Instead of the Dust- the Heat

We are right in the middle of the summer here in Mexicali, and even the crickets hide out during the afternoon when the temperatures reach 115 degrees or more. It is true that you get used to the heat, more or less, but we all try to stay where the air conditioning is blasting whenever we can. We can't run the air conditioning in our manufacturing area for several reasons, and the heat is palpable. Especially when the humidity is between 40-50%. Five minutes on the shop floor and your hair is dripping. Not exactly a pretty sight. The fans are blowing and keeping the air moving a little. In order to minimize the astronomical cost of electricity supplied by the federal government here in Mexico, the employees start to work at 4:00 in the morning and the equipment shuts down just before 2:00 pm. Since that is also just reaching the hottest time of the day, at least some of the workforce gets to go home early.

The heat is as much a part of life in Mexicali as crossing the border into the US. It's hard to say which one is the most difficult to handle but the latter is definitely worse when the weather is hot. If your car's air conditioning is good, the hour and a half wait is aggravating, but if you have to turn it off and open your windows, that wait can be hell. It seems to me that every week, the amount of time taken with each car gets longer, but I'm sure that's a relative judgement. I do remember that several years ago, the crossing hardly ever took more than 20-30 minutes, except at the peak hours in the morning and afternoon. Now I feel lucky if it only takes an hour. One of the most frustrating experiences is when you are almost to the crossing gate and the guards decide to take a break. They put a red cone in front of the next car and walk away, leaving whatever line is queued up waiting until an agent returns to take over. I have seen and heard angry, frustrated people futiley honking their horns and getting out of their cars to rail in useless anger at other drivers. I confess to holding on to my steering wheel and screaming inside my car, hoping no one actually hears me, in order to release my pent up rage for losing so much time waiting and waiting to get to the other side of the international border. Ah well, it's just something you have to deal with. . .
Here's a link to a posting that has some good information and pictures of the border crossing: http://www.ericrench.com/MEXICO/MEXICALI/BORDER/bordercross.htm.

Employees are an Enigma, Part II

I don't think there will be a part III to this line of thinking. I wonder if I was just having a bad day when I wrote about the inability of our employees to be good team players or if I just couldn't admit that it's not really their fault. Anyway, since I posted that some things have changed a little. First, I've decided to change my approach and I think I convinced a couple of other people at work to do the same. You know, they always say you can't change someone else's behavior, you can only change your own. And that's how you make change happen, for better or worse.

When we hired this new group of 'managers' we said we were going to let them do the job we hired them to do and spend our time coaching them and helping them to be successful. Don't think we planned to do this for purely altruistic reasons, but our plan wasn't fiendish either. It was pretty normal and reasonable, considering that we have been working at making our company grow successfully for over five years. We need to have a team ready to take over when we are just too old and feeble to go on or maybe just when we want to take a couple of weeks off and go to Acapulco. At first, we were spending most of our time with the new group training them on the basics of the company and the organization. How the processes work, who the other employees are and what are their jobs, the different policies and procedures and the general conditions and daily routines. After several months, we began to expect that they would automatically start to take over and act like us (probably not a good thing anyway). Sometimes when they made a mistake, we spent more time telling them what they did wrong than showing them how to do it right. Other times we held them by the hand and walked them through different scenarios so they could make a more informed decision in the future. In other words, we were inconsistent and we didn't have a standard so that we could hold them accountable. They responded by becoming less and less willing or able to make the decisions we were demanding and everyone was frustrated. They also never wanted to be the "bad guy." It's so much nicer when everyone likes you and wants to be your friend or when you can be someone's hero (without trying to figure out who the victim is). We call that tendency the "Chanito Syndrome" and it's a common problem everywhere. A couple of people quit, for undisclosed reasons, and that made it even harder to get things done. Not just because there were fewer people to take up the slack, but because the roles kept changing.

I think the most important thing we have done to change in the past few weeks is to leave the new managers alone. Not alone in the sense that we have abandoned them, but freer to make decisions that will allow them to succeed or even to fail. If they succeed, we will reinforce them and if they fail we will be there to pick them up, dust them off and help them learn from whatever went wrong. I think it's already starting to work, but I could be dreaming. . .

I also found a cool website that has some really useful information, like a very succinct employee handbook. You can enjoy it here http://punkrockhr.com/punk-rock-employee-handbook/

"Employees are an Enigma" or "The Great Cultural Divide," Part I

When we first started working in Mexico, we had a group of people with us who had lived and worked in the US for a number of years. As they drifted off to other places and we had to hire new people, we chose to access the local universities to provide us with educated and talented employees. At least that was our plan. Prior to graduation in Mexico, students are required to spend some time in either a public or private organization to complete their 'practicas profesionales.' We hired young engineers who spent time with us as students, as well as those who had just graduated. We believed that we could train them to be a strong, committed management team with a special understanding of the processes and capabilities of our new company.


