Academik

Tuesdays and Thursdays are unstructured days for us to visit with
clients, work on deliverables, and generally make sure that we’re
moving forward. This past Tuesday I went to Wintermar to meet with
Sugyman and Darmawan, the two brothers who run the company.

As you can imagine with any company, everyone has a different
perspective on what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed. For some who
hear about Rep, they may think that we’re trying to convert everyone
to Christians, and while we’d love for that to happen we’re really
more interested in making sure that Christian principles are becoming
lived out in the marketplace. The rest will fall into place once that
happens.

Concrete examples… God spoke to His people, the Israelites through
prophets in the Old Testament. In the New Testament God speaks through
His son, Jesus. He directly approaches the problems of the world by
engaging us on our level. When I met with the owner of the company he
mentioned that they were having communication and cultural issues with
the staff, and more specifically with the crew who are distributed
across Southeast Asia and living in a different environment and
culture than workers in Jakarta. I asked both brothers if they had
ever worked on any of the boats or spent much time with the crew.
They replied that they see the crew from time to time in the office,
but that they haven’t ever spent time on the boats. I immediately
began to feel like this was an important step for them to begin to
solve issues of communication and culture - they need to spend a few
days living aboard one of the boats and working with a rig so they can
better understand what their people are going through.

I’m going to continue to pray about that insight and how best to
communicate that to them. In the meantime Darmawan, Kiki, and Martin
and I went out to lunch and had three types of fish which I wish I’d
taken pictures of for you - they took the entire fish and threw it on
a grill and then split it in half and put it on a plate for us. I
also had a great sweet tea which tasted very woodsy, but good. I’m
gonna see if I can bring some back so you can try it.

We went back to the office after lunch and worked on the purpose
statement and an assessment of where they are and where they want to
be in different aspects of the business. Hong Lim, my co-consultant,
stressed the alignment of the different parts of the company. This is
something I feel we’re going to struggle with as the CEO has not
communicated a real purpose statement for the company, and as such,
we’re having trouble formulating a plan for HR that aligns.

We came back home and debriefed with the rest of the team and then
headed out for some Thai food at the mall next door with the team. I
stuck around to work on the Internet and ended up giving Julia a tour
of the mall via Skype. Picture me walking up to J. Co, a donut shop
like Krispy Kreme, with my laptop open and just holding the laptop up
so that Julia could see all the donuts while two workers behind the
counter wondered what the heck I was doing… stealing their donut
secrets!

Technology has been a bit frustrating here because we have cellular
Internet in three of our rooms, but in all but one it’s extremely slow
(it takes about 20 minutes to download email). Please pray that we
find a solution soon that works and is convenient for everyone.
Ironic that one of our clients is the 3rd largest ISP in Indonesia and
differentiates itself by quality. We are assuming God has given us
this experience so that we can better understand what Indonesians go
through and market the company accordingly.

All the best,
Andrew