Academik

Wednesday morning started with a quick mental ride, first in a car
with a discussion of the importance of alignment in our lives, and
then on a bike with wheels of character and competency. Fortunately
both rides did not require us to venture out onto the maniacal streets
of Jakarta. The second structured day is a big one, mainly because if
clients didn’t like the first day, they don’t come back. We’re 8 for
8 though this morning : )

Today was exciting because the President of Indonesia shared the hotel
with us. We kept an eye out, hoping that we could invite him to our
afternoon session, but alas he evaded us. We carried on through
Product in the morning, led by Pak Ben who started off the discussion
with Albert Guinness’ desires for beer as a substitute for Scotch and
Gin so that his countrymen would not spend so much time passed out in
the streets. We then watched a clip from the Passion of the Christ of
Jesus making a table. What do you notice about his Jesus’ work? Good
products are sturdy, of high quality, made with focus and precision,
innovative (most tables were much lower at the time), they often
create a secondary need… Pak Ben, normally quiet and very reserved,
comes alive with an audience. It was great to see him joking around
with the audience and really mastering the material.

We asked clients about miracles they wanted to see in their businesses
and already one had been fulfilled. One client knew that two
consultants were coming to visit her, but she prayed that she would
hear from one other person, just for that little extra bit of
confirmation we sometimes feel we need. She asked God for Richard,
our intercessor, to be a part of the visit, and it just so happened
that when the consultants walked through the door, Richard was with
them to pray for the business. The client was immediately overjoyed
and felt God listening. Others among the clients simply asked that
God would be with them in their business and we asked them to dream
bigger. That God would allow a discussion of faith to take place
between a husband and a wife… That a family would finally accept
their son for who he is, and not what they’ve always wanted him to
be. As God reveals himself, I’m sure their expectations will grow,
just as their faith will.

We spent the afternoon discussing presence, and the many ways that God
markets himself… His Son, His Word, miracles, the majesty of His
creation. It is moving how much he reveals to us when we just ask
Him. I had personally been struggling with the question of how to
retain employees at a business with high turnover - through prayer God
revealed that the employees did not belong to the company and thus
could not be seen as something to “keep” - with this new mindset I
realized that really all the company could do was love them and live
out a good example for them as Jesus did for the disciples. We’re
working on a strategy for the employees to be fulfilled, loved, grown
and affirmed.

We finished the day with a discussion of giants in Indonesia and there
are some big ones… corruption, education, infrastructure, laziness,
and law enforcement to name a few. We asked the clients to think
about what their business could do to help fight these giants. What
kind of legacy would their company leave? would they leave for their
children? Would they stand up to make a difference? This was a very
moving idea for many of them, especially when thinking about their
sons and daughters.

The team quickly wrapped up and headed out to dinner at a nearby Tapas
bar. A small Spanish restaurant with Patatas, Jambon, Empanadillas,
and more we had a bite to eat and took a few photos of the interesting
club downstairs. The bathrooms had chalkboard paint so we left a few
reminders of God’s love.

As the team enters into our second unstructured day tomorrow I feel
like we’re quickly coming up to speed… with several small miracles
and acts of faith under our belt, we’re growing confident that we can
change the businesses and the people here in Indonesia to accomplish
God’s Will. We are thankful that God has already given a sense of
fulfillment in our purpose, and we continually re-surrender to His
infinite wisdom and design.

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

The first day and there were tears all around my table. Let me tell
you the story.

We were up before dawn this morning to iron shirts, get breakfast,
prepare presentations, and get our conference room setup. Being the
very tall networker that I am, I greeted people downstairs and
directed them to our room starting at 8:15. All of the clients and
local consultants arrived by 8:45am and I went upstairs to meet my
client and co-consultant.

My client, PT Wintermar, is a shipping services and management company
whose core business is supporting offshore rigs. The company has ~500
employees of which 120 are office staff and 350 are crew for their 45
shipping vessels. I’m meeting with Pak (Mr.) Martin, the crew
Director, and Ibu (Mrs.) Meiky, the HR director for the office. Their
boss has already been through Rep’s program and has asked them to
participate since so much of what they do revolves around having the
right people (read: honest). Both of them were intrigued when the
boss gathered all the managers and directors in a meeting over
Christmas and told them that now the business belonged to God, and
that he was no longer “the boss”, God was.

Kiki and Martin are here to grapple with what that means. The first
day gives a broad overview of the 10 deliverables which we’ll provide
them at the end of the 2 weeks, beginning with an impact assessment
(looking at what they think is important in their business, and how
they’re doing), a 10-P summary of their business, and a first look at
the purpose of their business. You’ll see 10-P a lot in here, it’s a
list of the 10 different parts of their business. The founder of Rep
likes the number 10 (10 consultants, 10 days, 10 visits to a city,
etc…)

The work today was slow-going because the clients are still not quite
sure what this is all about, and how to answer many of these questions
(especially if they’re not overseeing all of the business like my
clients), and so we made good progress, but certainly didn’t finish
anything today. Early on in the day I asked both of them how long they
had been Christians and both of them gave me a somewhat puzzled look
and said since they were babies (Martin said since he was in the
womb). Little did I know what impact this question would have later
in the day.

