Party Time in the Burg

Back in May we were joined in the Marienburg by our new colleague, Andreas. I have known him for over 25 years, going back to our early Bayer days together and he recently ventured into the world of self-employment and was pleased to be able to link up with a group of like-minded friends and colleagues here in the Burg. Last week he decided to celebrate joining our network and his birthday with an invitation to the rest of us. Since he has spent many years of his life working in South America and his wife was born and brought up in Brazil, he chose to invite us to a “Feijoada” lunch, this being the Brazilian national dish.

To add to the sense of occasion, the special ingredients for this exotic sounding meal had been imported from Brazil just days before and at great risk and expense by Andreas’ wife Friederike. We started at 14.00h with a caipirinha each and as the legendary cocktail took its effect we began enjoying the slightly surreal atmosphere of Brazil inside and two feet of snow and -6°C outside. The food was superb and it was also a fitting way to christen the new Marienburg Business and Conference Center (which should, by the way, be called “Centre”, but that‘s another story).

But above all it was fascinating to watch Andreas in action. As someone who had worked his way up from humble Sales Rep to full-blown Board Member of a major American pharmaceutical company he is known and respected for his finely-honed skills in that key leadership competency “Achieving results through others”. To see him hover expertly in the background, subtly supervising, co-ordinating and generally managing things while his wife and their house keeper prepared the food and drinks was a masterful demonstration of the modern “no touch” philosophy in business process management. However, like all great strengths it has to be carefully dosed to ensure that it doesn’t get out of hand. So with this in mind we have agreed with Andreas on a couple of key development goals for 2011. We’ll start with “pressing the right button on the fully-automated café latte machine” and then move on to “making a cup of English tea using a real kettle” and then, if all goes well, progress later in the year on to “cooking simple meals at lunchtime”. We are all confident he will manage this as well and we can’t wait to start enjoying the results. Merry Christmas!