Day 4 in Havana

Buenos Dias! Today was our fifth day in Cuba and our fourth full day of content. Our days always start with a lovely breakfast provided by our host families. Mine specifically included some fresh guava juice, sliced pineapple, diced papaya, toast, eggs, ham, cheese, and the best coffee around!

The content for the day started at CIPS with a lecture from Professor Juan Triana from the Centro de Estudios, De la Economia Cubana, on Cuban economics. The economics lecture not only gave historical context around economic policy but also a glimpse into the Cuban open economy. One startling fact we learned was around the sugar production and the fact that Cuba imports sugar as they have not been able to produce the volumes they would like. The decrease in both sugar production and tourism has drastically hurt the Cuban economy. Learning ways to modernize sugar production and hopefully increase tourism (especially from the United States) is crucial to Cuba’s survival.

After our lecture we had our first full class session where we were able to digest, reflect and share our thoughts on what we had experienced and learned over the past few days. Some key leadership insights and themes emerged. We are continually reminded of the resiliency of the Cuban people. The human impact of leadership decisions made outside of Cuba are very real and evident here in Cuba, we are very aware of this now. We are also reminded we need to stop trying to put everything in neat little boxes or giving everything one specific identity – there is not just one perspective or one answer, in fact there are many, we need to remember to not take something complex and force it into a simple box. Professor Radd reminded us of a mental model image we learned about of an elephant, when you can only see one section of the elephant, for example the leg, you may see it as a tree trunk. You need to step back and see the entire object to see it is actually an elephant. We are only still learning and seeing small pieces of the Cuban perspectives and we are continuing to put together all our learnings to create a more complete narrative.

After class we had another amazing lunch, this time at Café Laurent. One of the owners shared with us the new enterprise model of multiple owners being able to share in ownership together and form a partnership. This new enterprise system allows them to share in the decision-making processes together, import/export without government assistance and employ different amounts of workers. This new model is very good for business owners to be successful in Cuba.