Painted Red

This picture here is taken while waiting for the overnight train from Riga, Latvia to Moscow, Russia. We are at platform 9 and 3/4 :)

Ok, so my camera battery is dead and I am looking for a way to charge it. Therefore I am going to try to paint 1000 pretty Russian Red words.

Fragments

Like:

Russian letters.

Russian church.

Accents

Dislike:

Missing camera charger = lack of pictures

working on that one.

empoweRED

One thing is apparent when going through the streets of Moscow. There is a sense in which power is displayed. Buildings stand majestically adorned with statues. The statues that stand have a Che like manner in which they are timelessly looking to the horizon at a better tomorrow. In fact, there were a few youngsters that I saw that had on Che shirts. It seemed out of place to have an Argentinean revolutionary on their shirts given that they are an ocean apart, but yet the character of Che seemed to fit in. There are statues on what seems like every street corner. My assumption based on this observation is that Russians value power, and powerful leaders. There were many images of political leaders (Lenin and Stalin for example). My assumption was in a way confirmed, in a venue that I would not have otherwise expected.

Left: The hill of crosses in Lithuania. There are an estimated 50,000 crosses there. I think there must be like a million though.

Metaphors

Today in the Russian headquarters of IKEA we had the opportunity to hear from the HR director, Leif. In explaining the corporate culture of IKEA (a Swedish company) and the way in which it interacts with the local culture of Russia, Leif likened it to an onion. The outer layers of the onion are ones in which IKEA is willing to adapt to the local culture, but the core layers of the onion are ones into which the local employees are going to have to be acculturated. He noted that Russian employees want to have their careers on fast forward; they want to be CEO in six months. They want to climb the ladder to success. The trait is that Russians seek power. Although it is a broad generalization, it matches up with what I expected based on the statues.

What he called the trait specifically was “power distance.” This is the willingness of an individual or group to accept the unequal distribution of power. Russians have a tolerance for the power distance whereas the Swedes, and the IKEA culture, have a less rigid differentiation of power within the corporation. They like Americans, operate on a vertical structure. Leif stated that he thinks that there should be no “job descriptions.” He said that they are limiting. His statement reflects a highly group oriented person. I am interested in how culture and business are so connected.

The Golden Ticket

Along with IKEA, we also visited Mars Company. Mars is the chocolate producer who makes Snickers, Dove, and M&M’s. We got to go on a tour of the factory where they make M&M’s, Snickers and Twix bars. I soooo wanted to just grab a Snickers bar right off the line, or to take huge handfuls of the M&M’s and throw them up in the air, or to see an Oompa Loompa swimming in a chocolate river.

Aside from the tour we learned a lot about the history of the company and the vision and values of the company. I am finding out that the “big picture” aspects of the company are what interest me most. I like to be focused on the vision and mission statements and I generally think about the central purpose for something. At the same time, I have vague long-term goals but no long term plans of how to accomplish those goals. On the other hand, I like to find the treasures hidden in the monotony of everydayness. That said, I think this trip is helping me to know myself better.

Running

Russia was not the ideal place for running. The city was crowded with traffic and there is a good deal of crime, and we were supposed to carry our passports everywhere and it is probably not a good idea to get my passport all drenched in sweat. Given that I have no training partner, I stooped down to the level of running on a treadmill in the hotel. I was just glad to have the treadmills though. It allowed me to go running at night. It was the closest to having a training partner I have had in a while also. There were others from our group who were running on the treadmills also. Therefore I composed this poem:

Running is exploring.

Treadmills are boring.

All to look at is the screen showing miles traveled

When I can’t get outside my brain is unraveled.

On Sunday we attended a Russian Church. The church had some distinct differences between American churches. In the service, the pastor would start a prayer and then others from the congregation would join in. There was even a young kid who prayed for the whole church of 100 or so. There was an apparent generation gap. There were old women in the church and there were also younger married couples and kids. Conspicuous by there absence was the older men. They were not there.

When we were visiting IKEA Leif asked our group who we thought were better workers: Russian men or Russian women? The women are apparently better workers. They are more reliable. The men, he said, spend rather than save, and move to Siberia and become alcoholics. He said that it is not uncommon for there to be a 25 year old single mother working for the company. Something needs to be done to get the Russian save the Russian families and to bring the Russian men to Church.