De Baak senior program maker / trainer Caroline van der Linden
What do you learn when you take a break from your daily routine and spend a week visiting fast-growing businesses in India? Or spend two weeks in Ethiopia advising on development projects? A good question for many homebodies. For participants in the New Manager (India) and the EYE-exchange (Ethiopia) programs a personal learning process that they're still right in the middle of. For myself, as the learning manager and co-organizer of the two learning trips, a never-ending challenge as well. These trips target the participants themselves: specifically waking up - reawakening - their entrepreneurial side, the one that takes initiatives. How and what am I supposed to undertake in a completely new environment that's sometimes less than secure? How far can I trust myself? How far am I prepared to go to get things done? How can I take on a sharper entrepreneurial edge in my own business environment?
I realize what a fertile approach to learning we sometimes have here in the Netherlands. When we lift up the shutters covering our eyes, ears, all our senses, then - with a dose of respect - we Dutch people, inquisitive as we are, can learn a great deal. We stay open to all regardless of color, wealth or status. In India you see caste and hierarchy hobble learning. In Ethiopia taking initiatives and curiosity were never stimulated.
What I myself learned during these learning trips is to check your own prejudices and assumptions. "We think of so many things as self-understood. I'm assuming what I'm telling you is perfectly clear. But that other guy hasn't even spared me a look ... and then you go in search of other approaches..."
What really touches me are the people with vision, inspiration and guts. They may be few in number, but they are the ones who dare to stand above the rest. In a country like Ethiopia that's more than bold: it's foreign to the culture. In India you see the people who turn their visions in no time into sky-high reality. But what about us, I ask myself. And what about me? What are my visions, our visions? What do I need to make these happen?
