Placement report: Gericke Group 2019

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Placement report: Gericke Group 2019

A placement report detailing the IPE master placement of Sake Padt at Gericke

Group in Zurich.

Author: Sake Padt

Student number: s2555662 Phone number: +31631530067

Placement contact Gericke: Markus Gericke CEO Placement counselor: Bastiaan Aardema

International Relations, track: International Political Economy Placement period: May 24th – August 24th 2019

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Introduction

One of the bigger passions that I developed during both my bachelor International Relations

International organization and my master International political economy is for the way

organizations can entice people to communicate in a certain way. Such a situation becomes

even more interesting for me when it involves actors setting policy goals and subsequently

acting in a manner contrary to these goals. In particular I enjoy finding the approaches that

can correct such behavior. To large extent, my bachelor and master thesis followed a similar

frame of analyses. Furthermore, I always regarded the cultural, legal and organizational

barriers in place between countries as the more clearly defined causes of such distortions

between intent and outcome. As such, it may not come as a surprise that already during my

bachelor I was very interested in experiencing this challenge myself, as I decided I wanted to

do an internship abroad. Sadly I was not able to find a suitable internship position during my

bachelor, however, as the reader of this report may already be able to deduce, this year, I

succeeded. The following chapters will provide a brief overview of my experience as an

intern at Gericke Group in Zurich.

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Before:

Why this placement and how I got here

Finding an internship is not easy, although I suspect my road might have been a bit harder than normal. Already during my bachelor I had send a number of letters to especially embassies, because they had some of the most readily available positions. To no avail however, and after a while I let go of that plan. During my master I gave it another try and in the end it took me about 40 letters.

I did however maintain some restrictions, in particular for positions abroad I needed some kind of compensation, and I tried to get selected in particular for positions involving private organizations, because they seemed more fun (although I did apply to plenty of public ones). The reason for this is the fact that I suspected the pressure for results would be higher at private organizations. Furthermore, I consider myself a commercially minded person and as such, like to quantify results in money made ore lost.

Ironically enough, after having sent this large amount of letters I ended up accepted at two and had to make a choice. The choice was between Samenwerkingsverband Noord Nederland (SNN) and Gericke. Gericke in this case, offered the more interesting project.

In particular, my father who also worked at Gericke mentioned how this multinational suffered very significant losses in large part due to the different Gericke subsidiaries having trouble effectively sharing information. In very practical terms, products no longer being produced at the factory where still being sold by some of the sales people, while in another situation, one subsidiary doing business with a multinational was not aware another Gericke subsidiary was doing the same thing. This behavior was costing allot of money and it gave me the idea that I, with some time and study, might be able to offer some solutions. Thus I decided to write the CEO and with the help of my father was able to arrange a video interview with him.

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5 | P a g e During this interview we discussed the communicative challenge Gericke was facing and a method with which to analyze this challenge. Given that SNN was unable to provide me with a description of a project, I decided to pick Gericke. Finally, some other facts that helped sway my preference strongly in favor of Gericke where: the fact that Gericke offered the more significant compensation of 500 euros p/m compared to 300 with SNN and the fact that Gericke was actually abroad, while SNN is located in Groningen.

Expectations and preparations

To be honest, I did not know what to expect, I did not know of any similar internships or people that might have done an internship at Gericke before me. As such I decided to just go with the flow. Furthermore I already had plenty of stress trying to arrange a place to stay in Zurich. My boss Markus had said he would see if we might be able to arrange something via the company and my father also reached out through colleagues. Meanwhile I searched the internet for the regular rooms offered in the area and even made a couch surfing account for the worst case scenario. For those interested in doing an internship or living in Zurich, you do well to know that single rooms start at 1000 CHF. You may be able to imagine how lucky I felt when I heard from my father that he had found a colleague who offered a small apartment for 900 CHF. The only catch was that it was built into/as a part of an elderly couple’s home, thus limiting my privacy a bit.

Regarding my assignment I did take some extra preparations, for one, I borrowed a bunch of books on knowledge management and communication in businesses from the library and took those with me to Switzerland. While for another thing I decided to study the organization of Gericke, its products and company culture as much as possible via the website and the information available.

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During:

About Gericke group

Gericke is a Swiss machine builder that designs and builds installations for factories. It was founded in 1894 as a mill builder, but has since grown to include a wide group of powder handling appliances, from mixing, to feeding, to pneumatic transport, to size reduction. These machines are constructed and tested on three production locations. The main production location is in Zurich Switzerland, this is also where I was stationed. But there are also production locations in Singapore and the United Kingdom. Furthermore Gericke maintained sales and engineering offices in Brazil, the US, China, Germany, France and the Netherlands. Gericke machines are found in production lines in a wide variety of branches such as food, pharma and, plastics. Some of its better known customers are Nestle, Friesland Campina and, Mars.

