Tamk Consulting Academy (click here for more details)

Here is information about the TAMK Consulting Academy (TCA) for which I am an assistant, temporary coach.  It is an EXTREMELY interesting concept and is designed to give the International Business students experience in solving real world problems.  Below is a brief overview of our latest meeting.

By the way, Analeise babysits for Anni, the woman third from the left.  She babysits Leo every Wednesday afternoon.

This is Mauri.  He is a true playa for real, fo sho do.  He is the Coach for TCA and has been for a while.  He embodies success:  successful businessman, married to former Miss Finland, extremely prolific business textbook writer, always well dressed, and more.  He and his wife own the most elegant apartment I have ever been in.  

I have to say that he and his wife  are some of the nicest people we have met in Finland - they were the first people from work to really make sure that Kate and I were well settled in and comfortable.  Also, when my father-in-law came to visit, Mauri made sure that Denny had a chance to go to the local Rotary Club meeting, taking several hours out of his day to make this happen. 

I think the quality of Mauri that I like the most about Mauri is how funny he is.  He is very funny even when he is being serious.  For instance, when he was explaining how effeminate drinking cider is.  Also, Mauri has told me that under no circumstances should I use the word 'ihana'.  This is opposite advice from Kate's relatives who try to get me to say it all the time, but I'll take Mauri's advice - when I say 'ihana' I tend to get laughed at a lot.

As the Coach of TCA, Mauri helps find projects, orient the projects, pick projects, make sure they are on the right track, etc.  I know this is an extremely demanding job.  We only meet for about 3 hours per week on Tuesday mornings, but I know that Mauri spends many, many hours at business meetings making arrangements for students or helping them out on the projects in some way.

What I am trying to learn from Mauri about TCA is how to help these projects along without doing the work for the students.  He is excellent at asking questions, but does not tell the students what to do exactly.  During the first meeting, I thought I really understood the process, but I am finding it is a lot less directed than I had originally guessed (and is that way on purpose).  It is an art form that Mauri has developed to know exactly how much guidance to give:  too little and the projects never go anywhere, too much and the students don't learn anything or experience the process of self-discovery.

This is Noora speaking about a project to promote TAMK and the IB program in Russia.  TAMK would really like to have more Russian students.  Russia is Finland's biggest trading partner and Russian students are very good apparently.  If TAMK could have a plan to recruit several Russian students a year, it would be very beneficial.  Here are some notes from Noora's talk:

• They are targeting St. Petersburg because of its proximity to Finland and ease of travel to this city.
• Russian students are VERY young when they graduate high school, so decisions are made in large part by their parents.  It is important to market to the parents also.
• The university in Mikeli is really good at recruiting Russian students.  The group is wondering why this is and how this might help us.
• The general scope of the project this year might to be to come up with a plan and/or do research into the best ways to recruit rather than to implement a plan by the time the Russian students need to have their paperwork in for next year.
• The team plans to travel to St. Petersburg this February to get more ideas and data.  

 Here are Judyta and Silja.  Judyta is married to one of the other IB students, Taito.  I think I am getting really old because she seems way too young to be married.  But then I realized that she and her husband are in their 20's and they are not too young, but that I am getting old. :-(

Mauri, Ruta and Saari listening intently.

Noora's speech.  The back of Alberto's head.

So this is a guest speaker, Sakari, Loyty.  I apologize in advance if I didn't spell his name right.  So Sakari was invited to talk about Namibia where one of our TCA projects is to take place.   Sakari is the father of one of the TCA students, Johannes and they have lived in Namibia for very extended portions of time (it seems that Sakari is basically from Namibia now).  The idea of Sakari's visit was to give background on the country and culture of Namibia to help out with our project.

Sakari is personally very interesting.  He is the son of an Evangelical Lutheran missionary and grew up in Namibia.  He later studied music and has been working on integrating traditional music into worship in Namibia.  He has studied for his Master's degree how colonial music influenced Namibian music over the past century.  His son, Johannes, has lived for a large portion of his life in Namibia because of Sakari's work.

Some of the points that Sakari made about Namibia are:

• It was formerly under South African rule until about 1990.
• It has a relatively small population of 2.1 M.
• Individual tribes/nations exist and somehow share rule along with the national government.  They are not primitive, but just different societal structures than we are used to.
• The extended family is the core social unit of Namibia.  These 'families' are not like in Europe because they are so big.
• With 50% unemployment, the few people in the family who work may have to help provide cash for all the people in the extended family.  Because of this structure, there is a lot of nepotism.  Again he emphasized that this is not a 'backwards' situation but that it makes a lot of sense given how the society is formed around these families.
• He said it is really important to greet and pay respects to the people you meet on a daily basis.  This is totally opposite of Finnish culture.  You see, you would NEVER pass someone you met in a village and not greet them warmly.  Even in cities, it would be important to smile and acknowledge others.  In Finland, I know for a fact that if you greet people you don't know on the street, they will look at the ground and ignore you.