This is an interesting and very timely mini-treatise.

I run the Indian operations of a UK-based publishing company. I regularly witness the types of behaviours that you are alluding to in your first two points. What often frustrates my UK colleagues about their Indian colleagues is that we are usually not upfront about what we think. There's often a lot of back tracking that takes place along the lines of 'I didn't mean this or that' or 'I hadn't thought of this or that' or worse still, 'I had thought of this or that but I did not want to say that during our meeting'. This sort of behaviour makes any planned meetings almost useless. People walk away with an 'agreement' only to find out people did not say what they meant.

Much of this is due to lack of forward planning, thinking, and articulation, all of which is hard work which many of us are not really prepared to do; much of our thinking is ad-hoc. We are also easily offended by criticism, something a lot of westerneres view as a tool to improve work quality. There is also a major obstacle for an Indian professional in the context of today's business environment - we really do not have a concept of individual liability; we still work on the principle of collective responsibility (which really doesn't exist)!

I would be interested to know what efforts are being made in a corporation such as M&M to make locals more receptive to criticism and the idea of individual responsibilty.

Regards,

Vijay Tase

The Cappuccino Trend may be new to India but it has always exited in middle east Asian countries in 70 and 80's.The migrant population is almost close to 50% in countries like Singapore, Malaysia & Indonesia . This brings people with diverse skills, expertise, cultures & values together and the outcomes are fabulous . India being the land of opportunities has of late started attracting westerners, Americans and Europeans in diverse fields . As stated by Ms.Molly ,these people come from different educational background and disciplines & their approach to business & profession are diverse from the way we do our business . For eg They are very punctual with targets & deadlines , more systematic & focused etc. we should try emulate these qualities from them rather then teaching them our qualities.

The Cappuccino Trend is here to stay for long time to come and it is in our hand to take advantage of it and make it huge success

Hi Vijay,

Thanks for your thoughtful response. It's very interesting to hear your perspective from the opposite angle, which seems to be very much in line with mine.

One objective of Mahindra's global recruitment initiative is just what you mention in your final question. The programme intends to expose Mahindra employees to the professional style and working habits of Americans and encourage both sides to adapt to the practices of the other. I hope the initiative makes local employees more open-minded and result-oriented, and it has certainly taught me to clearly articulate my objectives and work toward them persistently.

Of course, a dozen Americans make slow gains in an office of nine hundred, and we can hardly affect the 50,000 Mahindra employees around the world. Another way that Mahindra acts to improves the work environment is through its human resources policies. For example, we are reviewed annually on our ability to set and reach well-defined goals, to integrate a long-term vision with daily activities, and to think outside the box with a global perspective.

I'd be very happy to know if your company has adopted effective practices to deal with this kind of cultural mismatch.

Molly,

We have been in a UK-India business model for the past four years and previous to that we were in a similar business model, but one which went pear shaped! We learnt a lot from our first failure and the current model is a success on the whole considering it was started ground-up four years go.

The bulk of the strategy-forming unit of our business is in the UK key with a few people from India contributing to strategy forming. Key business managers are UK-based however as we grow in India, we are moulding and empowering the Indian managers. Our strategy has been to hire straight out of college, as we did not see any benefit of hiring experienced staff in most of the roles, including managers.

I started the Indian unit as I had a long experience of studying, living and working in the US and the UK. I also had trusted relationship with the company owner. My role was to get the Indian company off the ground and let the UK managers nurture/grow it with continued input from me. Naturally there have been a whole lot of issues to deal with and friction along the way, caused by differences in culture, work practices, education systems, and as we rather surprisingly concluded, misplaced expectations. We had to, and we still have to, constantly rework the growth strategy to based on our (the management team's) collective learning of the Indian experience.

There's no area of work that we as the top management team do not touch collectively - hiring strategy, job role definitions,appraisal systems, salary reviews, quality, systems and processes - through which we continually form what was right level of expectation from what can be achieved from India. Ability and capability of Indians (in any field) is a very emotive and evocative issue for us Indians. You have to barely hint that within the constraints of any given business, it may not be possible to do certain things in India, and people will either take it as a personal challenge or in some situations they will simply refuse to take a no for an answer. We have to continually work on bringing our staff round to putting business before individual ambitions - no business, no scope for fulfilling ambition - and not take it as a personal criticism. And this we had to do at the smallest unit of work, such as certain tasks of a job role, to the highest levels of strategy, that is whether we can create certain roles in India at all.

What you said about integrating long term vision with daily practices is absolutely crucial. There's a huge drain on management time to mould our young staff into managers suitable for our business. However, we view this as essential investment in our business and staff.

One key thing that we as a management team do is work on people's communication skills, particularly writing. One thing I am realising as I grow old is the power of the written word, particularly in the business world. Outside our business, I provide consultancy on improving writing skills to small companies and inside our own company we encourage people to write reports related to their jobs, reports detailing issues, solutions, projects in hand, etc. on a regular basis. The clarity that this exercise brings to one's thinking is a benefit we cannot live without.

Anyway, let me stop before I start to market myself blatantly. And I am not sure whether the forum readers will be interested in details of my voyage;-)

Anyway, I hope it has not been a waste of time to read my views.

You (and indeed any of your readers) are welcome to get in touch with me on my email if you wish.

Vijay Tase
vijayt@peertechnical.net