100 Lemon Pharmacy in Saudi Arabia

Team 33 Poster

Team Reflection

Lemon Pharmacy Chain in Saudi Arabia has introduced a telehealth and online prescription management platform, which aligns with several Sustainable Development Goals, notably promoting Good Health and Well-being. This platform, inspired by their experience running a large vaccination center during the pandemic, offers convenient, sustainable medication delivery and supports women’s health and leadership in accordance with SDG 5 (Gender Equality). The program also backs SDG 4 (Quality Education) by providing training for the workforce and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) by creating new job opportunities through planned expansions. This platform has increased Lemon Pharmacy’s revenues, acquired many new clients, and improved employee morale through sustainability education. Enhancing healthcare accessibility for vulnerable populations is aided by the available service, which also reduces environmental impact through sustainable packaging and delivery. The strategy of Lemon Pharmacy shows how companies can address public health needs while also advancing sustainability and inclusivity. This new idea is a convincing example of how social impact can be integrated with business expansion, offering an optimistic view for the future of healthcare. Reflecting on the AIM2Flourish assignment for Lemon Pharmacy Chain inspired us to see how such a business could be committed to making a change in Saudi Arabia’s healthcare system. The collaboration with international students gave insight into diversified perspectives that improve the wealth of the project and let us appreciate different manners of problem-solving and innovation in diverse cultural settings. What really bonded this team together was possibly a common commitment to the attainment of SDGs, so to say. What really touched us was the story of how Lemon Pharmacy Chains project manager managed a vaccination center during COVID-19 and vaccinated over 40,000 people. His dedication during a challenging time and his recognition of the importance of community trust reinforced how important it is to prioritize empathy, resilience, and responsibility. This commitment to supporting the community and saving lives, really showed us how leadership could be truly transformational and called us to find work that contributed positively to society and aligns with wider sustainable goals.

This has irrevocably changed us and makes us more active in our pursuit of purpose-driven work. In our career trajectory and leadership approach, it has underlined the need to be empathetic, solve community-oriented problems, and be sustainable. We wish to instill these values in searching for opportunities that could help in innovating while answering the call of social and environmental challenges, whatever industry we venture into. This project really brought into focus the realization that success is not just in terms of profits but in terms of leaving footprints, which makes us more committed to becoming leaders who will look into the concerns of business and people alike.

Our courses provided a theoretical foundation that really enhanced our teamwork. Specifically, it taught us the importance of systems thinking, which we applied to understand the functioning of Lemon Pharmacy Chain’s innovation within Saudi Arabia’s broader healthcare, environmental, and socio-economic systems. Through our coursework, we gained insights into understanding of how social, economic, cultural and environmental factors are all connected, allowing us to analyze Lemon’s actions in a more comprehensive way. When it comes to working together, our conversations were enhanced by the different perspectives of each team member, drawing from what we learned in class and resulting in a comprehensive analysis. This encounter has strengthened our dedication to working together and upholding ethical standards as we move forward in our roles within the industry.

Concerning collaborative tasks and sharing our work, this was carried out through an organized division of tasks wherein each of the team members was given specific roles according to skills and interest areas. Some worked on the interview and information gathering, some worked on the story and organized all the information, some worked on the poster and how to present the story, and so on. Every week we had meetings where we presented updates to each other on what we did, what problems we encountered, and everything else to make sure we were heading towards the same goal. We used collaborative tools such as Zoom for meetings, Word for writing to ensure we were all on the same page and we talked through a whatsapp group chat daily to ensure our communication.

Moreover, regarding what worked well we believe regular catch-ups and open conversations to keep the team dynamic were key in our project distribution and we also think we succeeded in encouraging everyone to speak up and feel comfortable and free to share with the rest any possible ideas. We consider that the combination of all of our personal strengths helped us achieve quality results and that the cultural knowledge of one another while being comprehensive with the different ways we could each face the tasks made things much smoother.

