Expecting the Unexpected - Lessons from our Vocational Visits

We havent been writing much about our vocational visits. Each of us have different vocations and our Area Coordinators are working hard to organize visits according to our preferences. All five of us most often go in different directions and see different places. Though we exchange a few notes about what we have seen, its difficult to describe all vocational visits with such notes. I can talk extensively about my vocational visits, but that might not be doing justice. This is the team's blog and I dont want to make it personal.

At the same time, we do not want to give the impression that the GSE is a long vacation full of only fun activities and no serious business. The other day our team leader Dr. Upendra was mentioning “We get so many different experiences in GSE, from professional exposure to cultural understanding!” I cannot but agree with him. This program is turning out to be such a learning ground, that for the prepared mind it becomes a life time experience. We all have understood that the trick lies in being prepared. And as our GSE Chair Mr. Manjunath Shetty told us, the learning value comes from “Expecting the Unexpected”. Which means, we have to be ready for making use of opportunities that are provided to us.

In this post, I will try to summarize a few common vocational experiences that we have had so far, and try to impress upon the point that the vocational visits can be only as much interesting as you make them. Please remember that these visits are organized by Rotarians, who probably have no idea what you do in your jobs and have to work based on some assumptions and facts which they get to know through your “Wish List”. No matter how detailed your wish list could get, there will be concerns and view points that they might not have time to check back with you. So, you may not get exactly what you want, but if you try, you can actually “see” what you want and develop a network that can help you to get what you want, if not during your visit, but afterwords.

So, how do we bring “Expect the Unexpected” thing into practical use? How can we make the best use of what has been offered to us? Here's what we did on a few occasions, to bring the principle into practical use. We had talked to each other about our vocational visits, ever since we received the vocational visit chart from Don Schiller, the Rotary GSE Chair for RI Dist. 5490. Through our email conversations with Don and telephonic conversations amongst ourselves, we knew that what we had put in our wish-list is not going to materialize 100%. Though there was some initial discontentment, we were able to understand the limitations of the Rotary Team working on it. And we spoke to each other over mails, chats and had conversations over telephone as to what we could do. All our conversations led us to only one thing “Let us take it as it comes and use judgement to decide what to do at the right time.”

Accept people's invitations with an open mind
In my previous post, I had talked to you about this wonderful young couple who ran “The Residence Inn”, which is a Marriott franchise. To refresh some memories, this was the place where we were put in, right after we landed in Phoenix, to let us relax and clear our jet-lag. We had learnt a little bit about them in our conversations with them. Kalpesh had told us that in USA there were many such Indian families that ran the hotels. It was heartful for us to hear that our fellow country men were doing well.

On the day when we were about to leave the Inn, Kalpesh came over and gave away a couple of souveneirs to carry. We asked for Bhavna and were told that she was in another facility doing work and that she would be there in five or ten minutes time. We wanted to take some pictures with them to show back home and brag a little bit about how Indians were “dominating the world”. Kalpesh informed us that they had a ten minute meeting with the hotel staff, and would be shortly out for the photographs. But, as Bhavna came in, she simply invited all of us into the meeting room. We all followed. Remember, we could have politely declined and waited for them outside the meeting room.

What followed was a brilliant display of how a culture of “Valuing the Customer” could be built with the “Housekeeping” staff, who often were not permanent employees but temporary staff. This means that the staff would be changing constantly. Its a challenge to keep up the same service level as the attrition rates were high. Similarly constantly attracting talent to get to the Inn was also another important aspect. What we saw in that meeting was an amazing amalgamation of various training methods and a brilliant inter-mixing of monetary incentives and non-monetary recognition that the couple had deviced to over come those challenges. It would take an entire blog post or more to tell how they did it, but that is not the point here.

Had we not accepted the invitation, we would have never been able to see this happening. In reality, our vocational experience had already begun (atleast for Namratha, Umesh and Me) even before the actual vocational exchange began. Here are some pictures related to the meeting.









The first one shows the staff available on that day, the second and third show Bhavana and Kalpesh Patel talking to their team. They have these meetings everyday before everyone began their operations and gets them ready for the days work. We have made some notes of the entire event and got to see the background operations for managing a hotel. I even have shot videos, which I can use to show back in my class room to discuss with students the challenges and show them how incentive schemes could be designed for the purpose of encouraging people to follow a value system that you want them to follow. And all we had to do was to simply say “yes” to an invitation from a friendly person who wanted to share the experience with us.

Take the opportunity to meet and talk to people
On our first vocational day, we all went to Macy's Operations Center, where we were shown the logistics behind the retail chain's success. We were briefed by the Vice President of the building about various processes that were followed to make their Op Center a sophisticated, technology driven logistical unit. It was amazing to know what they did, to get to where they are today. On the same evening, we had the opportunity to visit a retail outlet at Macy's in phoenix downtown area. We were all roaming around the outlet and seeing whatever we liked to see. At the outlet, several sales staff approached us and greeted us, and wanted to help us. We said, we would ask when we wanted help to the first two sales staff. The third one was a well mannered woman in her middle age. As she approached us, we told her about our visit and explained to her that we were in the retail center to make a few observations about the retail business. She then said whether we would like to meet the store manager. We said “Yes”. She said she would check and revert.

