“Don’t say no problem when you have a problem” says Mr. Todd (My name is Todd but they call me Toad) to Mr. Puru in the film “Outsourced”. The point is both Todd and Puru were confused with each other’s attitude at that.
I meet many people and manage many people in my profession. People across cultures. Varying skin colors. Different languages. The variety makes it interesting and challenging. I have to switch quickly from the demanding American to methodical Swiss to laid back English to machine like German to cunning Korean to innocent Malaysians to arrogant Middle East to systematic Chinese to dedicated Japanese. All in a single day. The width is challenging. The same words and deeds mean different to each one.
I once had a meeting with a Swiss customer in my office’s Swiss branch. In fact, they have orally agreed to buy the software from my company and I have gone there to negotiate and finalise the contract. During a break I took the chief negotiator from the customer side to the pantry for a coffee. He put the coffee mug in the machine and pressed the appropriate buttons in the machine for his coffee. The machine started grinding the beans, then added hot water and milk. And it took some time. While the machine was trying to come up with a good coffee, he asked me whether my company wrote the software for that machine. I asked why. He smiled and said it takes so much time to deliver. I also joined the fun and said that we did not write that software. Had we written the software it will work faster but it would have delivered tea instead of coffee. He put the final nail by saying he can live with that if it consistently delivers the wrong one. That sums up.
Once I went to Tokyo for some business discussions with some new prospects. That was my first trip to Japan and I did not know much about their culture. Usually I research a bit on a country I visit first time but I could not do so this time since I was quite busy before the visit. I had a long meeting with a prospect. Finally I summed up the points and told them that I will get back to them on certain points soon. I left the meeting with the feeling that the deal was in my pocket since the meeting went on so well. But it went cold. I later found through another person, a Japanese, that they did not take me as committed since I did not tell them when I will get back to them. He further told me that I should always tell a date and it should be delivered at the start of the day on that date. Otherwise it will upset their system since they would have planned their day around that. Tell this to an Indian. See how he is baffled. For us, a date is just a date. If we say delivery on 20th it means that we intend to deliver on 20th and will take steps to do so. It is not a commitment. It is only an intention. Also the 20th is valid till midnight of 20th. Isn’t? It does not seem so in Japan.
We, Indians, tend to say "No problem" when we have a problem as Puru in Outsourced does. It usually puts many other cultures in a dizzy. We, Indians, usually find a way out of everything. No one can explain how. But we do. You need to have only the will. But other cultures demand the means. They want to know how. The truth is we do not know how when we start. But we will find out on the way. There are two ways to look at it. One way to look at it is, not having a clear plan and method before starting is inviting disaster. The other way to look at it is, if you have clear plans and methods then it kills creativity. The creativity thrives in the shades of grey. We, Indians, excel in grey. It helps us to cover up our mistakes, cover up our lack of knowledge but helps us to experiment. We love to experiment. We love to experiment even in important functions. We love to take risks. We take risks in everything without a Plan B. We take risks with arranged marriage, we take risks with the company we choose to join, we take risks with selecting our governments, and we take risks with everything. We do not fear the failures. We extend that in business interactions also and there the problems start. It all starts in the way of life. In India, we are used to chaos. We do not mind. In fact, we will be surprised if everything goes as per plan, if you have a plan in the first place. We grew up like that.
It is common knowledge that you can set your watch when the Swiss train arrives. In that country everything works on time. The entire country itself is a huge precision clock. And it works that way. They are used to the predictability. In the absence of predictability, they get tense. Contrast this with the environment, in which every Indian grew and is living. Nothing is predictable. If it works fine, if it does not work it is still fine. Don't you know the famous joke about the train which come exactly on time but turned out to be the previous day's train? We have accepted that for long. We will accept for some more time to come. It takes time. But should it be like this? In a purist view, it shouldn’t. But the reality is always opposite.
The problem is acute in business. We have people working in Indian companies who grew up in India like this. It is difficult for them to align. They will take some time. A person who was employed by an Indian company is recruited for the skill he possesses and not for the expertise in understanding the other cultures. It is only a secondary skill. Indian companies who do business with other cultures invest heavily on training people on these skills and expectations. But will the training alone produce the result. Will training worth a week’s time replace the thinking and habit of hundreds of years? I doubt.
In business parlance, people have started calling the vendors as partners. It is intended to create a situation where both parties work in the interest of the common goal and help each other. It means they are going to work together. So let them learn the way of each other. Let the Indian learn the ways of their customer’s culture and let the customer learn the Indian way of doing things. It works. When a foreign company comes to India to sell their product, they learn the Indian way quickly but they don’t when they come to buy Indian product or service. It baffles me.
There is a software company, which is doing plenty of business in the west. Most of their employees have worked in projects in the west. They all have good exposure to the western world and their way of doing things. In fact, many of them have lived in the western world for some considerable time. This company has branches in many Indian cities and this function happened in Chennai where their office is located outside the city. The government has built a new highway in that route since there were many IT companies in that road and named it as IT Highway. But the road to that place runs through some villages and hence like any road through villages there are lot of cows in the street. They just laze around and the heavy traffic generally suffers because of that. Many people felt it a big nuisance. In that function, the Minister of IT was the chief guest and a question – answer session was in the agenda. There were many questions on the government’s policy and plans of supporting the industry. There was one specific question which touched upon the issue of the cows on the road. One employee asked the minister what he is going to do about the cows. The minister promptly answered “The cows were roaming in these streets for hundreds of years. We came here only 10 years back”
That raises a simple question. Should the country change dramatically the way it had been living for hundreds of years for the sake of the business with other cultures? Should a billion people change for the few billion dollars? That’s the billion dollar question. Literally.
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