What we didn't fully appreciate, was the difficulty of transferring our 'gingo' cultural ideas of leadership and teamwork to a group of Mexican workers. After more than five years, we have to concede that a degree from a university doesn't guarantee an understanding of the meaning of responsibility, discipline, communication, authority, commitment or any other word that conjures the basic elements of work. Our expectations were based on our cultural paradigms and experiences gained from working in companies in the United States. Our new reality in Mexico is about as similar as walking on the moon. I don't really believe that the differences in expectations and outcomes are deliberate or intentional. People accept a job and get up every morning to come to work because they want to do a good job and get paid for it, no matter where they are in the world. At least that is true at first. Later, after personalities and conflicts come into play, there are probably more reasons to show up every day, or not, but getting paid is still number one. But once they get to work, how do they make themselves productive and valuable? When we interview and hire prospective candidates, we tell them that we are looking for people who will help us to build our new company. We explain that it is an opportunity to be creative and innovative. We discuss the challenge of starting from scratch to develop new processes and build new teams. We get excited about the prospects and show them our passionate belief in what we are doing. And in doing so, I think we probably scare the hell out of them. Their eyes start to glaze over and they begin to nod their heads in agreeement to anything. "Yes, yes," they say, as they accept our offer to build a dream. But when they arrive at work, they put their heads down and wait for someone to tell them what to do. So we explain to them and train them in the processes and procedures that already exist, fully expecting them to get as excited as we are and to take up the gauntlet of continuous improvement and world class ideas. We wait for them to charge ahead and make a glorious new contribution. And we wait. And then we wait some more. And when we ask them why they haven't done what we asked, why they haven't implemented the disciplines we laid out for them, why they haven't communicated the policies and procedures to all the people, where is their initiative, we just get that same glazed look we got when they told us they wanted the job.

It is disappointing. It is frustrating. It can sometimes be endearing. Sometimes it makes you want to cry. Sometimes it makes you laugh. But is it always part of the complex and diverse culture that is Mexico.

Can You See Jesus?

I found a fascinating article the other day that I want to share with you. It was about another miracle that should raise your spirits and confirm your faith in something else. I'm not here to tell you what 'something else' is, but it's out there somewhere with a design we may never fathom.

There is a restaurant in Calexico, California, just across the border from Mexicali, called Las Palmas, where one of the employees discovered a likeness to the Virgin of Guadalupe on the griddle. They have put the griddle in a separate room so that patrons can go in and look at it or pray to it or leave an offering for it. I suppose they had to buy a new griddle for cooking, but I'm sure it has increased their business tenfold. Not only did they get an article published in the LA Times about the phenomenon, but it's been mentioned on many other internet news sites. I'm tempted to go there myself. The Griddle Room is open Wednesday through Sunday for viewing, along with the restaurant, in case you need some faith and sustenance.

It's not the first time people have seen religious personnages or articles in or on weird stuff. I found a Fox News video that mentions Jesus in a pancake, in a dirty sink, on toast, in the clouds, you name it. You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvjGIkl2yDY. We are so easy. . .

And not to be outdone, I have my own relic. Here is a picture of my own Jesus rock in my garden. I have carried this rock around the world with me since I found it on a beach in Saudi Arabia almost 30 years ago. Should I put it up for auction on Ebay? Can you see Jesus in it?

A friend once told me that when you do business in Mexico, one of the most important things you can do is to put up a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe in a public place. It was one of the first items to go in the cafeteria so the employees would feel comfortable eating there. And there it remains until this day, along with a candle and some flowers.

Not long after we moved into our building, we did something else that might seem unusual to most 'gringos.' We invited all the families of the people who were working for us to come to the company one Saturday morning and we had a ceremony to bless the building. We have a Deacon in the Catholic church who came to Mexcali to work with us. He got some holy water and put his purple and white robes on for the occasion. We all followed him throughout the building while he sprinkled the holy water on the walls and in the corners and prayed for our safety and success. I'm still looking for the proof that it worked, but since we can still go to work every day along with our 30+ employees, I have to think that it didn't hurt.

H1N1, Swine, Mexican, North American Flu

Last week would have seemed normal in Mexicali, except the weather was unusual and the news of a potential global pandemic tinged everything with a sense of danger. It was strangely overcast in the mornings, with a sense of heaviness that you could almost touch and a slightly ochre cast to one's view from windows and cars. Often, even in winter, the sun lends such a harsh, bright reality to everything here, that every leaf, a garden stone or a window ledge has the power to fracture your view of the world. The muted tones of the past few days dreamily softened even the stark reality of the news from Mexico City, where streets were empty, restaurants closed and the citizens were staying in their homes to minimize the risk of infection. In Mexicali, where a few cases of the flu were identified, the response was much less obvious, though an undercurrent of tension was noticeable in casual conversations and fewer cars on the streets. Notice was given at the end of the week, on a major holiday in Mexico, that all 'non-essential' businesses should close the following week. Since almost everything was already closed on Friday and many establishments would also be taking a holiday on Monday, it was difficult to know how to contact employees over a long weekend to tell them not to return. It turned out to be unnecessary when the ban was lifted in the city by the next day and now even businesses in Mexico City will reopen by Wednesday. Do you think things will really be the same there? Or will it be weeks or months before the crowds and traffic resume their congested sameness.

Across the border in Calexico, however, everything was business-as-usual on Friday. The traffic was heavy at the border because of the holiday and it took more than one hour to make the crossing. The guards at the border didn't mention the flu and their was nothing different at the gas station. I had to go to the Bank of America, which I swear must be the busiest branch that exists in the whole United States. No one there was wearing a mask or keeping an unusual distance. Even though the flu was identified in Imperial county, the response was not the same as it was just across the street in another country. Though the news in the States was broadcasting flu updates every half hour on radio and TV, the public reaction was far from intense just minutes from the border. I'm sure there is nothing geographical in the spread of a virus, but there definitely is something different about how different cultures respond to similar threats.

It must have something to do with the level of tolerance people in the States have to the constant media pounding of one dire problem after another. Numbness begins to set in and the "ho hum" factor takes over. In Mexico, though the Internet has become a way of life and TV and radio news shows are running just as constantly, they are still not as predominant in everyone's daily life. Sometimes I ask people who work in the company for news of what is going on in the news, and for the most part, they can hardly give you a run down of local, state or national news. Newspapers are still sold on every major street corner in the mornings, along with Chiclets and the ubiquitous request for handouts. It's not that life is simpler here, but it definitely is different in many subtle and indefinable ways.