Heading into the final week, there is a swirl of emotions by all of us. It’s clear at this point, we’ve become a family – it’s amazing. We’ve talked to our friend and coordinator, Malika, about the dynamics of our team. Interestingly, she said that while all teams bond, there are usually more sub-groups, either based on personalities or the sub-team you’re assigned to. In our case, she said she doesn’t see that, it’s not all sunshine and roses, but we consistently are together, we disagree, we compromise and we move on. It’s a great dynamic.

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After our great stakeholder meeting on Thursday, we’ve been tweaking, modifying, adding a few things here and there and running through our presentation – it’s all in the details at this point.

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CGEM is a strong organization, with a 75 year history of helping Moroccan companies grow – they know what they’re doing. Our mission is to help them become more efficient and effective as they’ve experienced dramatic growth in the last several years. We’ve been looking at their organization, their infrastructure, and the dynamics at play from inside and outside of the organization to identify areas where they can improve. We’ve conducted over 40 hours of interviews and the Project Manager from CGEM, Khaoula, has been tremendous in getting us situated and helping us maximize our time here.

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Again, we went with our routine of eating a hot sandwich on the street with some raw sugarcane juice with lemon and a little ginger – an amazing meal for $1.20. Interestingly enough, there is a sugarcane drink place opening at one of our malls back home, but I bet it won’t be $0.60 a glass!!

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Tuesday was Labor Day in Morocco, so many businesses were closed including our host organization. We were working, but at our hotel – this allowed the running group to go a bit farther as we didn’t have commutes. We did a 15K, 9 mile, run. It was fun as I ran with Cat and Ana who had done over 10 marathons between the two of them. That’s the farthest I think I’ve ever run and they helped me keep a solid pace.

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It was interesting working from the hotel as we mostly in the same room. Special shout out to Cat Dame, for offering some tips to improve our analyses. For lunch, a group of us went to Morocco mall for some American pizza – I went with Zuben and Shadi, and they had never heard of Papa John’s. It’s not great, it’s pizza, but we were starving, especially after my run.

 

Wednesday, we did final preparations and a dry run of the analysis between us. The final readout is scheduled for two hours, Thursday at 4:00 pm. After work, our hosts, including the CEO, Secretary General and several department heads went to dinner at Le Bistrot Chic – a great place near our hotel. We had a great conversation talking about Moroccan culture, how the world is getting smaller and how Morocco is moving forward to take a more prominent place in the world. We learned a lot, plus we talked about kids, holidays, and regular life. As we discussed, the world is getting smaller and we’re all facing the same issues. It was a fun talk and very enlightening.

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With only two days to-go, the roller coaster is nearly back to the beginning. The Corporate Service Corp is very well run, our team is great, our sub-team rocks and we love the opportunity to help.

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Thursday will be exciting, we have our readout and then Friday night our goodbye dinner, or rather, see you later dinner – it will be bittersweet – more to come.