Tan Hong Lim, my seasoned co-consultant and I took them through
everything that we could, and at one point Tan handed me a piece of
paper reminding me that while both had been Christians since they were
born, perhaps they had never actually chosen to commit their lives to
God… so we asked them. Do you believe that God loves you, and that
you’ll go to heaven when you die. Martin thought about it for a
little bit, and then responded yes. Meiky seemed a little taken aback
by the very straightforward question. She told us that she’d struggled
with the idea, and had never really committed her life to Christ. I
asked her if she would stay afterwards so we could pray with her (and
involve Errol or Rebecca, our leaders), and she agreed. God had other
plans. Tan grabbed the opportunity and said we should pray right
now. So the four of us grabbed hands and began to pray for Meiky.
She began to weep, and weep, and weep. That prayer unlocked something
in her that had been holding her back for a long time. I don’t know
what she was thinking, but I know that she was deeply affected by the
message that she was forgiven for any past wrongs and that she was
loved by God and unique in His eyes.

We prayed with her while she wept for nearly an hour. It was a great
way to start off the venture, remembering that while we’re working to
repurpose businesses, our main goal is to transform the people within
a society. Tomorrow, it’s off to work with Martin and Meiky!

PS - Janet and Alex - tonight we had Korean BBQ for dinner, nothing
like Club Riders though : )

Sunday morning I woke up and worked out and then went for my first
experience at the breakfast buffet at the hotel next door. You know
how sometimes mom made breakfast for dinner (hooray scrambled eggs and
toast mom!), well the Indonesians do the opposite - dinner for
breakfast! There was rice, fried bean curd, chicken dishes, something
with noodles, something with fried rice, green beans and ground beef
with peppers, etc. it’s all an adventure. Fortunately for the “boo-
lays” (white skins) there are also cereals, fruits, breads,
croissants, eggs, and omelettes. They even have sausage and fried
tomatoes for Scots like me (I’m traveling on my UK passport since my
very well traveled US passport expires in July). There’s also a
killer selection of juices - Guava, Kiwi, Orange, Apple, Papaya, and
my favorite Pineapple.

So on Sunday we gathered as a full group for the first time to go over
our agenda, pray for the venture and our clients, and do a little
praise and worship. Our little laptop sang its heart out and we sang
along. We gathered in the lobby at 3 and all headed to one of the
local leader’s houses, Dr. Soparno. A former client of Rep’s who has
become very involved in supporting its missions here in Indonesia, Dr.
Soparno owns many different businesses and is well respected here in
Jakarta so his involvement with Rep has added a lot of credibility to
our venture. We arrived at his beautiful house and met the local
consultants with whom we’ll be working.

To be completely honest I had no idea what to expect of the local
consultants - old, young, experienced, heartfelt, intelligent…?
What would they be. I was overjoyed to meet them and find out that
they are all of these things. There are several younger consultants
in their late 20’s and early 30’s as well as several more seasoned
consultants in their 40’s and 50’s. All of them have so much to offer
our clients here (sometimes I wonder why we’re needed : ), and they
were overjoyed to have us there. I spoke with many of them talking
about what they do there, and what I do in the states. I now have an
appointment with Harjano, our translator, to explain how businesses
can use Facebook to build their user base : )

Several of the clients joined us for dinner as well (although we
didn’t know which clients would be ours). I didn’t get a chance to
speak with many of them, but I’m interested to see who I get paired
with because all of them seem very interesting. client run-down to
follow tomorrow

I’m hoping to put up a few pictures of the dinner and the house when I
get a chance because both were spectacular. Dr. Soparno’s wife, See
Mun, is an amazing painter and the house is filled with her work.
Tomorrow is the first day of work and I’m headed to bed early to make
sure that I’m ready. Wish me luck!

So I’m sitting in an apartment building in Jakarta right now, thinking that I should be telling you more about why the podcast isn’t happening for the moment, although I have one more that is hopefully going to go up soon, and let you hear about my trip because hey, it’s kinda cool.

All of the trip details will be posted to Academik.org and to Sevenlamps (on the blogroll).  I’m spending the next 2 weeks here doing some Christian consulting in Jakarta who are interested in involving God in their businesses… sounds crazy right?  That’s what I thought until I did some more investigation from a Christian perspective.  49 out of 51 of Jesus’ miracles in the Bible were in the marketplace.  He chose all of his disciples from the marketplace.  The words for work and ministry are the same in Hebrew (or is it Aramaic?)… The ideas that we currently have of work and ministry being separate are unfounded biblically.

I’m not saying that work should be a time to thump the bible over someone’s head, but I am saying that the workplace gives us a great place to act out our values.  More and more we’re leaving our principles at the door when we live our lives.  My boss, Jeremy Toeman, and I just facilitated a discussion on social responsibility at the Web2.0 Conference and a few of the things I took away from the meeting were:

Social Responsibility has different meanings to different people; it’s some variation of all of them, including volunteering, a triple bottom line, and a commitment to the long-term.

