“SoSa by Sergio”…a new Netflix series

I see you there, sitting on the sofa, eating a take-away pizza and deciding which new series to watch on Netflix… so here I am to offer you my story.

Come on, don’t pretend to tell me that you are not interested, I know you’re so curious (ok, maybe only curious) to know how my experience in Indonesia is continuing!! 😅

For those who missed the first episode (but how did you do it?! 😱), a short recap:

(scene music for flashback)

- my name is Sergio 👨‍💻, I live in Milan and in life I cook, laugh, talk, visit every possible place from big cities to small towns, I cook, I’m curious (this is not an activity!), I like hiking, I play sports (I change often but right now Krav Maga and gymnastic), I go to the theater as soon as possible, I act (or at least I try), I cook (I’m Italian, what can I do about it?!), I read, write, draw, take photos (too many)…and occasionally I also work as a logistics process consultant for a large software company

- I have a dog named Geremia 🦁 (did I already say he’s beautiful?) even if unfortunately I can’t always dedicate the right amount of time to him

- In July I participated in a pro bono consultancy project offered by my company and was lucky enough to spend precious time in Indonesia in Jakarta…my stories tell of what I learned in a light tone hoping they will be useful to someone else as curious as me

(change scene music for back in the present)

In the first episode I shared the moment before arriving, so now it seems correct to “land” in Indonesia. Yes, “Landing” seems to me a suitable term both because I really arrived by plane but also because, within a few hours, I “landed” in a completely different world from my usual one (don’t worry, I don’t want to bore you again with the story “of the get out of your comfort zone”…😅).

Before arriving in Indonesia and starting our project, we did several exercises to be “prepared” for this adventure, but you’re never really ready until you “land” here, meet your stakeholders, talk to them, have lunch with them, laugh with them and understand how different their reality is from yours.

SoSa is a program focused on helping NGOs or small businesses who share the same vision as my company is that, like us, they really try to improve people’s lives. But if everything is beautiful and simple “on Power Point”, working with small companies that have many problems and few resources is not exactly what I usually do and I assure you that it is not simple at all.

The first week is dedicated to listening only: no judgments, no prejudices, no stereotypes, no analyses, no solutions, no to everything I usually do. It was really helpful and I highly recommend this approach with big clients too, because it allows you to better understand the other’s point of view and be more efficient in helping them.

So in this episode I want to share with you this lesson learned about the importance of listening. Be careful, I’m not talking about “hearing” but really “listening”, especially us men who never really “listen” to our wives but only “hear” a few words here and there.

Thanks to listening, I was able to truly appreciate the many efforts and many difficulties that these small realities encounter. I understood how difficult it is for them to be able to be heard by the “big companies” and generate an important impact in people’s lives.

I remind of a sentence read a few days before landing in this adventure and which said “it’s easy to look perfect when you’ve done nothing”. Here, this is the essence of what I learned in my first week: in life you try, you fail, you stand up, you try again, you fail again, you don’t give up, you try another time, you fail another time, but you don’t stop doing what you believe in.

With the pandemic everyone has started talking about “resilience”, it’s a word that sounds good and makes you look smarter. In this first week I really understood what it means for this people and how important it is when used to help others.

This is what I learned from the first week…not so bad I can say!! 😜

*The SAP Social Sabbatical Program is an award-winning portfolio of global pro-bono consulting programs that enable SAP employees to share their knowledge, skills and expertise with innovative non-profits and social enterprises all around the world. It builds upon SAP’s Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy to create equitable access to economic opportunity, education & employment, and the green economy.