Academik

I arrived at our training room just after 7 this morning to find Kiki
speaking with Errol, one of our leaders, and my surrogate father on
the trip. We happen to look alike, but he’s got striking blue eyes of
knowledge and kindness like my father (hi Da!). I checked in with her
later and heard that she had spoken to her husband about the new
feelings she was experiencing in her faith. I don’t think this was a
subject they had ever broached before, but they found some more common
ground and she’s working to include him in this journey.

Today was all about positioning and people… The first
rather difficult to relate to an HR department, the second rather
critical. To help address the first I presented the parable of the
unmerciful servant (Matthew 18:21-35) to the group both reading the
text, and in theatrical form. Harjono, our translator, played the
King while I played the unmerciful servant, and Richard, our
intercessor, played my servant. The parable depicts a king who
forgives a servant’s debt, only to have the same servant later have
another servant who owes him money thrown into prison. The king finds
out about his lack of mercy and rebukes his previous forgiveness.
Richard, nicknamed Jackie Chan for his good nature and handsome asian
looks, was kind enough to indulge me in a kung fu battle as I tried to
collect my debt from him.

What does this have to do with positioning, or our relationship to
others in the market? Well the most direct example would be if a
supplier forgave our debt, and then we sued a client for not paying a
bill on time. God positions us in forgiveness, mercy, and love so
that we can, in turn, pass those blessings on to others. How are you
passing the blessings in your life on to those around you?

We’re still struggling with this point from the perspective of the HR
department, but I’m confident we’ll eventually find a way through.

People came next, and we were on top of that one. We worked through
several strategies, action items, and KPIs for building up great
people at Wintermar including:

• ensuring new employees had training not only for their job, but
  also on the values and purpose of PT Wintermar.
• creating a new way to affirm employees by creating an employee
  of the month award for each of the five departments.
• examining employee workload and responsibilities to ensure
  employees are matched with their skills and not overworked or too
  stressed (recently a 5yr employee had quit because he was promoted to
  a position he didn’t really feel qualified for).

This was a great start because we put some concrete things down on our
scorecard (the big deliverable for the 2 weeks), and started building
momentum as we move into the home stretch. It was also very affirming
that Kiki texted her boss that morning to say “Thank you for
sending me to the program. I have something new in my life” He
responded, “Same thing happened to me, now how do we share it!”

Andrew

“The well-lived life is not a spectator sport”