Unexpected business trip to Europe #6

“Gosh! It’s gone! My laptop’s gone!”

These were the words that burst from the mouth of senior sales manager Mr. K, as soon as he opened his briefcase.

For the moment, everyone in the client’s meeting room were simply speechless, while they all were staring Mr. K who’s feverishly searching his laptop inside his briefcase.

However, as one would expect from the experienced Mr. K, he had diligently printed all the slide deck data in his laptop onto paper and brought it with him, despite having lost his laptop. Using paper-based design drawings, he proceeded to explain everything fluently and eloquently, from the acoustic semi-anechoic chamber specifications for delivering Sonora Technology’s manufactured products to the client’s site, to the construction work for the pits within their factory.

Despite being significantly late for the meeting and losing his laptop, he handled the client interaction flawlessly in a foreign country. This demonstrated his ability to anticipate and respond to any eventuality; a skill honed through his years of experience. I was very impressed by his confident behavior and attitude.

Especially when travelling abroad, there is always a risk that your checked-in luggage may be lost or arrive days after you reach your destination. In the worst case, your luggage may go missing entirely.

During my previous consultancy assignment, when I first visited a company in Helsingborg, southern Sweden, all the other Japanese business partners travelled via Stockholm, but I travelled via Copenhagen. As a result, everyone except me had lost their luggage unfortunately. As we had planned to visit multiple local companies and had divided the gifts among ourselves, I managed to get through the first day’s meetings using the gifts I had brought with me. This taught me that splitting up the journey can sometimes help to avoid any of risk.

It is too late to scramble for solutions once an issue has arisen. Therefore, one of the most important essences of business is to anticipate risks and act accordingly.

As we only had a limited evening slot on the first day of our visit to the the outskirts of Prague, the detailed discussions and factory tour were postponed until the following day.

That evening, we returned to the hotel and ate at a nearby cozy restaurant serving traditional Czech food.

As you can see in a picture at the beginning of this article, having tasty schnitzel and Czech beer, we held a small debriefing session with the sales manager during our dinner.

However, our minds were totally preoccupied with only one question:

“Where on earth had the laptop been lost?”

After retracking our movements since leaving Haneda Airport, we concluded that it was most likely lost at the luggage security checkpoint in Vienna Airport.

< to be continued…>