to be to be like walking in the dark, instead of waiting for someone to turn the lights on. This might not necessarily be something negative, since having things done this way means that everyone has to take ownership over what they are doing, or nothing would be done at all. Well, the latter seems to be frequently occurring as well. It also adds a lot of freedom.

Listening does not seem to be a commonly valued activity to engage in; it is more about pushing arguments and getting your voice heard. Connected to this is one of the biggest differences to what I am used to, namely the view of authority and hierarchies. The whole Indian society seems to be centered around gaining status and authority, compared to the Scandinavian "jante law" of 'Dont think you are special or better than anyone else'. The leadership style are not that inclusive and it is more about telling people what to do than to facilitate dialogue and consensus. This is something I have had quite a hard time with. Not by being directed, my boss are good to deal with in that sense. Problem is when having to lead myself, which I had the chance to experience by becoming the project manager for the AIESEC alumni congress here. I am definitely not good at pushing people around! It felt quite alien to have people telling me that I need to tell people what to do, how much to do, when to do… Not like the Swedish way of involving everyone in the decision making and asking rather than telling. I guess the more authoritarian view of leadership is required to make things happen in the, in my view, disorganized and unclear environment over here.

Something I admire a lot about India is the pride people have in being an Indian. Not pride in a negative way but rather as a strong uniting force for doing great things for the country. This is especially admiring since India should not really be considered a country but rather a continent. There are so many different religions and languages, and comparing one state with another can be as comparing two  European countries with each other. Still there seems to be a strong national entity even considering the tremendous diversity. I almost felt like an Indian myself when I went to this AIESEC conference where there were sessions about India as a country and AIESEC's role in it.

A general comment about my integration is that I probably been in a slight denial about the challenges with it. By being an easy going optimist trying to adapt to everyone else I think I made the self image of myself as an intercultural superman not having any problems with integrating. I might have managed to  smile at the issues and my own frustrations making it easy for me to cope with them, but that does not automatically mean that I am integrating well. There are surely new behaviours I need to master to not just being able to enjoy my experience here, but also to become a more effective member of this society. I am using the excuse of cultural differences to myself way too often, which limits my efforts in doing the best I can.

OK, I won't receive the Pulitzer price  for the structure and coherence of this post, but I am getting too tired to clean it up. And, if I don't finish it now I am not sure when I would get it done. There are also so much more I could write on this subject, but I will stop for now and write more another time!

Thanks for reading this far!