INDIAN WORK HABITS THROUGH EYES OF FOREIGNERS- EconomicTimes
The Economic Times
Argumentative too emotional - are Indians tough to work with?
By Lijee Philip DIBYENDU GANGULY, ET Bureau
Corporate Dossier asked expatriate CEOs to describe the most
incorrigible traits of Indian work culture.
The list we've compiled might upset you, but feel free to argue
— which you will anyway.:
We're always late
Seasoned expats have given up complaining about this quirk, except for
a few German and Japanese CEOs, who still feel the pain every time they see an
Indian colleague sauntering into a meeting 15 minutes late.
Makoto Kitai, MD, Mitsubishi Electric India, remembers fondly his days
in Japan, when everyone would actually arrive five minutes early. "In India,
being late by 15 minutes for a meeting is not considered to be late," he sighs.
"Schedules go haywire in India but people don't complain."
If only our lack of punctuality was confined only to meetings! "Whether
it a dinner or a larger function, I now assume that guests will arrive at least
one hour late," says Philipp von Sahr, President of BMW Group India.
We're very argumentative
Indians, as Nobel laureate Amartya Sen tells us, are argumentative by
nature and given the opportunity, we will debate and discuss till the cows at
home. Jean-Christophe Lettelier got a taste of this as soon as he took charge
at L'Oreal India last year. The meetings he conducted would go on interminably
with everyone going in circles.
"Maybe it's because of an inductive approach to understanding things,
but Indians make things more complex than they really are," he says. "I value
the depth of thinking, but sometimes I have to just close the topic. Else there
is complete chaos."
Mitsubishi's Makoto Kitai is another expat CEO who has had a hard time
conducting meetings. "Japanese are very good listeners. We as a culture never
speak out of turn which ensures that our suggestion would be asked every time.
My Indian colleagues, on the other hand, are very ardent speakers and are
always impatient when it comes to an opportunity to articulate their views," he
says. We also have a propensity to get into time consuming discussions just
about anywhere.
As Tetsuya Takano, MD of Ricoh India points out: "In India it's easy to
form a discussion group. You only have to ask someone something and suddenly
five people are around you and you can discuss anything. The preferable subject
is politics."
We're confusingly diverse
After a year at the Hyatt Goa, Glen Peat thought he had Indian work
culture figured out — then he was transferred to Mumbai. Now the chief of the
Hyatt Ludhiana, the New Zealander says, "Punjabis are so very different from
South Indians and the people of Delhi are so different from the people in
Mumbai.
At first, I thought everyone in India speaks Hindi. It takes a lot of
adjusting for an expat used to a uniform national culture." Expat CEOs
invariably see India's diversity as one of its strengths, but truth be told, it
takes getting used to. "The diversity poses quite a challenge in terms of
unanimity of operations, tweaking the offerings to different needs," says Volvo
Auto India MD Tomas Ernberg.
Besides managing your own work force, the diversity factor also plays
an important role in market success. "It's both a challenge and an opportunity,
as there is no one way of doing business or dealing with people. Something that
works in Mumbai may not work in Chennai or Kochi. So, India allows the
expatriate to use his creative side," says Ricoh India's Takano.
It takes 3 of us to fix a light bulb
the first time are usually struck by how establishments there manage
with so few people. It's the other way round for expats in India. Dmitry
Shukov, CEO of MTS India was amazed to see eight people pushing the boarding
ladder at the airport the first time he arrived in Delhi.
"In Russia there is just one person doing that job. In sectors like
retail, there is always excess staff in India," he says. It's also very common
in the hospitality industry, where guests are pampered with a level of service
unheard of in the West. But splitting one person's job among three not only
reduces wages, but also the challenge. Or, as Rex Nijhof, the Dutch chief of
the Renaissance Mumbai Hotel puts it: "If you have something heavy and only two
people available to move it, you have to find a way to build wheels on it. In
India, you just get six more people."
We're too emotional
Indians are highly engaged with their work, which makes us more
emotional about it. This can be disconcerting for expats used to a less engaged
workforce, going about with stoic expressions.
"People here wear their heart on their sleeve, which is something I
love," says Ben Salmon, a former diplomat with the Australian High commission,
who is now CE0 and Co-founder of Bangalore's Assetz Property Group. "The flip
side of it is that you can't criticise someone's work without visibly upsetting
them. If there's bad news, it has to be carefully packaged."
