Friday, April 20, 2012
Well, folks, it has been a long time since I have sent you
an update. It’s 10:30 at night local
time, and I’m sitting in the airport café at Hanoi International, sucking down
espresso and ice cream and charging the PC batteries enough to get me to
Seoul. That is just over a 4-hour flight
from here, landing at 6 a.m. their time.
4 hours to kick around, then I kill 13+ hours directly to Atlanta. Less than 3 hours there, and I should be
landing in Columbus about 4:30 p.m. Saturday.
There is a lot to talk about since my last blog post almost
two weeks ago. Let’s see if I need to
break the narrative into more than one blog.
Last weekend, Tu tracked me down on Facebook…he is the high
school student who rescued me from being lost, and led me to the B-52
remains. Anyway, he is also an
apprentice jazz sax player, and invited
me to any of three open-air concerts his band was giving at the Luala fest,
near the Opera House. Unfortunately,
Tu’s teacher was there all weekend, and he bumped Tu from playing at all. Regardless, I did make most of the Sunday
morning concert, and the smooth jazz was quite enjoyable. I took Tu out to lunch afterwards at a
lakeside café, and he regaled me with tales about Viet legends, local shamans,
and similar stories I would never have heard.
He will go far in life…intelligence, personality, and a drive to always
learn more about almost any topic.
I spent a few days in the bank proper last week, and most of
the rest of the time since then was spent training. The
first week’s training, 2 days, covered product development and was held at
leased rooms in the stock exchange training center (preventive maintenance
ceased about 20 years ago). This week’s
training, 4 days of sales and sales management, was held in the bank’s training
center which was a much shorter cab ride away.
Regardless, the salient point is that the bank and training
truly do shut down completely from 11:30 until 1:00. Most people had a quick lunch, as there is a
cafeteria in the bank and the training centers routinely have lunch and tea
breaks for any classes. Some may go out
for errands, but the others recline in their chairs (or in a row of three
folding chairs) and literally nap.
Lights are also turned off, so make sure you bring a flashlight if you
stick around and want to read.
I continue to be astounded by the lack of customer service
orientation. While people are friendly
to those they meet in person, there seems to be an innate inability to orient
oneself to the customer’s POV. This
extends to areas such as only selling what the bank thinks the customer wants,
or creating products that have absolutely no reason to exist except that some
mucky-muck thinks they are neat or shiny.
More on that later in this drivel.
Breaking in the new team leader, Jane, has been a
challenge…more so for her than for me.
At least I had 6+ weeks of experience in Hanoi…she has none. The streets befuddle her, and she has a hard
time picking up the local accents. OTOH,
she is a tireless worker, and is not afraid of hammering at a point until she
totally understands it. That is badly
needed in this relatively rudderless project.
If I could pass on some of the deeper details about what is going on,
you would think I was crazy to still be here.
At our IFC/Bank meeting today, Jane found out that she was expected to
stay until early July (as opposed to May 29, June 4, and June 30 dates that had
been suggested earlier). No problem as
far as she is concerned, but one would expect the project hierarchy to have its
act together 9 months after it started.
Boarding starts in about 5 minutes…time to power down, pay
the bill, and truly start back home.
Saturday…very early morning in Columbus, and we are about to
cross the Date Line on our way across the Bering Strait. Both flights today have been absolutely
jammed, and this one has its temp set at least five degrees above comfort. Plus, this plane has no individual air vents
for passengers. Not a way to spend 13
hours.
The training classes went quite well…students were
attentive, ready to speak up (after some initial coaxing), and did not object
to the sales role plays even when I gave them no prep time. I see one of the students has already posted
a photo on Facebook from the class. There
were two disappointing aspects. I
rapidly found in the first week’s class that the bank product managers know how
to write, but have no concept of using Excel to create sales and financial
forecasts. Inexcusable. During the second day of the sales training
class, it began to dawn on me that the branch managers had not yet been briefed
on the new path the bank is planning, and how it would affect their customer
mix, daily activities, and task responsibilities. So I took it upon myself Thursday to give a
half-hour summary of the project and what might occur and when. That will probably annoy some mucky mucks in
the bank, but the people in the training certainly should have been up to speed
on why there is this sudden need for new training.
Anyway, the evaluations came in with very high marks. Wednesday evening, the sales class (probably
all but 5 of the 32 in the class) took me out to dinner at Bia Hoi, a rather
famous and traditional open-air garden diner.
At the close of class on Thursday, they also presented both my interpreter
and me with a kilo of Viet coffee. Very
nice of them, and maybe a response to my habit of rewarding them with candy
throughout the trainings.
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