By Aaron Gutting
Every week in GLOBASE just seems to get better, and this week the excitement for Ghana really built with client visits to Bloomington. Kelley arranged for Bridget Darko from Aid to Artisans and Raphael Tyson and Manasseh Portuphy from Kingsbridge to come to Bloomington for a week and meet with students and faculty. I’ll talk more about their visit in a moment but first want to talk about the week #3 class. The session featured a lecture by Management Professor Matt Semadeni. Professor Semadeni challenged the GLOBASE teams to alter our approach to our projects and take the perspective not of a manager but of an entrepreneur. He emphasized that we need to consider our clients motivations beyond just pure business goals and consider what is really driving them.
We were able to immediately put this advice to good use in our meetings with our clients. My group was able to meet with Bridget, discuss her organization and scope out our project. We also had the chance to meet with Raphael and Manasseh. We were able to bounce ideas off them and get a sense for some of the challenges we will face once we get to Ghana. Finally – a highlight was that we had the chance to go to dinner a couple of times with Bridget, Raphael, and Manasseh. It was great to take a break from project work and actually get to know the people we’re working with. It has made everyone feel more comfortable as we start the heavy work on our project and will make some of the adjustments once we arrive in Ghana a little bit easier.
Every week in GLOBASE just seems to get better, and this week the excitement for Ghana really built with client visits to Bloomington. Kelley arranged for Bridget Darko from Aid to Artisans and Raphael Tyson and Manasseh Portuphy from Kingsbridge to come to Bloomington for a week and meet with students and faculty. I’ll talk more about their visit in a moment but first want to talk about the week #3 class. The session featured a lecture by Management Professor Matt Semadeni. Professor Semadeni challenged the GLOBASE teams to alter our approach to our projects and take the perspective not of a manager but of an entrepreneur. He emphasized that we need to consider our clients motivations beyond just pure business goals and consider what is really driving them.
We were able to immediately put this advice to good use in our meetings with our clients. My group was able to meet with Bridget, discuss her organization and scope out our project. We also had the chance to meet with Raphael and Manasseh. We were able to bounce ideas off them and get a sense for some of the challenges we will face once we get to Ghana. Finally – a highlight was that we had the chance to go to dinner a couple of times with Bridget, Raphael, and Manasseh. It was great to take a break from project work and actually get to know the people we’re working with. It has made everyone feel more comfortable as we start the heavy work on our project and will make some of the adjustments once we arrive in Ghana a little bit easier.
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