Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The 7P's: Prior Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance

A military friend of mine once said that the key to successful missions are the 7Ps: prior preparation and planning prevents piss-poor performance. CSC "missions" are no exception.

For every CSC assignment, teams are formed 3 months in advance prior to the deployment date to undergo rigorous and comprehensive training program. This training is designed to equip CSC leaders with a range of skills, including cultural awareness, international development in developing countries, high performance teaming, corporate social responsibility, capacity & capability building, issue-based consulting, media & communication and other logistical preparations. These skills are intended to enable CSC leaders to make a lasting impact to their client organisations -- not only to solve their problems but also help them to develop the foundations to solve future problems as well. With the global nature of the team composition and the exposure to unfamiliar culture and norms in the destination country, CSC leaders are expected to adapt well culturally and quickly learn to handle uncertainties.

As a part of the preparatory work, the team has been working together in virtual setting. Collaborative technologies have enabled us to share documents, talk to each other (through messaging system and teleconference facilities) and contribute to team discussions seamlessly. We formed, stormed and - to some extent - normed without even meeting each other in person throughout this period. Having done this, hopefully, by the time we meet for the first time in Beijing on 28 Aug, we could start moving into the performing stage quite rapidly. It was interesting to observe the cultural diversity that every single one of us brought to the teleconferences and we definitely had lots of fun so far.

One month is an extremely short time to make a real and lasting difference. This is why we have been contacting every one of our clients well in advance to properly introduce ourselves and obtain some background information about the organisations, local communities, markets, regulatory structure and the economic landscape in China. Through this process, not only that we get to target our preparatory efforts, we also got to build rapport and relationships with the clients - absolutely critical in any consulting engagements. Having completed these activities, we hope to be able to hit the ground running quickly when we meet the clients next week.

With 3 more days to go, we have completed the training program and the majority of the preparatory works. I am confident to say that we are all set to kick-start our CSC journey in China!

1 comment:

  1. One month is pretty short but you will be amazed at what can be achieved when there are no sametimes, people calling haha. Also, we spent a lot of time thinking about sustainability and like with any consulting assignment, putting processes in place so that our work doesn't just get shelved the day after we leave!

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