“Are we supposed to be impressed?” a young Irish guy asked
after Lia counted to three in French as she took a picture of us on the bus to
Dublin. It was rather hilarious, b/c
she’d made a big deal about it. We all
had a good laugh…
Interesting day here – it rained
somewhat significantly on-and-off all day, so we got our first real taste of
Irish weather. Yesterday I felt like we
really dug in and made some progress on our Wavebob project. Which, I must admit, feels good. Today felt more like dead ends. Which, I must admit, doesn’t feel as
good. It was still important to do
enough research to get to that decision point of “no, there’s nothing here,”
but it didn’t feel like a lot of tangible progress was made. I was researching off-shore oil and gas rigs
in Chile’s Pacific waters, and concluded the lack of them means there isn’t a
good opportunity to link decommissioned platforms with Wavebobs. I also looked at what Chile is currently
doing with renewable energy and whether funding opportunities exist, and pieced
together the opinion that the government’s role at this point is mainly setting
goals and in a few cases, mandates, but not particularly enforcing them or
providing incentives to do so. The
former roles are being played more by utilities and third party agencies…
Jan came out to Maynooth today
and met with Andrew, then we all went to lunch at Barberton Castle – the former
home of Eric Clapton. It was a good
little break – it’s always nice to get out of the office for a bit. As we were leaving, we saw a fascinating
little thing roaming the grounds…it looked like a Rhumba. We couldn’t figure out what it was doing (it
didn’t look like it was mowing), but it sparked a discussion for the ride back
to the office.
Speaking of car-ride discussions,
on the way back to the hotel this evening one of the team members expressed
that this course was too much work, and another brought up “working for free.” Opinions were asked, so two of us responded
that given the condensed nature of the course we felt the workload was
completely appropriate, and that the “working for free” was a valuable
opportunity to learn, apply, and hone business skills. What we’re doing is (at least should be)
growing us as leaders and building our resumes in the best kind of environment
– a real one – some of the very things I undertook my MBA to accomplish. I mention it only because it reinforced what
was told to us at the beginning of the class – “you will get from the course
whatever you put into it.” There have
been some long days and the nature of the situation has required some extra
attention to interpersonal skills, but I have gotten so much out this
experience so far. It’s completely worth
it, and I feel like what I’ve put in has been multiplied back to me. I think that’s generally the case in
life. Sometimes it takes a while before
the returns are seen, but I feel like I’ve gained multiple valuable things every
day here. It also reminded me to tell my
mom “thanks” again for nurturing a (mostly) positive attitude. I tend to think that you see what you choose
to see. Most situations can be viewed as
either positive or negative, depending on what one chooses to focus on. Jan encouraged us to view our challenges as
learning opportunities and take as much good and self-change from them as we
can, but I think this is even more basic than that…it’s about not viewing
everything as a challenge, but rather simply seeing some things for the good
that they are. Ah the reflection this
course has evoked…more on that later…for now, we’re arriving in Dublin…
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