The father, son and the Holy Geordie

Having spent my professional career to date working for Ernst & Young (one of the big four accountancy firms for those of you who may not know us, not to be confused with the jeweller Ernest Jones) in the North East of England it is quite a departure to working for a Christian mission led NGO Hospital in Africa and as such I am finding myself exposed to a whole new set of challenges and experiences.

One of the most obvious differences is the composition of senior staff as whilst typically I find myself interacting with Finance Directors and Controllers, CEO’s, owner/managers of small businesses etc here the composition of the senior team is quite different.

I was invited to attend the weekly management meeting early in the week where I was joined by the Executive Director of the hospital, the Matron, the Medical Director, the physiotherapist and the Spiritual Director, a Malawian pastor.

Whilst at first this composition seemed highly unusual what was clearly in evidence was that such a diverse mix brought a great deal of balance to proceedings, offering a variety of unique viewpoints that captured the cultural, ethical, operational and pragmatic organisation needs of such an entity.

The breadth of discussion was vast and the differing opinions led to a good level of challenge and debate. Equally interesting was the diversity of agenda items that we discussed, and without giving away any confidential information that would have my Director of Risk Management placing a collect call to Malawi I imagine it will be the first and last time that I will see “Christmas party” and “Funeral policy” on the same agenda.

Consequently I am being required to understand a set of business needs that are far from conventional.

However, the most unusual thing about these meetings, and indeed all meetings held in the hospital are that they are opened and closed with a prayer to bless the meeting and the participants.

Religion is prevalent in the hospital with most of the staff and patients being practicing Christians, as are around 80% of the Malawian population.

It’s fair to say that I’m not exactly a very good Christian. In fact, if I am a Christian then I’m probably a rubbish one, and seeing that I have to ask “if” I am a Christian there perhaps isn’t much hope for me on this one.

So far though I’ve made an effort to get involved and everyone has made an effort with me. Each morning starts with a 30 minute departmental meeting which is Christianity focused either in the form of prayer, readings or bible study classes.

I joined the bible study class on Wednesday at the invitation of the finance team where we debated whether being wealthy resulted in becoming detached from God. It was fair to say that I was like a lamb to the slaughter (although feel free to accuse me of mixing my religious metaphors at this point).

Now I’m not wealthy. In fact I have debts that would scare a small country but considering that the average monthly wage of a nurse in Malawi is around £120 it is quite hard for locals not to think that I do okay for myself.

As a result I found myself serving as a case study whilst the link between my lack of religion and my comparative wealth was explored, a uniquely uncomfortable situation.

Most people however were very open-minded to my contributions, as limited as they were, and it is this state of openness to the ideas of others that is required most of the time here and quite often it can lead to interesting ideas.

Every Tuesday each of the departments take it in turn to host a meeting which brings the whole of the hospital together. The executive director takes the opportunity to share some announcements but the majority of the meeting is turned over to prayer, song and dance.

The pastor and various members of staff read passages from the bible, prayers were said for those sitting their doctors’ exams and there was enough singing and dancing to make a man who is as rhythmically challenged as he is religiously challenged wonder quite what he had let himself in for.

All of these activities are linked back to events in the hospital throughout. All singing and dancing aside there was definitely one thing I feel I can learn from this experience, that being the positive sense of teaming that was generated by getting everyone together, refreshing minds about the shared beliefs, goals and aspirations and sharing frustrations and solutions.

As I mentioned above the various teams within the organisation are diverse and often function quite independent of one another and yet as we left the meeting there no doubt that everyone was convinced that they were contributing positively to the organisation and working with the same purpose.

So when I get back to Newcastle and am working with my teams I am going to give it a go more often. Not the religious service piece and certainly not the singing and dancing (unless the team really wants to) but taking the opportunity on a more regular basis to get the team together at the start of the day or week, even if only for five or ten minutes to capture the mood and remind ourselves of what and why we are doing what we do.

It remains to be seen whether such comparisons can be made between carrying out an audit or piece of tax planning advice and that of performing great work to improve the lives of disabled children in the name of God.

If that idea doesn’t work for you let me leave you with one piece of advice that you will definitely find useful…

If you find yourself, as I did, in a very religious environment just hang in there until it comes to the prayers.

As a non-religious person I tend not to participate in the prayers and instead pass the time looking for the one person who, whilst everyone else has closed their eyes and are saying their prayers, they are looking around the room, eyes wide open and not a thought for the words they are supposed to be saying.

There is always at least one and they are always very taken aback when they see that you’ve spotted them – particularly when they are the person who spent the last 30 minutes chastising you for how your comparative wealth has led to a lack of religious belief!

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