It’s officially five days until our group leaves for Bolivia and I cannot believe the date has snuck up on us so soon. I think for so long our group assumed our trip would be canceled that it never fully sunk in that we would be traveling there for spring break. Last semester, Bolivia was experiencing extreme political unrest after their President was overthrown. Reading news articles of the riots and protests occurring every day made our group worrisome that we would not be traveling, but the overarching concern was how this would affect CEOLI, the non-profit we have been working with.
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, PittBusiness has a ten-year plan with CEOLI to ensure that the consulting work is beneficial through longevity and constant growth. Talking to the students who went on the program last year, I could see the devastation that not only would we potentially not travel to Bolivia, but that all the individuals they met on their program were being affected by the unrest. As we transitioned into the new year, much of the political disputes have fizzled, but it is expected to rise a few months after our program when elections will occur. Even though our group has been working on the project for the entire semester thus far, it still feels as though traveling to Bolivia will not be a reality. I know that I personally am grateful that our program, much to my surprise, was one of the ones that were not canceled. Due to the Coronavirus outbreak, many of the study abroad programs currently, for spring break, and the summer have been canceled. It seems unrealistic that the project I thought would be canceled the most is the one that lasted over some of the most popular PittBusiness programs, such as Plus3. Although there was a large amount of worrying and fear regarding the program leading up to this point, it is important to shift my mindset and focus on the excitement I have towards the trip and working first-hand with CEOLI.
Since my last post, our group has been working diligently to achieve the most of our scope of work prior to arriving in-country. I specifically am part of the card sales and channels team, which has been experiencing a few bumps in the road in terms of achieving our milestones. To summarize our initial scope of work, our goals were to increase the card sales channels in the U.S. and to connect with Pitt departments to sell cards. Although there was a prior connection with the group to Maggie & Stella’s, a store in the center of campus, we have had no success in reviving that connection. Additionally, we have been reaching out to the owner of the Cathedral Gift Shop, but have heard no response there either. The current status of this is definitely disheartening for me personally. I know that arriving in Bolivia will make this even harder since I will be meeting those we are helping, knowing that I did not achieve the goals I set out to. There still is progress that can be made following the trip. Our group has reached out to several departments on campus and we believe we will ultimately be able to sell through the Cathedral Gift Shop, due to the connections our professor has with the school. Although there is a lot of success we can achieve in the future, I know one of the hardest challenges for me will be not having that achieved prior to traveling.
As discussed in this and the following blog post, the work we will doing in Bolivia is to provide consulting advice from a business perspective. As with traveling to any country, business is conducted in a variety of different styles, many of which completely different from how it is run in the United States. In my last blog, I went into detail about the idea of the culture map and how to understand how it differs from your host country. The importance of the culture map is adaptability; although you may be used to practices being run a certain way, the best way you can ensure success when conducting business is being understanding and adaptable to changes. In consulting, this is crucial because we are working for the client to understand and assist them, not to go in and run it how we are used to. This ties in directly to an article we discussed in class called “Building an Ethical Partnership”. In the article, one of the points they make towards ethically building the best relationship among a group is collaboration, to “work together for the well-being of all instead of polarizing into self-protection and turf struggles”. Although the topic of this article is centered around a team atmosphere, I believe it is also essential for a consulting relationship since we should be viewing ourselves and CEOLI as a collaborative team, not just as a client.
That being said, although our team can understand the differences on paper of how business is done, there are many cultural norms of the host country that we will have to adapt to avoid it becoming a challenge. One of the biggest differences between how business is done between the U.S. and Bolivia is how trust is built. In the U.S., there is a focus on achieving work and meeting deadlines to build trust, whilst in Bolivia, strong relationship building is a crucial part of our client connection and success. As Meade, one of our assistant professors for the class, touched on in class, building trust is a key feature to client relationships. Our group is accustomed to building trust from achieving goals on time, but now we will have to shift into a focus of client relationship and then deliverables. As she informed us about client relationships, “the team owns this”, meaning that we are in control of the success of our relationship.
In addition to the differences from the culture map of the U.S. and Bolivia, there will also be the communication and active listening challenge. Although it is less of a cultural norm, the difference in language will be a large barrier for the group. As we have learned from the other groups who went on the program, this is a challenge but there are ways to overcome this. One of the key ways is through active listening and expressive body language. We focused on active listening in class several weeks ago when we had an introduction to consulting. With this, we talked about how to be a good listener by asking questions and also asking for clarification. With the language barrier, asking for clarification is very important for our group that we will have to constantly be aware of. Additionally, expressive body language was one of the ways the group was able to build relationships with people who had limited or no experience with English. Since we will spend the majority of our days working in CEOLI with children, it is impossible to have continuous translation because there are so many of us. Instead, we have to be aware to express our excitement and positivity through our facial and body expressions. As Alex told us, we will definitely be sore from smiling.
There are many skills and lessons I am personally expecting to learn and obtain from the program, many of which have already occurred. Thus far, we have been able to gain experience working with an international client and maintaining communication without face-to-face interaction. Our group has also worked with local businesses and contacts in Pittsburgh with the card sales, giving us the experience of the challenges that can occur when we don’t expect them to. However, there are definitely some experiences I can only expect by being in-country. I am very excited to be able to work without client one-on-one and I think I will have a lot to learn and improve on with my client communication abilities. I like to think that I have strong communication skills, but I know that it is all subjective since I am used to working with the same type of people from the same culture. Being in-country, the largest skill I hope to gain is to experience some challenges with either information gathering, relationship building, or communication that I can understand and adapt to. I will never be able to have a global career if I am unable to adapt how I work with a global client, so this is one of the skills I would like to focus a large portion of my time building on.
Overall, I could not be more excited that our group actually has the opportunity to travel to Bolivia. I hope that the experience is not only beneficial to myself and my skills, but also to the client and the ten-year plan as well. See you soon Bolivia!