Leaving on a jet plane

Bloomington is once again preparing for the start of an academic year. The moving vans are clogging residential streets and new students, proudly wearing nametags, are exploring all that Bloomington has to offer. Here at the Kelley School, the first years have arrived and orientation activities are in full swing.

My fellow second years have begun to return as well, wrapping up their internships and enjoying a few days of rest before Academy Week begins. I, on the other hand, am leaving Bloomington tomorrow morning for Fiji. No, this is not a pleasure trip (although I expect the island to be stunning); I am actually traveling with four other GLOBASE leaders on a consulting trip.

The Kelley School is committed to supporting and developing social entrepreneurship through business both within our school and around the world. Our project in Fiji and the Marshall Islands is just one piece of this wider vision. Over the next ten days, we will be conducting a market analysis of the Marshall Islands for the South Pacific Business Development (SPBD) microfinance group. We will talk to the men and women that these microfinance offerings will touch: sitting with them in their roadside stands and listening to their needs. In our final proposal to SPBD, we will recommend which products to offer in the Marshall Islands as well as highlight potential challenges and competitors within the market.

The Fiji trip is just one more example of the dynamic, singular opportunities that Kelley offers MBA students. The GLOBASE leaders are excited to build upon this experience as we craft the 2012 GLOBASE programs.

Synergies

How can business aid development in the two-thirds world? Recent partnerships between government, NGOs, and business groups have offered creative synergies to link American excess to regions of desperate need. One such partnership is detailed in Tina Rosenberg’s New York Times article “Salvaging Medical Cast-Offs to Save Lives.” The article can be found at

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/salvaging-medical-cast-offs-to-save-lives/

Rosenberg writes about organizations like Doc2Dock and MedShare that consolidate and ship excess medical supplies to developing nations. Ghana is mentioned twice.

The organizations and individuals represented in Rosenberg’s article inspire. While the solutions are not perfect and lingering shortages remain, their efforts evidence both creativity and dedication.

Stories to share

Hello reader. Perhaps you are just a few weeks away from beginning your MBA studies here at Kelley. Even now, you are clocking in your last few days on the job, saying goodbye to friends and eating your final meals in the office break room. The classrooms and colleagues of Bloomington await you. However, you will be astounded at how quickly time passes. Before you know it, you will be sitting across from recruiters, pontificating on your strengths, your weaknesses, and the experiences that have most shaped you. What will set you apart from the dozens of other applicants vying for a job in today’s crowded market?

Participation in GLOBASE Ghana will provide you with compelling stories to share in those interviews. Imagine sitting across from a recruiter next spring. After exchanging pleasantries, she launches into questions:

“Tell me about a time you faced a challenge.”

You respond with a story from GLOBASE, describing the challenge of learning a foreign market in order to make relevant recommendations to an international client. Your team’s initial recommendations, formulated in Bloomington, had to be nuanced when you arrived in Accra. You learned how to be dynamic and flexible as the situation demanded, adjusting quickly to new realities.

“Tell me about a time you exercised leadership.”

Again, you share a story from the Ghana trip. The Ghana program is the only GLOBASE course that includes a module devoted to Leadership Development. During the course, one-on-one mentorship sessions and group feedback on a range of leadership qualities allowed you to grow significantly as a leader.

“Tell me about a time you were stretched beyond your comfort zone.”

Perhaps you speak for a little too long on this question, but there are so many stories to share from Ghana! Bartering for mangoes in a crowded African market, visiting a rural village and shaping shea butter with clients, walking over the swinging rope bridges in a jungle canopy…yes, you have certainly stepped outside of your comfort zone!

Leadership, challenges, growth, and fun! Participation in GLOBASE Ghana provides all this and more.

West of New York, south of Chicago

Although our rolling fields and Hoosier hospitality are charming, Indiana (and the rest of the Midwest) is not generally well-known to those outside the United States. This caused me particular difficulties when I lived in Nairobi before coming to Kelley. “Where are you from?” my Kenyan friends would ask. “Oh, I’m from west of New York City and a little bit south of Chicago.We grow corn.” This was the pocket-sized Indiana that I offered as my home: a middle place, somewhere between the big cities.

This flattened and folded version of my state offered so little. Indiana is the annual excitement of Colts football. Indiana is elephant ears at the State Fair and homegrown tomatoes.Indiana is Gary steel yards and Bloomington forests. Indiana also differs vastly from the many other places west of New York City and south of Chicago. Louisiana bayous and crawfish are a far cry from Indiana soybeans and cattle.

My Kenyan friends could never imagine Indiana, or the rest of the Midwest, through my cursory description of home. In many ways, we as Americans face the same challenge in envisioning the complex, clamoring, diverse continent that is Africa. Africa is a few big cities, some neat safaris, and a lot of space in between.

There is great beauty and importance to a program like GLOBASE Ghana. Throughout the course, Ghana reveals itself as a particular place. Ghana becomes the colors of kente cloth, the smell of the sea, and the frenzied cheering of the football (soccer) fans in packed stadiums.The clients we work with emerge from their context as real people: men and women facing dynamic problems and possibilities.