We can’t give up on our principles just because they’re not practical.  Would you stop recycling if you had to drive to a drop-off? Do you leave lights on in your house because you are too rushed to turn them off?  Do you encourage friends to follow principles that are good for the environment?

There are so many ways we can make an impact, but often we feel like we’d be inconveniencing others or embarassing ourselves in doing so.  The truth is that when you stand up for what you believe in, you stand out… and no one ever liked you because you were like everyone else.

So many people are giving me good music this week. A big thanks to Julia, Ishmael, and Victor for helping me.

Tracklisting:
To Build a Home by The CineMatic Orchestra
Stay (Madonna Cover) by Malcolm Middleton
Sun! by Tujiko Noriko
Nantes by Beirut
Sad Sad City by Ghostland Observatory

Graveyard Girl by M83
Keep Your Eyes Ahead by The Helio Sequence
Run Into Flowers by M83
Going Back to Harlan by Emmylou Harris
Baby In Two by the Pernice Brothers

Cinders and Smoke by Iron And Wine
Re:Stacks by Bon Iver

So I’ve decided that rather than continue sporadically posting the tracklisting for each podcast under the music section, that I would simply post them here because it’s much easier to search and peruse (and easier to manage as I quickly approach 100 podcasts).

Tracklisting for March 31, 2008

Fantasy by Mariah Carey
I Think We’re Alone Now by Tiffany
Mony Mony by Billy Idol
Heaven Is A Place On Earth by Belinda Carlisle
This is How We Do It by Montell Jordan

Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough by Michael Jackson
I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston
Maniac by Michael Sembello
Straight Up by Paula Abdul
Borderline by Madonna

Escapade by Janet Jackson
All 4 Love by Color Me Badd
Maneater by Hall & Oats
Hangin’ Tough by New Kids On The Block (by request).

Vampire Weekend is that outgoing, well-traveled hippy friend of the opposite sex you think is a little spacey, but whom you always look forward to spending time with. If you’d let him/her, they’d infect your life with zany adventures and rituals that might make you feel uncomfortable at first, but eventually you’d come to appreciate their positive impact (And their attention to grammar).

Perfect for wind-blown trips and Sunday afternoons in the sun, Vampire Weekend are 4 young chaps who mix African, Indie, and Pop music. While I’m no expert on ethnic music, I definitely hear hints of Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel who have both been greatly influenced by the music of Africa. Already dubbed “The Year’s Best Band” by Spin Magazine, Vampire Weekend’s garnered attention for making music fun to listen to again. More specifically, their songs like “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” are upbeat, universally appealing, tongue in cheek and impressionistic enough to let anyone find some meaning (or meaninglessness) in the words.

Driven by drums, guitars, and organs the album’s tracks are speckled with extra-curricular instruments including violins, violas, cellos, chamberlins, harpsichords, synths, and shakers. One member plays 8 different instruments on the album - should Sufjan be worried? The band describes their, “ideal avatar [as] preppy African with equal parts of fresh and clean. Preppiness with West African guitar pop, a perfect fusion of happy world music with Western, New England preppiness.”

If that ’s what it takes to get great rhythms like this then I say, “Give them a trip to Africa, a LaCoste gift certificate, a Guitar, and drums. They’ll work out a second album in no time.”

Tracks:
Vampire Weekend - I Stand Corrected
Vampire Weekend - Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

I sat on the #71 bus this morning in the last row, precariously perched between two older gentlemen who warmed me with the sides of their bodies pressed up against mine. I opened my book, Business Unlimited, by J. Gunnar Olson, and began reading its first pages. Olson is the Founder and Chairman of the International Christian Chamber of Commerce, an extraordinary man for the impact he’s had on the world around him.

I noticed in front of me that there was a woman reading passages of scripture from a handout and I instantly felt a connection with her. Here I was reading a book about Christian business ministry for the work I’m to do in May, and here she is reading the Gospels for a class or exam. I said a prayer for her as I do for many people on the bus while I ride quietly reading or listening to music in the morning. I used the departure of the man next to me as an excuse to sit across from the woman. As I sat down we made eye contact and smiled. She was well into her 30’s and this was not a flirtatious smile, but more an exchange of peacefulness.

We continued reading and I felt like I wanted to reach out and tell her something. Tell her I had prayed for her, and that I wished her a wonderful day. I wanted to share some joy with her to help her coast through her morning meetings. I wanted to be her Starbuck’s and her Happy Donut - that little treat we allow ourselves that helps us get going in the morning. Montgomery passed and I descended at 1st street - a mistake that has now serendipitously led to visits from two friends on their way to work - got off the bus and turned to look at the woman from outside.

I was safe from rebuke now, with a pane of glass between us and the final moments of our safe passage together now ticking down I unzipped my sweatshirt and proudly outed my chest like pigeon in a mating dance. “I {John Cusack holding a boombox over his head} YOU”

She smiled, laughed, and pointed at the one of a kind T-shirt a friend had recently given me. What a great way to start both of our mornings : )