First Steps of the BIM Team: Our SAP Social Sabbatical Has Finally Started!
March 31 — April 4, 2019
Working week 1 of our SAP Social Sabbatical in Shenzhen is over, and it feels like we’ve been here for ages. Hard to believe that it was only last Sunday, when the Sunshine team of 12 SAP employees from all over the world met for the first time. Due to Pyxera’s great onboarding day, we did not only know all about our introvert and extrovert characters after day 1, but a simple Lego game also prepared us for how much information can get lost via assumptions and interpretations. With this knowledge, we felt well-prepared for working with our customers and went out to discover the secrets of the Chinese cuisine: what an abundance of fish, meat, veggies and tofu cooked in exotic spices! And eating with chopsticks guarantees your slow-food experience — especially if your food is small, slippery or has bones.
Monday morning: cars are waiting in front of the hotel to bring us to the first get-together with our customers. We still have the ever-present hotel elevator music in our ears and thoughts, when we arrive at the China Global Philanthropy Institute. Big moment: we meet our customers for the first time, take the morning for introductions and are impressed by our students, who patiently interpret everything that’s being said in this big conference room.
After that, it’s time to meet our customer, CANYOU, at their office. This will be the working environment for our BIM team, Carolina, Christopher and myself, for the next four weeks to come. At CANYOU, we receive a very warm welcome over a nice lunch followed by a traditional tea ceremony. And we learn how easily one can move from a nice cup of tea to a business conversation. The afternoon and the next two days pass with a lot of interviews with staff in different roles, who share their insights into what our customer really needs: a project management process that is linked to a performance, development and rewards management system. We confirm our objectives and deliverables with the CANYOU management on day 4, and we are glad we could agree on a common work scope. A long weekend with a public holiday is ahead of us now, and we are looking forward to exploring Hongkong with the Sunshine team.
What did our BIM team learn in week 1?
· Meetings take double-time if interpretation is involved, but chocolate makes up for everything
· Even if words don’t take you any further, the gesture for “ok” is international
· Patient questioning and listening is the most important thing in week 1, even if there seems to be no more oxygen left in our windowless meeting rooms
· Having lunch in a restaurant is a great start, eventually having lunch in the customer’s canteen is a privilege and makes you feel part of the team
· If strange things happen — like getting lost, crashing a white board, or receiving awkward translations from high-tech translation tools — recall the hotel elevator music, and you’ll have energy to start from scratch
The BIM team are looking forward to working on the project deliverables in week 2, laughing even more than in week 1, trying all those Chinese food treats, overcoming many more language barriers, and diving further into the Chinese lifestyle.
