Well a year has passed since I arrived in Puerto Montt Chile for my four week CSC assignment. While the memories are still fresh in my head they seem almost dreamlike, as if my four weeks in Chile never really happened. This blog and the hundreds of picture that my team mates and I took tell me it really did happen, but if I ask myself what impact my assignment had to me or the client I worked with I really cannot come up with much. This is ironic considering I still describe my CSC adventure as an amazing experience, perhaps even an experience of a lifetime. Even more ironic is that I still recommend CSC to anybody that inquires about it.
In my DAYS 26 – 30 blog entry I questioned if CSC was really a life changing event. My answer today is it could have been, but for me it was not.
The CSC program is intended to provide participants with unique leadership development opportunities. I’m not sure what this means. Certainly my CSC team spent 4 weeks in Chile where we engaged in an assignment that required leadership skills, but since returning I have not been provided an opportunity to continue to grow or even utilize these skills. It is up to the participants to figure how to utilize their CSC experience. From a work perspective I came back to the same job I left. Nobody has even tapped me on the shoulder to help me figure out how to utilize their CSC experience. In fact due to management changes, my entire management chain is unaware of my participation in CSC and many in the chain have a very vague understanding what the program really is.
It’s fine that my life has not changed from a work perspective. After all, CSC is philanthropic endeavor. I should be happy with the knowledge that I had the opportunity to do something for the welfare of an organization that improves the quality of technical education for the youth of southern Chile. Unfortunately, I have no clue if my efforts actually did anything to help the organization I worked with. Once we left Chile, my job was done. There was no follow-on activities or communications scheduled with the client. I did make a couple informal inquires directly with the client afterwards, but the responses were short and vague.
CSC did provide me with a more global awareness. One of the best parts of my CSC experience was getting to know my teammates and learn about where they were from. The same is true about the people I worked with in Chile. I had hoped that the friendships I developed in Puerto Montt would continue to grow afterwards and continue to nurture my global awareness. Unfortunately, much to dismay, many of the relationships that I quickly developed while on assignment seemed to dissolve even quicker once my assignment was over. That’s not to say that I do not keep in touch with some of my CSC team members, but let’s just say it’s not as close as I had hoped for.
So why recommend CSC? Because it really was an awesome experience and engaging in a 4 week awesome experience is better than not taking advantage of the opportunity. The pitfalls that I mentioned above deal less with the experience itself and more how CSC deals with participants after re-entry. The CSC program does a great job preparing it participants for their in-country assignment. It does not do a very good dealing with participants after their assignment. When I recommend CSC to friends, I also warn them of this aspect of the program. It was the most difficult aspect of my CSC assignment.
The end of my CSC assignment was too abrupt. Personally, I would have preferred that the assignment not end when we left Chile. I would have liked there to have been follow-on activities with the clients. I would have liked for the teams to continue to work with each other. I would have liked to have been able to transition the work we started to a follow on team. But unfortunately that’s now how it works.
While I don’t have any magic answers to the abrupt end to my CSC assignment, I do have some suggestions to future CSC participants. The first is just common sense. After your assignment, stay in touch with you CSC team mates. The four weeks you spend with them is intense and you develop some close friendships. Those friendships do not have to end at the end of your in-country assignment.
In preparation for the Chile 5 team 1 year anniversary I created a video of our team’s experience that I shared with the team yesterday. This was actually very helpful for me, but of course waiting a year to do it is not really that helpful. In reality I did not wait a year. I started on the video in the summer and worked on it for a few minutes every couple of weeks, but it gave me a feeling of still doing something with the team and it was really a good reminder of the all that we did while on assignment. Somehow, it helped me connect with the team members that decided to not keep in touch.
The thing that helped me the most after returning from Chile was signing up to be a mentor for the Chile 6 team. Unfortunately that did not occur until almost 9 months after I returned, but it gave that sense of transitioning the work to another team. True, that team was not going to pick up any of the work that Chile 5 did, but watching them go thru the pre-work was an enlightening experience for me. I could relate to what they were going thru and I wanted to help them. I almost feel like I am a part of the Chile 6 team.