These men and women will introduce us to a Ghana that cannot be grasped in an Internet search or a news clipping. In a little less than nine months, the GLOBASE Ghana team will walk with them through the marketplace, smelling open fires and roasting fish. We will stand in their workshops and laugh with employees. We will share their food and their stories. And as we learn and listen, we will also give, working together to cultivate business strategies that make a lasting impact.

We as a leadership team are so very excited for this journey. Perhaps you will join us?

Ghana Reflection

By Rob Herrick

On Saturday, March 19th the GLOBASE student consultant teams and staff returned to Bloomington after two weeks of intensive work in Ghana and seven weeks of pre-trip coursework and preparation. Although this was a relatively short time, the clients expressed that all of our work dissecting their challenging business problems and formulating strategies had produced very valuable results. In many cases, they thought we had accomplished far more than they had anticipated was possible. This feedback from the clients was of course very gratifying for all of the consulting teams not just for the fact that we had spent so much time and energy on the projects. It was also gratifying because we had learned a great deal about the importance of taking on a clients’ problems as if they were our own, especially as we had immersed ourselves more into the Ghanaian culture and gotten to know our clients on both professional and personal levels.

For our team, who worked with Kingsbridge Corporate Services Limited, we had the chance during our field research to meet our client’s clients and business partners who our suggestions would directly impact. For example, my teammate Jimmy Bettcher and I went with Kingsbridge management to do a pre-loan on-site assessment at an elementary school in Accra. There we had the opportunity to see the operations of local businesswoman who ran the school meal program and was seeking a bridge loan to cover inventory costs until she received government reimbursements. Our entire consulting team also had the chance to meet Daniel, a very bright business partner of Kingsbridge who does susu collection (traditional Ghanaian small savings system) and provides basic business skills training to local small shop owners. These experiences both informed our recommendations for Kingsbridge and helped us understand the connection the organization held with its stakeholders and the real impact we would have on their businesses and lives.

Moving forward will involve monitoring and evaluation to periodically check in to see how things are progressing. From my own previous professional experiences doing project development in emerging markets, there can often be a lot of enthusiasm for new ideas, which is great and needed, but might not be followed by measured implementation. Our team has already planned to review our final deliverable one last time in the next week or two with the client. We also intend to touch base with Kingsbridge every few months to catch up with each other and see how things are going. Maintaining the relationships built over this inaugural program and into next year’s work will help ensure accountability for the success of Kingsbridge’s work and of the GLOBASE Ghana program.

It was truly an honor to be involved in this first year of GLOBASE Ghana and pleasure to get to know our clients in Ghana.

Day 13 & 14 in Ghana

By Aaron Gutting

On our second to last day in Ghana we took a short bus ride from our resort to a nearby fishing village. The visit to the village gave everyone a perspective on the poverty in Ghana and stood in stark contrast to our accommodations just ten minutes away.

We watched (and some students actually participated!) as the villagers dragged in the fishing nets, and then saw how the fish was smoked and packed for distribution. At the end of the visit, we had the chance to meet some of the villagers and give them consumer goods and clothes.

Next we were off to a canopy walk over the rain forest. This entailed seven different wire bridges with nettings on the sides that at times were around 100 meters above the forest level. For someone like me (afraid of heights) this was a very interesting experience. The more adventurous took the time to pose for photos with “The Goal” and Kelley School of Business banners.

On Friday we headed to the airport for a long 24 hours of travel back to the United States. On our way back into Accra we stopped at a restaurant for a final group dinner. Once again, our ever gracious hosts and clients stopped by to wish us safe travels and even hand out a few more gifts. It was a great way to the end trip and was an indiciation of the strength of the relationships we built over the past 9 weeks.

Day 11 & 12 in Ghana

By Chris Frank

If I had the power to re-name days, I would call the last two “Fine Tuning Day” and “Culmination Day”. With the final presentations on Tuesday night, each team spent many hours improving their PowerPoint slide content as well as rehearsing the actual delivery.

As usual, the leadership team has been committed to each team’s success. In this case, we practiced our presentations for all 6 of the leaders on Monday evening. Adaptability is one of the key characteristics needed for a GLOBASE member and these past days have followed suit. The best room available to us for our practice presentation in front of the leadership team was in a sort of computer lab with an employee at the desk and the occasional person walking in and out and pausing to observe the odd mix of foreigners. The back wall that we faced as presenters was all glass, which was a bit distracting with people milling around and shopping outside. As usual, each of us had the opportunity to allow ourselves to be distracted, or choose to be flexible with the setting and focus as best we could. In the end, the leaders gave us a balance of encouragement (to keep plugging away) and coaching on how to “fine tune”.


Tuesday evening was quite the event, which met in a large meeting hall in the La Palm Hotel. It was exciting to see the clients from all four companies attend, but they also brought some of their employees, friends, and family. Other contacts we had made from trade organizations and the cocoa industry attended as well. In all, there were about 50 of us with an even mix of Ghanaian business people and Kelley folks. The leadership team gave an outstanding presentation about IU and the Kelley School of Business. All four teams presented the best I have seen. However, the best part of the whole evening was when each of the clients from Emefa Jewellery, Kingsbridge Microfinance, All Pure Nature, and Aid To Artisans Ghana took the microphone. Some confessed to having doubts about the programs value, but all sang the praises of Kelley and the GLOBASE program, while celebrating the valuable consulting they had received and the friendships they had built. Does it get any better than that?