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My tasks

At the start of the placement the idea was to do two projects, first the internal communication project described above and afterwards possibly a market study for Iran, however due to the first project taking more time and the situation in Iran deteriorating, this second project was postponed.

My project was officiously known as the knowledge management project, the goal of this project was to make internal Gericke knowledge sharing, best practice sharing and, communication more effective. As mentioned in the introduction, mistakes slipping in because of poor communication were costing a lot of money.

My first task was to attend a number of meetings and develop an idea of the Gericke company culture. Furthermore I was provided with the literature on knowledge management that Gericke had already expressed some interest in. Based on this information I was tasked with developing a theoretical background to Knowledge management at Gericke.

In parallel with these tasks I was asked to set up a questionnaire and conduct a series of interviews throughout the company. First I interviewed all the general managers of the Gericke group member companies. Second, I interviewed the product managers, followed by the sales staff, engineers and administrative staff.

The data collected in these interviews was combined and presented to Markus. A number of bottlenecks where discovered and my third task became developing a number of suggestions that may mitigate these bottlenecks. Again these results were presented and I received my fourth and for now final task, which consisted of developing an ideal knowledge manager model for Gericke.

This task too was completed and all of this information was combined by me in a report, which was presented to the board of directors of Gericke AG. The report was well received, I was given praise and various attendees where supporting my conclusions with further arguments of their own. As you

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8 | P a g e may be able to imagine I was very proud. Afterwards it was decided that the knowledge manager function I had proposed was during the next meeting in October. Meanwhile I was given the task of briefly working out the details necessary for this job, which I did during the last couple of days.

Structure of my day

My alarm would go off about a quarter past 7. I would have breakfast, shower and be ready to go just a bit after 8. Then I would go to my work by mountain bike. Due to living on a hill this would always be a very pleasant ride, although back up would be a bit more challenging. Somewhere, a quarter past 8, I would be at my job. There was however, little focus on being on time at this company. As such, some of my colleagues would show up as late as 9:30.

I would work until 12:15 at which point there would be a large lunch break with a full diner meal being served. This was great since it allowed me to cut budget on my dinner at home. I would get back to work around 12:45 and then work until 17:30, although I would sometimes go on until after 6 if I was having a good day.

My daily tasks meanwhile consisted of: reading literature provided, digging through the vast company library to find out what kind of knowledge structure they used, conducting one hour interviews with employees, both in Zurich and via skype elsewhere, transcribing said interviews and, partaking in meetings. Finally every now and then if my colleagues were in a pinch, I would help them out.

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My contribution

My primary contribution to Gericke was the knowledge management report. This 61 page report contains a summary of the interview results, including an interpretative analyses and a theoretical review. Furthermore as a result of this study I was able to provide Gericke with a document listing a large number of company policy changes that would facilitate a more efficient communication and knowledge culture at Gericke. Finally I used these suggestions to develop an ideal knowledge manager model and a knowledge manager position for Gericke. These results where then successfully presented to the board of directors and they agreed to institute the position of knowledge manager during the coming year.

Guidance and support

To be honest, I find this topic difficult to judge. My direct colleagues were beyond helpful and friendly. They often went out of their way to include me in activities, invite me to company events and after work drinks. Various colleagues even invited me to come to parties with them. Furthermore I could always ask them anything on the office floor. This description also applies to my boss Markus, he provided me with all the information of the company I needed and I had frequent meetings with him. At the same time, the project related meetings where very businesslike. I got an assignment, I did that, provided my advice, received some further questions and additional feedback on what might also be interesting to look at and at the end Markus was very happy with the result. What I am trying to say is, I am not sure how intensive guidance should be and sometimes I had the feeling I was just winging it.

In the end however, the company was happy with my results and I felt like I learned a lot. Personally I have a rather independent working attitude. Since I was also able to apply this at Gericke, the guidance provided worked for me. In general however, my guess would be that the most important lessons are to simply ask when you want or need to learn something, because other people will not sense that for you.

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Living in Zurich

So Zurich is the third most expensive city in the world. This should not surprise anyone given that I mentioned rent being 1000 CHF a month. A big tasty at McDonalds here costs 9 CHF for only the burger, you won’t find meat for less than 3.3 CHF and a beer costs 7 CHF for half a liter. Zurich is expensive, luckily for me however, I am the kind of student that knows how to live very cheap and since my work provided me with a full evening meal for free during the lunch, I did not have to worry about going hungry either.

Furthermore, greatly compensating for this is the fact that the Swiss are very hospitable; I borrowed the bike from my landlord for my entire stay, allowing me some mobility and my colleagues often payed for beers or took me out for trips to the old city and even the shooting range. On my own time meanwhile I did allot of mountain biking, often taking off and spending half the day on my bike exploring the hills.

It is important however to speak some German, since there are plenty of people who don’t feel confident speaking English with you.