On the other hand, with regards to what did not work we believe the main problem can be summed up in misinterpretations due to cultural differences that at the beginning led to some confusion in task execution. It was problematic coordinating meetings across the various time zones, causing scheduling problems to be dealt with. Apart from this, some members of the group also struggled to embark on completing the project, and this also affected the general pace of the project.

Nevertheless, as we said before we tried to be comprehensive and at the end we managed to achieve what in our opinion is a great final result and we are all pretty happy with the cross-cultural opportunity that we had with this project.

Individual Reflection

Alanoud

For me, This project pushed my adaptability and communication skills, as I had to overcome many obstacles. We had to overcome the challenge of both parties living in different time zones, which made scheduling meetings difficult. That meant shifting schedules around each other and sometimes late night or early morning conversations. I found that in some cases, the difference in communication style led to misunderstandings or misinterpretations. That required me to create the small habits of active attention and to articulate everything so that each person knew what was going on. Nevertheless, I had a lot of wins in spite of these challenges. We came from different backgrounds, which shaped our discussions and led us to creative solutions I might not have considered. This project was an avenue for me to improve upon my collaborative skills and develop problem-solving skills.

Nawal

For me, this experience was a very different and new experience. It was very nice and interesting to get to work with people from different countries. Experiences like this will help us in our future jobs and set some expectations for how it can be. Assigning the roles of each pair was easy, we were all very understanding and managed to divide the work between us. A few challenges I faced for the interview was getting the company’s permission and finding a time that both the interviewee and I were free to conduct the interview. Another challenge was the communication between the group members, sometimes some were unresponsive or answered late which led to a delay in a few tasks.

Andrew McClure

For me this experience was the first time that I have worked in a group setting with others from different countries around the globe. This was a unique and interesting experience meeting on zoom every week to communicate and organize different tasks among the group. Some challenges that came up were dealing with different time zones and figuring out a meeting time that works for everyone. There were also minor communication challenges with everyone being busy leading to some late responses and delayed tasks, however it all came together in the end. I feel that this experience will help me out in the future dealing with groups because you never know who you are going to be working with and I need to be prepared to make it work and finish the task at hand.

Laura Torres

Personally, I found this project a great opportunity to get used to how to communicate with people from different parts of the world and from different cultures as we might face these difficulties in our future jobs. Despite the fact that I do believe that cross-cultural dynamics such as this one are positive in our learning, we did face some challenges that hampered the progress of our project. The main difficulty was related to miscommunications due to our different cultures as we were all used to working in different ways and that led to different perspectives on how we should approach the project or when it was best to meet. I also believe that these miscommunications resulted in an unfair distribution of the tasks of the project and even though we did have a WhatsApp group chat through which we talked and organized each other some members of the group weren’t involved enough in the project which caused some members of the group to have to do more work than others. In spite of these challenges I am pretty happy with the final result of our project.

Paloma Gil

In my opinion, this experience, working with students from different countries, can help us be prepared for future difficulties or problems that one day in our future job, for example, could happen. For instance, in my experience, I believe that we did a good job. However, during the project there was some lack of communication or bad communication with some members of the group due to different time zones or different ways of working, leading to an unequal distribution of tasks. I think that we all did tasks, such as meeting synchronously all together and sharing our point of view, but some more than others, and this led to an unfair distribution of work. Nevertheless, I believe that our final work turned out to be pretty good.

Will Hall

I believe this was a different and original assignment that allowed us to meet new people from different cultures and with different perspectives to handle the project tasks. However, I found this way of working a little bit difficult when putting it into practice as I had trouble keeping up with the pace of the tasks. I couldn’t join several meetings so it was harder for me to be completely invested in the project and that led to other teammates doing my part of the job. Still, I am happy with the final group result.

REFERENCES

• Lemon Medical Company  https://lemon.sa/en/about_us#:~:text=The%20journey%20of%20Lemon%20Medical,the%20Kingdom%20of%20Saudi%20Arabia
• Lemon Pharmacy Chain. (2024, October 17). Interview insights on innovations and sustainable development goals.
• United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. United Nations. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld/publication
• World Health Organization. (2020). COVID-19 and the social determinants of health and health equity. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240038387