Monday, October 19, 2009

Mon. Oct. 19: Meet the Rangoli Team




(Credits: Team photo from Annamari Soikkeli; Rangoli team logo by Susanne Hupfer; Team wheel graphic by Dominik Lanzenberger.)

Our CSC Team -- officially known as "IBM Corporate Services Corps India Team 4" -- has known one another virtually (via phone, emails, instant messages) for about three months, ever since we found out when and where our assignment would be. Since mid-July, we've been meeting every week by phone with our team facilitator, Charles Howell, who's been guiding us through various exercises and assignments that needed to be completed before the team's in-country phase. We've also had "homework" assignments -- about 60 hours' worth of learning modules -- that we finished prior to coming to Ahmedabad.

What kinds of things did we learn about in our pre-country work? History, economy, dress, food, and sights of Gujarat, and Ahmedabad specifically; cultural awareness and cross-cultural sensitivity; health and safety considerations for India; IBM's business operations in India; corporate social responsibility; theories on how to best effect social change; consulting methodologies, high-performance teaming; and much more.

One of the key aspects of the CSC program involves learning how to work effectively in a distributed, global team of IBMers, representing varied ethnic and professional backgrounds. Our team is a mix of older and newer IBMers (ranging from 2 years with the company to 20); men and women; consultants, researchers, QA specialists, and project managers from various parts of IBM (from Research to Services to Software Group). We come from around the globe, and bring a range of motivations for wanting to participate in the CSC program and apply our skills to social service work in a developing country.

Here's our melting pot of a team, with links to where you can find their blogs describing our team's CSC experience from a variety of perspectives:

A couple months ago, we collectively decided that "CSC Team 4" was too bland and boring a name for our fantastic team. After debating a few options, the team decided to call itself the "Rangoli Team." "Rangoli" is a famous Indian art form in which elaborate sand paintings are created on the floor (typically outside homes) by carefully arranging colored sand. We concluded that "Rangoli" is a good name for our team, since Rangoli sand paintings can be quite complex and are only successful through the careful coordination and collaboration of the various artists, working in harmony with one another. We are hoping our team of 9 will embrace this spirit of collaboration to create some great results for our CSC clients!

The team met for the first time in "real life" on October 19, after 4 hours or so of sleep after touching town in Ahmedabad in the middle of the night. It was very exciting to meet the actual people that go with the voices we've become so familiar with these past three months! I feel we're already friends, and I'm looking forward to getting to know these colleagues much better over the next month.

On our first day in India, our team had a couple hours of orientation in which we did a couple team-building activities and in which we learned how to handle everyday matters here (e.g. how to use our cell phones, how to get on the Internet, intricacies of getting laundry done, etc.). Next up: the ultra-practical lesson by Arjun, our local logistics person, on how to hire and ride a rickshaw!
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