Signing off….

Well what a crazy 10 days it has been I can’t believe it is only 10 days since we launched the blog here at CIMB Aviva and made the final preparations for the trip to Portugal.  A lot has happened in that time: many ups and down, thousands of miles travelled, plenty of new friends made but amongst all that we achieved our real objective and have successfully put the CIMB Aviva flag onto Aviva’s map.

Now that the trip is over for me I have had a bit of time to reflect on the experience and these are some of my thoughts that come to mind in no particular order.

Adversity. As I described in an earlier blog our dress rehearsal with the production team did not go very well at all.  Actually the teams initial reaction was not  positive and a sense of irritation & frustration was clear when we had a de-brief session with Oliver and Sarah (management team in charge of customer cup).  I think in hindsight the team can now see that this was also a rehearsal for the production crew and since we were first up we were the team that felt the impact.  This didn’t last long though – once the debrief was over it was back to Yati’s room to sort it out.  Actually – they took all of the issues ie too much space, Yati’s clicker etc  and turned it to their advantage.  Yati Z. use the space to her advantage and added some comedy that wasn’t previously there and Intan ran the slides perfectly (if you remember she drove the slides during the dialogue session so she knew the flow better than anyone).  So more than just adaptability they took the adversity head on and actually benefitted from it!

The dress / production rehearsal

 

A slightly tense post dress rehearsal de-brief with Oliver and Sarah

Back to the room to make some adjustments.

Aviva. The team now have a great feel for Aviva and the Aviva family attitude it believes in.  The team have made a huge number of friends – collected many email addresses.  We need to find a way now of keeping this network alive.  The accessibility we have been given to Aviva’s senior executive is a real privilege and we owe it to them to continue to push our project forward, document it and share it with other interested parties.

Support, support, support.  Who would have thought that Simon’s catch phrase from ACT teambuilding would be so embedded one year later.  I don’t mean just the words – the real sense of support the team felt last week via the blog was fabulous. Just some stats (am I turning into Intan?) the blog was viewed over 3200 times and on one day (last Thursday) was viewed 768 times (and we have less than 400 members of staff!).  The individual comments you left became quite powerful as they added a some additional pressure & focus to the team – so for those of you who commented I think you can consider that you directly influenced the performance last week – thanks from the entire team!

Customer Cup 2010/2011.  The planning is underway for the next customer cup which will kick off in May 2010.  So any ideas that you have now for projects improving customer experience could be turned into a customer cup project.  The finals will again be held in Europe – final country is yet to be confirmed.  So first step is to identify some good project ideas – the RAC project was a big project and incredibly successful – so you need to think big.  Where we are lucky is that team infinity are now experienced and they know what is required to win this competition which will be a big advantage.  Hopefully we can spread some of this experience across a few different teams.  Also – it is very clear to me that this entire competition is linked to Six sigma and continuous improvement.  Most of the other teams and facilitators have Six Sigma experience.  The good news here is that the HR team are building a Six Sigma training programme so for any of you who are interested in Six Simga training & accreditation please let your line manager / HR know so that this can be planned.

EasyLife Takaful.  We are now all focusing on the implementation of EL Takaful for the end of Nov.  This is a huge deliverable I know but if we can continue to perform as a team we all know it is achievable – this is going to be another huge CA achievement and very important to our Q4 and 2010 performance.  It is also a unique product offering within Aviva which means we may have something here for a customer market segment in Aviva that wasn’t available before – therefore it also seems to me that it could be some sort of platform for the next customer cup….

Pride.  What I have strongly felt over the past week is a new sense of pride.  Yati ended the presentation with her pride, pride, pride line – describing the sense achieved by delivering the project & benefits.  The team chose to wear their CIMB Aviva shirts rather than costumes as they were proud to be on an Aviva platform. The other Aviva teams were open, friendly, welcoming and supportive of the CA team (as well as the other teams) and it did make me feel proud to be part of Aviva.  As a team we felt proud to be the most actively supported team by our colleagues back in KL (the Cust Cup team were surprised by our blog and linked it to the Aviva World site) and the management support we were receiving. For me a crowning moment was when Graham Boffey said it make him feel proud to work for Aviva when Infinity performed (he wouldn’t have known anything about CIMB Aviva before). This is the sort of environment I love working in!

Great fun off road with people form across Aviva group – despite the weather!

 

Most westerly point of Europe – and very very windy

Oliver asking if they could link to our blog from Aviva World (shown)

So, that’s it from me.  I have really enjoyed this past week, enjoyed this blog and all of the fun that has gone with it and of course your input.  Perhaps we should do another one sometime….. I will now hand over to the rest of the infinity team to be your eyes, ears and voice as they continue their adventures across Europe.

Andy

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