I arrived in Morocco on a red eye at just after noon on Friday, April 6, via Charlotte, North Carolina and Madrid. After getting some Moroccan Dirhams, I found the driver to take me to the hotel in downtown Casablanca. About an hour later, I checked into the hotel and opened WhatsApp, the communication tool of choice for Corporate Service Corp (I've never really used it before and I really like it -- great tool!). 

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I messaged the group, most of whom had landed already, and got instructions to walk to the restaurant where they were, a Moroccan place called Amistad. I had my first tagine - it's a dish with meat and vegetables cooked in a conical ceramic dish shaped like a tent -- and it's awesome!

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While I've worked with the group for the last three month, this was the first meet and greet with the group I'm going to spend the vast majority of waking hours with for the next month. I didn't expect to be nervous, but there was a bit of 'first day of school' feel to it. It didn't last long as the folks I'm fortunate enough to work with are what you would expect -- warm, kind, and generous.

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After lunch, some of the group took a nap, but a few, myself included went on a self-guided walking tour. We're about a kilometer from the coast and we walked down and saw the ocean and the 3rd largest mosque in the world.

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On Saturday, we met with IBM and Pyrexa, IBM's partner in CSC, and went through logistics, security, reviewed protocols and discussed different scenarios we might encounter. On Sunday, we took a bus tour of Casablanca and toured the Hassan II mosque, previously mentioned. It's incredible, ornate, solemn, and spectacular. It can hold 20,000 people and had a retractable roof long before Cowboys stadium in Dallas. I learned more about Islam, saw just a tiny sliver of the new medina in Casablanca and topped it off with a gourmet French dinner. As great as everything was, there was a bit of a stranger in a strange land feel to it that was mutually shared by the team. While I did learn about the city and country prior to arriving, experiencing the city and seeing how cosmopolitan it is, while also seeing so much more potential was interesting.

 

On Monday, April, 9, we went to the IBM Client Center in Casablanca and met with Hassan Mahej, Morocco's country General Manager. We learned more about IBM's 84 year old presence in Morocco and some of the innovative things IBM is doing to help Morocco move forward.

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We met our host organizations and then the 15 IBMers representing nine countries and and five continents split into our sub-teams -- five teams of three IBMers working with five different host organizations. I'm working with two great people; Ajay Malik, an Associate Director for Financial Services in India and Ana Quigley, a Global Stability & Availability Investments lead from Ireland.

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We had lunch with our hosts, a group that supports business growth and advancement in Morocco and abroad. We read that Moroccans want to build a relationship and get to know you before really getting down to business. This is true, but we also saw that these relationships can be built quickly.  Our hosts' and IBM's desire to help the small and medium businesses in Morocco helped advance the relationship and by Tuesday afternoon we'd already conducted nine hours of interviews with team members to start the process of data gathering. We are helping our hosts better optimize to help a larger universe of business in Morocco.

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At the end of day two of our CSC assignment, everything seems to be happening at hyper speed - getting to know my teammates, our hosts, and the country while 'settling in'. The title of this blog is mostly true, but there really is no time to settle, the clock is ticking and everything is done with a heightened sense of urgency.  BUT, I can say that the bonds with my colleagues are growing and that helps ground everything! More to come . . .