Academik

This morning started with a text message to Kiki encouraging her for
the day ahead. She replied that she was just thinking about me, and
poof, I sent her a text message. She asked for prayers as she had to
fire an employee this morning. I prayed for the wrong thing, thinking
that he was quitting, and she wanted him to stay. I didn’t feel like
that was going to happen, but I prayed anyway.

This morning started off with praise and worship, and then a diaspora
of consultants throughout Jakarta. Some of us left later than others
so we sat together and worked on our deliverables. One of the younger
consultants who works at Cnet had been asked to come speak to an
office’s employees. He’d never done anything like this so we worked
on a couple of topics and sent him on his way.

I posted the two novels below : ) and then headed out to my client
again to see if I could get a better sense of how we could improve
what seemed to be a good company that was facing giant problems. This
time around though, I had a secret weapon in the form of Errol, a
retired South African Navy consultant who leads our Indonesian office
here. We spoke first with Kiki, and then I met with Erdanto, the
crewing manager, and then finally with Mr. Sugyman. I asked Kiki
about her conversation earlier in the morning and she said that it had
gone really well, very smoothly. In Indonesia you must supply
employees with a severance package if you fire them, and you must
coordinate everything with the Ministry of Manpower (labor).
Fortunately in this case, Wintermar had followed the law really well
and the employee, who had been with the company for 5 years,
understood why he was being let go and left peacefully without
demanding severance. Even though I prayed for the wrong thing, God
was faithful in giving Kiki what she was looking for.

We discussed the issues of corruption and staffing issues again -
everyone seems to have different problems, but in the end we finally
realized one thing. The boss didn’t have enough time to do anything
but react. This gave us a great insight into how HR needed to change
the company… If HR could hire and train people that were responsible
and self-sufficient then Mr. Sugyman would have time to visit the
boats more regularly. He would have more time to spend with employees
and with his family. He would also have more time to set the
strategic vision for the company and HR could then communicate that to
employees.

It was a big breakthrough for us as we had been struggling to find a
clear purpose for HR that aligned with the needs of the company.
Tomorrow, we help Kiki and Martin realize this purpose and begin
formulating a strategy for moving forward!