The learning process

When I set out on this internship I had the following learning goals:

 Developing a more hands on understanding of the internal challenges facing a multinational  Developing a better understanding of facilitating skill sharing and cooperation across borders

and in different cultural settings.

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11 | P a g e After my internship I can confidently state that I most certainly succeeded at these. The most surprising answer to the first one, at least to me, was how long serving, highly capable employees develop odd habits that they refuse to change. However, I also learned that if you allow people to reflect on their own situation from a third person point of view and present a solution as something they came up with, then that such a solution will be received much better.

The second problem remains difficult to tackle. People tend to be very much locked into their own cultural framework. Regarding Gericke in particular there was a very strong core periphery at play between the European branches and the rest of the world. One would expect less of this since the Gericke group is much more a group with Switzerland as primus inter pares than a top down organization.

The main recommendations I promoted to tackle this challenge was increased horizontal cooperation. By having more shared projects with lower level engineers from different branches it is my conviction that more mutual understanding, familiarity and a common working approach can be developed. This is especially necessary as currently only the top management have some form of regular interaction. Non-management personal only cooperate when it’s already essential that it goes well, leading to an ‘’us vs them’’ atmosphere.

Regarding this third learning point, I would argue the paragraph above, to some extent, already stands testament to this growing understanding. However, I can also add to that the more widely used problem of the commons, which can be observed throughout all the layers of Gericke. There exist for example a number of databases for the Gericke group, with information about past projects. Now almost all employees complain that these databases are not filled in properly, while downright refusing to fill in their own part as well. Furthermore there was a very strong tension between the European core of Gericke and the periphery in Asia and the Americas, where in the latter employees Europeans argued did not listen to them, while the European argued the periphery never wanted to

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12 | P a g e share their ideas. As you may be able to imagine, both are likely true as the idea of these situations being as they are create a self-fulfilling policy.

Have provided this small exposition above, it should also be clear why international relations can and should play a major role in the way multinationals are organized. The tragedy of the commons is a returning problem between departments and even more so between different offices around the world. Combine that with the cultural barriers and an us vs them attitude and one will easily understand why projects being handed over between different Gericke locations often experienced expensive mistakes.

As frustrating as problems such as the ones described above can be, I was pleasantly surprised with their existence, and to my enjoyment had a lot of fun working with them. The importance of International political economy and IR in general can therefore not be overstated for this internship. What I ended up recommending, for a large part, where measures that increase low level interaction between employees of different Gericke locations and departments, annual skype meetings and shared projects. These interactions cultivate shared familiarity and shared experiences, while also allowing for best practice exchanges.

Finally, on a more personal level, I feel like I became much more aware of the importance of taking your time when you want to spell out an idea to someone. It remains difficult for me not to verbally run away with an argument. It is however, very important when someone else did not read as much about a topic as you did, to effectively walk them through. I am convinced this is a point on which I still can learn a lot.

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After:

Career prospects

I had great fun at Gericke, my colleagues are amazing and more importantly I found a lot of joy in the work I do here. If I would not have had the friends and family in the Netherlands there is a chance I would have seen myself work here. For now however, 3 months away from the people I love is plenty long and I am very happy to be going home again. In either case, I developed quite some respect for the diplomats and permanent expats that stay abroad for years and I am certain, I have no desire to emulate that lifestyle.

Luckily for me however, this is not a choice I would have to make right now, because Gericke has no position for me available on the long term. As such I will simply go and look for work again when I come back to the Netherlands.

Tips for future students

- Be interested in the things/work other people are passionate about; it’s a great way to learn things for free and make friends on the way. Even if you think it won’t be relevant for you, there is a very good chance you end up surprising yourself.

- The only opinion that matters is that of your boss, even more important than your own. - Do what you do with excellence and aim to be efficient for yourself, but don’t expect praise

of your coworkers or others.

- If you go to Switzerland, try to speak some German, it will greatly improve your social live. - Always figure out who the people going for drinks on Friday are, this is the best place for

learning about the company.

- Once you know who they are, join them, people always like it when others joint them for beers.

- Always be to the point, people like that. Don’t do too much theory, unless it really helps your argument.

- If someone offers you an opportunity to not sit at home and do nothing, take it. Actively try to get out of your comfort zone; abroad this is much more important than at home.

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Concluding

This internship was an amazing experience for me. I learned a lot about Swiss culture, working in the office of a multinational fabrication company and about myself. Sometimes my days looked a bit like the sitcom The Office and other days I spend whole Saturdays with some of my favorite colleagues working in the office on wat we wanted. I made a great amount of friends that I will definitely be visiting in the future.

Moreover, because of all these circumstances I was able to make a very valuable contribution to the company. The appreciation I was shown for my insight and the thrill of discussing these ideas with the top management has greatly strengthen my confidence. I can only hope more exciting adventures such as these lie in my future.

Placement report: Gericke Group 2019