Swiss Tidbits

Today was a splendid day in Lausanne, Switzerland: the sun was shining, the sky was blue and all the kids were out at the citywide sports fest. I was roaming around, popping in small cafes for a bit of this and that and spending pleasurable moments on the shore of Lake Geneva. As ill luck would have it, being in roaming, my 3G was gone, so I could not share my Swiss observations in real time, hence I was jotting them down and posting now. 


Here we go:

• There is something about a good bouillabaisse that makes my heart go boom-boom.

• An old Romanian lady at the next table is trying to prove to a Swiss waiter that he cannot speak French. I find it adorable.

• Observing two 90-year-old ladies at a restaurant fighting over who should pick up the bill. I wonder if there'll be casualties.

• Swiss money is funny.

• What was the rationale for the decision to keep the shops closed in Switzerland on Sundays: to decrease sales or to annoy the foreigners?

• Switzerland is all about style and location.

• Having a funeral agency right on the central city square (Place de l'Europe) is symbolic, isn't it?

• Russians were here!

Up In The Air

There is a movie with the same title. It jumped to my mind as I opened my laptop sitting in a business lounge at the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow waiting to take off for Geneva. Now that I am back in the workplace, my jet-setting business trip layover hotel airplane food begins again. It is an ambivalent feeling: on the one hand, I am glad to be up in the air again, enjoying the dynamic life of airports and meeting rooms inseparable from the present day international business, but on the other hand, I feel uneasy about breaking my routine (gym, friends, cultural life) and submitting my body to dehydration, sleep deprivation and jet lag.

I see to have arrived at the same point in my weltanschaung as the character of George Clooney, but some 30 years earlier. Mobility gets you to the top much faster and your readiness to be away from your your family will cast a positive reflection on your paycheck, but how do you put a price on relationships and well-being? One of senior VPs, who once interviewed me, confessed that he had got to where he was primarily due to his willingness to be mobile internationally. Bitterly, he added that it had cost him his marriage.

It boils down to making choices. Many would give a fence-sitting answer that it is all about balance, that sitting at home all of the time is also no good, and that separation makes hearts grow fonder, but how many have actually managed to achieve that equilibrium successfully and maintain it?

I am pro-balance. Big time: my Zodiac sign is Libra, after all. I enjoy traveling and I enjoy the comfort of my routine. I love novelty and I revel in the company of old friends and that significant other. There are compromises, of course: you can travel to places where you have friends and catch-up with them while you are on a business trip, or you can take your partner with you, who will enjoy sight-seeing and shopping while you are toiling away at the office, or you may come up with another alternative arrangement... I guess what I am trying to say is that finding the balance is not impossible. It also depends very much on your personal values and your ambitions in life. George Clooney was very clear on that. Until something (well, someone) changed his point of view.

A fleeting visit to Morocco: Thoughs

This weekend I went to Marrakesh to get my busy head out of the orderly European life and immerse myself into the 1001-nights-like atmosphere of that ancient city. It was not my first visit - I have already visited Morocco back in 2007 when I virtually did a round-trip across the country: Casablanca, Rabat, Fes, Meknes, Marrakesh and Es-Saouira. I was thinking to myself then, "This will change in the next 5 years. With the rapid pace of development everywhere else in the world, this country will not escape the burden of modernization". This time around, I was travelling with a friend who said exactly the same thing, and now I am not really sure how much is going to change in the next 5, 10 or even 20 years.

Think of Morocco as a country where

• a red traffic light is merely a suggestion to the driver to look both ways before proceeding
• a signed contract is a great place to start negotiations
• travel is still measured in hours and days instead of kilometers
• mules, bicycles, camels, people and buggies are equal members of the chaotic mess lovingly referred to as "traffic"
• a bribe is not corruption but simply a "facilitation payment" to speed thing up
• in bars you will see only men, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes or shishas, while women stay in home taking care of the house and children
• telling lies is an acceptable negotiation practice (and oh so many tourists have suffered from that!)
• etc, etc, etc

How do you do business in that country? Surely not by deploying a pack of Western managers blindly believing that they are able to change people so that they adopt the Western cultural practices. To me that sounds like a sure way to schizophrenia: being one person at work and at home - another. At the same time I understand the business imperative to carry out transactions in a consistent fashion, with integrity and within the legal boundaries. The people issues in such cases are key: values transfer, adapting Western management practices, dealing with "double bind" issues... I would really enjoy an assignment like that :)