Believe me friends! Ten minutes later, she gets us the store manager, with whom we have a twenty minute chat and get answers to many questions right from Visual Merchandizing to Market Research to Chain Growth and Customer Service. Had we not spoken to the sales staff and explained the purpose of our GSE Visit, this would not have been possible. This opportunity was sudden and unplanned. A Picture of Macy's retail outlet that we visited is here below.

We really cant be expressing all our feelings in words. We were not only having fun, but we were also learning. One of my classmates of MBA, Saraswathi Narayanan, used to call this “Edutainment”. We were therefore getting “Edutained”. Saraswathi, if you are reading this blog, then you would know that my “Edutainment” that began ten years ago is still continuing. Well, here goes the next trip.

Seek opportunities and prioritize your tasks
As told earlier, sometimes people would not know what you want even when you provide your “wish list”. Or, they might simply not be able to find something that suits your wishes. Instead, they would have put together a program which they think will suit you. In our own case, Don had indicated that they were facing challenges in the more rural areas to match our vocational requests. Don and his Area Coordinators had looked at our profiles and had assumed that we were highly technical people and they could not find exactly what we wanted to do. Therefore, they had put together a program that they thought would suit us. They had done the best they could in the light of information that they possessed.

When we reached Sedona, Renata and her team were anxious whether we would like what they were doing for us. We were sure we had to work on our vocational visits. Namratha and Sushma were staying with Jeanette (You can see her photograph, in my last post) and David. Their daughter Mimi was studying in “Verde Valley High School” which had an International Buccalaureate program and was doing very well. Jeanette was herself a student of that school and is very proud and passionate about the school and its programs. Namratha and Sushma were really struck by her enthusiasm and requested her to setup a visit, as it would enhance our vocational experience. Jeanette was kind enough to accept their request and worked with Renata and team to set us up for the visit first thing next day morning.

Verde Valley High School was a fantastic experience. When the Headmaster, Mr. Paul Domingue told us that the founder's mission was to set up a school which would bring in International Understanding and World Peace through the means of a cultural exchange, we were all taken aback. It is difficult to explain whether we were shocked, surprised, enthused, or overwhelmed. I guess, it must have been a mix of all the emotions together. Our adrenalin gushed out and we had a lot of questions coming out. It was very interesting to know how the classes were conducted. The way the school encouraged students to come together was based on behavioral principles. It was very enlightening to know the different schemes used by the school to promote the values of tolerance, patience and cultural acceptance to the students.

Seeing the similarities of our Mission, our Team Leader, Dr. Upendra took the opportunity to ask the headmaster for two things. First was to make a presentation to the school and second was the opportunity to see the students in their classrooms. We were not able to get our first request as the school had a test that was coming up in the next week, but arrangements were made for us to be a part of the classroom activity. We watched a Math class and a Biology class. A photo of the Biology class is below.



Dr. Upendra's Experiences of Vocational Visits

GSE program gave me an opportunity to see how my profession is practiced in this country. I had the opportunity to visit Veterinary Clinics, a total of four animal clinics in different places in the District of Arizona. All the animal hospitals except one at Prescott were aimed only at small animals and all the clinics were privately managed clincis. The doctors are young with DVM degree and have continued educational support. The clinics on an average handles 60 cases per day. Hospitals equipped with basic diagnostic facilities and most of the time utlize specialist service for diagnositic procedures such as endoscopy and ultrascopy which is commonly handled by our undergraduate students. Dentistry is one area where there seems to be lot of opportunity for the vet to earn money. As it is the veterinary fee is comparatively high; 100 USD for endoscope, 150 USD for hair clipping, 80 USD for basic haematalogical and biochemical study. The fee may go as high as 1500 USD especially if it is for euthanasia. All the clinics have their own outlets to supply feed and other necessary items. What amazed me was the documentation maintained by the hospital. Anaesthesia records, inpatient records, follow-up records are something we need to study further and put it to practice in our hospitals. I also happen to see a new type of Elizabeth collar which costs 5 USD but is very easy to use and disposable one. We can definately get that manufactured locally at Bangalore and use. Similarly, disposable fecal sample collection sticks is very innovative and not costly. The concern of people about the obasity in dogs is another point we need to take seriously as the same problem can be seen in India in next 5 years. I was thinking that US is free of Rabies but I was proved wrong as Rabies recorded in these clinics at an interval of 2 years. Over all visit to these animal hospitals gave me how private practice is managed here.

Those are some of the lessons that we learnt from our experiences. Hope this made an interesting read. Please feel free to comment and criticize this article. Click on the comments tab and post your comments. Your participation will encourage us to be more enthusiastic in our pursuits.