Project Update #1: Introduction to la SMIT

Last Monday, we had the first opportunity to meet our clients and begin talking about the statements of work. To recap, I am working with Dany (Canda), Ana Paula (Brazil), and Sayoko (Japan) for the Société Marocaine d’Ingénierie Touristique (la SMIT), a semi-public agency tied to the Moroccan Ministry of Tourism. According to our Statement of Work (SOW), our team would work with la SMIT to develop performance measures and refine their master plan for implementing sustainable tourism in Morocco.

Unlike the other teams, our client is based in Rabat, about 90 minutes (door-to-door) from Casablanca. While the commute can be long, it is an incredible chance to see the seat of Moroccan government.

The sign outside of la SMIT office! Notice it's in French, Arabic, English & Berber.

Meeting the client

We first met with our primary point of contact at la SMIT, Fatima zohra, as well as the head of the Development Department and the head of Sustainable Development. Surprisingly to us, the clients (with the exception of Fatima zohra) spoke almost no English! Dany was able to present our pre-project plan (which was based on the SOW) in French so that the client felt more comfortable with our team and what we were proposing. I was able to translate and ask follow-up questions to refine the requirements for the project. As we continued to meet with them throughout the week, our meetings were conducted in French nearly 90% of the time. While we knew that French was the language of business in Morocco, I think most of us in CSC assumed that we would at least be able to conduct meetings in English or have a translator handy. While I was thankful for my own fluency in French, I could tell it was frustrating for our teammates who didn’t speak the language.  We were going to have to figure out the best way to conduct meetings so that our whole team was involved in the coming weeks.

Aside from the language barrier, the clients we met were extremely engaging and friendly to our team. They were excited about the opportunity to have IBMers provide guidance on their strategies and their methodologies. Most of the people we met had engineering backgrounds, and they had a wealth of experience in both the private and public sector. I am excited to work with them all over the next few weeks.

Defining the Scope
Honestly, this phase of the project was more challenging than our team was expecting. After sitting with our client several times, we discovered that our statement of work was only a fraction of what they required and expected from our team. We went through several iterations of gathering requirements, conducting research on sustainability and tourism, refining the requirements, and reviewing them with the client.  After at least 4 meetings over the course of 9 days, we finally detailed the deliverables we will be providing at the end of the assignment:

1. A Performance Measures Framework for implementing sustainability indicators for tourism products.
2. A Governance Model for implementing sustainability in tourism products.
3. Recommendations on their Schema for Sustainability, related to their Vision 2020 Master Plan

Thankfully, I have experience in implementing Performance Measures, KM and governance strategies (thanks, Workforce Transformation Solutions!), so we should be able to leverage the methodology and materials when executing the project. Fatima zohra will be working with us every step of the way, and she has already proven to be a wonderful resource when understanding the SMIT organization, culture, and processes. Even though we have a large task ahead of us, I am excited about the work that we will be doing and we are looking forward to seeing its impact on SMIT!

Adapting to the culture
A large part of doing business in Morocco is establishing relationships with your clients well beyond the relationships I would build in the US. Most meetings started after ten minutes (or more) of talking about our weekends, our travels, and our backgrounds. To this American, it was a bit of an adjustment! At home, I am used to putting on a “Business Brittany” persona that limits the amount of personal details I share with my clients and seeks to be as efficient as possible in meetings. Here, however, that persona would not get very far. The people with whom we were working really wanted to get to know us more personally. If, in the first 10-15 minutes of a meeting, we started to steer the conversation back to work, our clients would answer the question and immediately follow up with another personal question!

This cultural difference sparked my first CSC Personal Challenge: “Learn when and how to feel comfortable connecting with work colleagues on a personal level.” While I’m here, I will take advantage of the opportunity to get to know Fatima zohra and the others personally. They will be the best insight I have into Moroccan culture, and I look forward to connecting and sharing experiences with them in the coming weeks.

Another project update coming next week! Stay tuned…

Fatima zohra and me sitting in a cafe

The team at lunch

Fatima zohra and Sayoko

#ibmcsc #morocco5