This is an email written by Kelly 5/19/02.
I'm writing my friends to tell them what I'm doing at work. It's about all I can write about because it's about all I do here. But it is not boring. I'm an internal consultant in a corporate / country culture where it's hard to accomplish non-routine things. The Indonesians are good at doing repetitive things, like operating a machine or answering the phone. But when special projects need performed, most of them just keep operating the machine or answering the phone and don't get it done.

I'm still training longhole drillers to operate million dollar drills. These electric hydraulic drills bore 100 foot long holes underground, at just the right location, angle and length so that explosives can be loaded in the holes to crack the rock in the construction of a self-collapsing block cave. I work with a Canadian drilling specialist who speaks no Indonesian. We develop classroom and field training to teach Indonesians how to set up the drills, apply just the right combinations of feed, rotation and percussion to the drill bits while monitoring pressures and temperatures. Small operator oversights frequently lead to tens of thousands of dollars of damage to the drills. Well-trained operators can drill three times as far in a day as the usual dummy. Improperly placed, crooked holes can produce bus-sized boulders that obstruct the cave and take weeks to break at substantial safety risk to the boulder bombers. And we're drilling into literally billions of dollars of gold and copper. So the training is well worth the trouble. Our drillers productivity is up 23% since we started five months ago. Mostly what I do personally is 1) re-write all training materials into words and sentences that can easily translate into Indonesian; 2) delegate work assignments among Indonesian mining engineers; 3) run team meetings to report drilling problems and agree upon who will do what to solve them. I'll finish this by July. I've also planned, organized and kicked off a similar project for Jumbo drillers who drill access tunnels rather than drill and blast into the mother lode.

I'm doing a systems project. Freeport hired Accenture to develop a Web-based employee business expense reporting system. Now, instead of filling out a paper report, you just key in your travel, meals, lodging, etc. and the Accounts Payable system direct deposits your reimbursement. I designed and am delivering the user (employee) training and monitoring the downstream processing to make sure reimbursements are handled accurately and promptly. It's high profile because most of the volume comes from executives and screwing up their reimbursements can be a career-limiting move. Becky is helping on a volunteer basis.

Freeport re-designed its job levels and salary grades. I helped write a presentation to 1500 managers to explain the change, then trained the presenters to deliver the presentation and respond to employee questions and complaints.

I designed a one day Customer Service workshop to teach employees how to treat the people they serve as if they were customers. Lots of role plays and case studies. I trained nine facilitators to deliver the workshop to groups of twelve, ran five of the workshops and continue to monitor and adjust the curriculum and presentation quality.

The easy, fun job I have is building the new hire orientation program. Before this program, new employees came here, filled out their employment paperwork, sat through a one hour safety lecture and got sent off to the mine. I've written a four hour presentation that takes them through the history of the company, mission, philosophy, finances, mining process, corporate culture, ethnic cultures and daily living questions. They get to handle ore and concentrated gold and copper. They get introduced to a concierge service that helps them do things like get a telephone, email account, bank account, drivers license, etc. Why they waited 29 years to do this is beyond me; too busy trying to rush the gold out of the mountain and into their pockets before the government collapsed, I guess.

Another fun one I'm just now starting is developing a one day cultural diversity workshop for all new employees. I can mostly borrow this curriculum from other companies. Introduce people to the dimensions of culture: collectivism, time orientation (future versus present or past), fatalism versus destiny determiners, direct versus indirect communication, confronting versus avoiding conflict, etc. The idea is to help the Indonesians understand how and why the Westerners act and think the way they do, and vice versa. Papuans will get a chance to put on skits pretending they're Americans and so on.

I've developed and occasionally deliver a facilitator skills workshop. Indonesians tend to deliver lectures rather than lead discussions when training. I'm trying to teach them how to run training courses by making the participants do most of the talking rather than the instructor.

I'm also the e-mail cop. I've delivered a courtroom skit to 250 people where we convict people of e-mail crimes. I've written do's and don'ts for e-mail use and distributed them. I've got people reprimanding each other for sending long, unnecessary, poorly written e-mails.

I've written a business plan for developing an internal change management consulting practice and am recruiting Indonesians to join it. I'm writing the questions for a Jeopardy game that all managers must play to learn how to write effective performance evaluations. I'm putting together outdoor experiential games for delivery to a company-wide leadership development program. I'm just now starting the Word Of The Day club, where expatriate graduates of Freeport's Indonesia language training each day receive an e-mail containing a digitized voice file of me pronouncing and translating a single word of value in business conversation, like in my opinion, I'll try my best, etc.

Pretty much easy, fun stuff. It's too bad they have to bring someone from half-way around the world to do it. And there's too much of it to do.