Off to the land of ABBA and Mikky Dee.....

So the globe trotting consulting journey begins!  Off to Heathrow for my first flight.  How exciting going to the airport and flying seemed at this point.  Come back in a few blogs time to find out how this excitement began to fade quite fast!!!

First challenge was that I was flying out of Terminal 3 but returning to Terminal 5 due to moving European locations midweek.  Which car park should I book?  After far too much time spent thinking about this decided to book the easiest one for getting home quickly when I returned on Friday.  You can tell the old decision making has become a bit rusty even after just a month off...thank god I am back to work before the brain grounds to a halt completely!

Now you could well be asking yourself the question - Simon you said you were off to Sweden, so why the picture of a road sign for lovely Slough?  Well I soon learnt that the locations for the overseas offices may have been advertised to me as Stockholm, Paris etc but as you would expect with a sales, distribution & warehouse operation their sites are actually outside the cities.  The best way to illustrate this would be to think that you are flying into Heathrow and being told that you are in London but are actually heading for Slough!  Not exactly a problem as the timescale for completing the work is very tight for each location and I am getting paid to work not be a tourist!

I arrived at Stockholm airport to be hit with my second dilemma!  Coming out of the terminal you are presented with two competing lines of taxis.  Which one to take?!  Well my choice was actually made very easy by the fact that one was headed up by a gentleman in a suit and tie who was opening the door of his clean family saloon with a smile and the other by someone who was unshaven, was shouting down his mobile phone and looked like he would take me to the forests surrounding Stockholm, torture me and then bury my body in many pieces amongst the trees!!!

One of the interesting sidelines from this project is to observe the difference in work cultures between countries. Three clear ones came out of my time in Sweden... 

Firstly the hours - the start very early 7.30am but also finish early at 3pm.  Apparently it is more of the norm for people to work this way so that they can have a family dinner together at around 4pm which I guess does give them a much better work life balance. 

Secondly they take their dogs to work.  I had been warned so this was not a complete surprise but still took a bit of getting used to when you are talking processes and controls to someone and their dog is sniffing your feet at the same time!

Lastly and the one that I most liked, and wished we had more of in England, was the real sense of "family" that the office had.  Now it was only a small operation (10 people) and this may well be the same for family type businesses in the UK but at morning and afternoon coffee/tea break the whole office and warehouse staff stop and come together for a conversation over a drink and a pastry.  There was no one saying that they were too busy and they genuinely seemed to enjoy getting together and catching up on the day so far.  I feel embarrassed and sad about the times that I turned down lunch or a drink at the pub with the team because I had something urgent to do.  My impression was that this short break made them more effective and efficient as a team and everyone went back to work with a real spring in their step.  I believe that this is something that larger teams could learn a thing or two from - yes you too my old team - especially the management team!

Now I was staying two nights in a hotel.  I soon realised that I needed some more money to cover all the taxi costs and the hotel told me where I could find a cash point.  Now it seemed a nice enough area I was in but I began to question my sanity (and safety) when I wandered off under a subway, taking a path across a deserted field and then under another subway in a station before emerging in a local residential area.  It was dark and I had no idea what kind of area I was really in.  Well all turned out well enough and got back to the hotel safely but I did think my god did I really do that when I woke up the next morning!  I will certainly think twice before doing that again....

My last observation from this trip is just how small the world now appears due to the globilising effect of TV.  Flicking the channels I came across the Swedish versions of Idol (complete with same graphics, format etc as the American version) and I am a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! A bit depressing really.   However my mood was brightened up when I realised that I recognised when of the contestants!  Now I guess for the majority of my readers this would have passed you by.  But a certain long haired bloke looked strangely familiar (middle of back row in picture above).  After thinking long and hard I realised it was Mikky Dee, Motorhead's drummer!  He is from Sweden and apparently quite famous in his home country.  A fantastic drummer (one of the best live I have seen) and he really made the Motorhead gig I went to see in November.  According to Classic Rock magazine he has been given time off by Lemmy to appear on the show.  Got me thinking how brilliant it would be to see the main man himself on the UK version - he would make John Lydon seem positively a ray of sunshine and god help the Z list celebs....!!!

So to finish this blog here is Motorhead with Rock Out from their latest excellent album Motorizer (happy now Stuart?!)...