Favourite Consulting Assignments: Kazakhstan Training Project

Greg Smith, Senior Consultant

Every consultant has assignments that they remember with special fondness. We asked our team to reminisce a bit about their own favourite memories. Here's another one from Greg Smith:

One of my favourite consulting assignments was... a training and evaluation project for participants from Kazakhstan, which started in 1996. Consilium was asked by the leading high tech firm, Newbridge Networks Corporation (later acquired by Alcatel), to help design, deliver and evaluate a cross-cultural pilot project in management and marketing training for bank and telecommunications managers, administrators and technical specialists from Kazakhstan. Newbridge was providing equipment to the Kazakhstan national telecommunications company, ALTEBA, for a number of branches of the country’s largest bank - Halyk Savings Bank. With funding from CIDA, Newbridge brought personnel from both Kazakhstan companies to Canada for two weeks of technical, marketing and business training. Consilium designed and delivered training on Canadian business and marketing practices, and later evaluated the overall training program and equipment deployment in Kazakhstan.

With our training design and delivery specialist, Terry Rudden, Fred Weihs and I helped to pull together our part of the two-week training program for about eight participants. This included a presentation on customer service by my old friend Ian Brooks, who lives in Auckland, New Zealand and consults and speaks on this subject around the South Pacific, and happened to be in Canada at the time. It also included visits to Canadian banks in Ottawa and Montreal, presentations and discussions by banking representatives, a visit to Telesat’s Montreal satellite operations centre, as well as sessions by marketing specialists. The trainees were very interesting and interested in the subject matter, the Newbridge counterparts were fun to work with, and the two weeks in Canada culminated in a great party punctuated by lots of Russian caviar and vodka, and many toasts to everlasting friendship.

Almaty Central Mosque

Six months later Fred and I joined Newbridge staff, technical consultant Ross Cowan, and Russian translator Vladimir Privalov, and flew to Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, to meet up with the trainees and to review and evaluate the results of the training program and equipment deployment. This was the most interesting time of all, starting with the Marlboro and Camel billboard-lined highway in from the airport at 2 a.m., through all of the meetings, tours and other activities laid on by our hosts, to the final farewell party, which again featured lots of vodka and energetic toasts. Almaty was a fascinating city, a blend of age old markets and horse drawn vehicles, grim Soviet era buildings, exotic far Eastern architecture, little shops and roadside restaurants, and near the city, along the border with China, a mountain range we visited on one of the excursions organized for us.

Greg and Fred (not exactly as shown) at the Arasan Public Baths.

One of the highlights was a visit to the dome shaped Arasan Public Baths (Banya) complex with an ornate and elaborate Turkish bath, sauna, plunge pools and massage section that felt like something from the Arabian Nights. Following our guides, we stripped off our clothes and entered a large round chamber which centred around a slab of heated stone, upon which clients laid down to soak up the heat. Along the perimeter were a number of smaller rooms which held saunas of various temperatures, each one seemingly hotter than the next. On the opposite walls were arched niches for massages, and each of us was assigned a male masseur. I was lucky because mine was thin though energetic, while Fred’s was heavier; both proceeded to splash us with hot soapy water, and pummel and knead our whole bodies, culminating in them standing on and walking across our backs as we lay prone on the stone benches. It was partly invigorating, partly exhausting, and partly just plain bone crushing agony, but overall, a very memorable experience.

After a week or so, we left Almaty to return home to write our report - mission accomplished, bodies somewhat sore, generally a bit hung over, but satisfied with the whole experience, and sorry to say goodbye to our very welcoming hosts and former trainees.