Well, that’s it for day 365. I’m sure this is a post that nobody will even read, but it’s a post that helps bring my CSC experience to a closure.
#ibmcsc chile
In my DAYS 26 – 30 blog entry I questioned if CSC was really a life changing event. My answer today is it could have been, but for me it was not.
The CSC program is intended to provide participants with unique leadership development opportunities. I’m not sure what this means. Certainly my CSC team spent 4 weeks in Chile where we engaged in an assignment that required leadership skills, but since returning I have not been provided an opportunity to continue to grow or even utilize these skills. It is up to the participants to figure how to utilize their CSC experience. From a work perspective I came back to the same job I left. Nobody has even tapped me on the shoulder to help me figure out how to utilize their CSC experience. In fact due to management changes, my entire management chain is unaware of my participation in CSC and many in the chain have a very vague understanding what the program really is.
It’s fine that my life has not changed from a work perspective. After all, CSC is philanthropic endeavor. I should be happy with the knowledge that I had the opportunity to do something for the welfare of an organization that improves the quality of technical education for the youth of southern Chile. Unfortunately, I have no clue if my efforts actually did anything to help the organization I worked with. Once we left Chile, my job was done. There was no follow-on activities or communications scheduled with the client. I did make a couple informal inquires directly with the client afterwards, but the responses were short and vague.
CSC did provide me with a more global awareness. One of the best parts of my CSC experience was getting to know my teammates and learn about where they were from. The same is true about the people I worked with in Chile. I had hoped that the friendships I developed in Puerto Montt would continue to grow afterwards and continue to nurture my global awareness. Unfortunately, much to dismay, many of the relationships that I quickly developed while on assignment seemed to dissolve even quicker once my assignment was over. That’s not to say that I do not keep in touch with some of my CSC team members, but let’s just say it’s not as close as I had hoped for.
So why recommend CSC? Because it really was an awesome experience and engaging in a 4 week awesome experience is better than not taking advantage of the opportunity. The pitfalls that I mentioned above deal less with the experience itself and more how CSC deals with participants after re-entry. The CSC program does a great job preparing it participants for their in-country assignment. It does not do a very good dealing with participants after their assignment. When I recommend CSC to friends, I also warn them of this aspect of the program. It was the most difficult aspect of my CSC assignment.
The end of my CSC assignment was too abrupt. Personally, I would have preferred that the assignment not end when we left Chile. I would have liked there to have been follow-on activities with the clients. I would have liked for the teams to continue to work with each other. I would have liked to have been able to transition the work we started to a follow on team. But unfortunately that’s now how it works.
While I don’t have any magic answers to the abrupt end to my CSC assignment, I do have some suggestions to future CSC participants. The first is just common sense. After your assignment, stay in touch with you CSC team mates. The four weeks you spend with them is intense and you develop some close friendships. Those friendships do not have to end at the end of your in-country assignment.
In preparation for the Chile 5 team 1 year anniversary I created a video of our team’s experience that I shared with the team yesterday. This was actually very helpful for me, but of course waiting a year to do it is not really that helpful. In reality I did not wait a year. I started on the video in the summer and worked on it for a few minutes every couple of weeks, but it gave me a feeling of still doing something with the team and it was really a good reminder of the all that we did while on assignment. Somehow, it helped me connect with the team members that decided to not keep in touch.
The thing that helped me the most after returning from Chile was signing up to be a mentor for the Chile 6 team. Unfortunately that did not occur until almost 9 months after I returned, but it gave that sense of transitioning the work to another team. True, that team was not going to pick up any of the work that Chile 5 did, but watching them go thru the pre-work was an enlightening experience for me. I could relate to what they were going thru and I wanted to help them. I almost feel like I am a part of the Chile 6 team.
Well, that’s it for day 365. I’m sure this is a post that nobody will even read, but it’s a post that helps bring my CSC experience to a closure.
#ibmcsc chile