This makes simple performance appraisals a herculean task in Indian
workplaces. Bosses are wary about giving negative feedback, however
constructive it may be, since the receiver is quite likely to fly into a rage
or burst into tears. "During performance reviews, Indian managers tend to give
only positive feedback and leave the criticism unsaid," says L'Oreal's
Jean-Christophe Lettelier.
We don't trust easily
''There seems to be a trust deficit in Indian business and society in
general which makes business par ties wary of each other until a relationship
develops," says John Kilmartin, Director of IDA Ireland, the Irish government
's foreign investment agency.
The lack of trust extends to international brands and often translates
into behaviour that expat CEOs find surprising. "For some reason, customers in
India tend to escalate issues very quickly. May be this is due to lack of
trust? Regardless of why this happens, we need to convince customers that we
will always be fair and do the right thing for them," says Nigel Harris,
president and managing director, Ford India.
But once the trust is earned, it tends to be strong. "The culture in
India is such that if you earn a person's trust, you'll be treated like family.
People in India are extremely cautious....but once on-board, their loyalty's
commendable," says Michael Mayer, Director, Volkswagen Passenger Cars.
We escalate decisions to the boss
When it comes to big issues, where the stakes are high, we would rather
let the boss decide. At L'Oreal India, Jean-Christophe Lettelier has been
trying to push decision making down to the front line and make the organisation
entrepreneurial, but his observation is: "People avoid taking full
responsibility for anything because they don't want to take any blame if things
go wrong. Then if things do go wrong, they blame something else instead of
taking responsibility."
Ben Salmon, CEO and Co- founder of Assetz Property Group was a diplomat
at the Australian High Commission before he became an entrepreneur. He says:
"There's a tendency to push decisions up to promoter level. For someone who
believes that midmanagement should be taking decisions everyday within a strong
corporate framework, this part of the Indian business environment is
challenging."
We're very hierarchical
It's hard to get Indians to call the boss by his first name. Expats
squirm when emails begin with the phrase "My respected sir." Tom Albanese, CEO
of Vedanta says "Indians can be too eager to please sometimes. The only time I
get flowers is when I am in India. I find awkward garlanding moments all the
time. " The bowing low and garlanding is occasional and symbolic, but a
practical day-to-day problem is addressing the CEO by his first name.
"Despite my best attempts, many of my colleagues still do not use my
first name in discussions. The focus on hierarchy makes people take titles very
seriously," says Ford's Nigel Harris. If you can't beat them, join 'em.
At Volvo Auto India, MD Tomas Ernberg has started adding the suffix jee
after the names of his colleagues to show them an equal measure of respect.
"People in India give too much importance to hierarchy. Even unconsciously it
does reflect in their style of working and interaction," he says.
Michael Thiemann, CEO, ThyssenKrupp India tried to demolish hierarchies
in his company and distribute responsibilities according to capabilities, like
they do in Germany. The result, he says, was chaos. Thiemann then called in his
senior colleagues to rework things. "We developed the concept of team work with
an Indian flavour, taking care of the hidden rules of the Indian working
culture," he says.
We're lousy at work-life balance
Indian CEOs pooh-pooh the issue saying we have to work 18 hours and
build the nation, but expats find the lack of work-life balance in India quite
appalling. "When I started working at BMW India, I was amazed to see e-mails
coming from colleagues well after mid-night. I personally went to them and told
them they need to maintain a good work-life balance," says Philipp von Sahr,
President, BMW Group.
Expat CEOs believe spending long hours in the office equates with
inefficiency. "It's actually hard work done smartly that takes you the long
way. Time management is important," says Volvo's Ernberg.
Others, like Irishman Mike Holland, CEO of Embassy Office Parks in
Bangalore, take a more philosophical view of the problem. "It relates to being
in a different level in the economic hierarchy," he says. "Unlike the West,
there's no distinction between work and life in India — they are fused. For an
expat, it takes getting used to."
We're don't follow due process
''India's the global capital of BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) but
in day-to-day life, Indians don't seem to believe in business processes at
all," says Mike Holland, CEO of Embassy Office Parks, a joint venture of
Blackstone Prive Equity and Bangalore's Embassy Group.
Some expat CEOs attribute this impatience with due process and the
desire for shortcuts to age. "India has a much younger workforce and I like to
give enough space to employees. I don't want to take away the freedom from
employees," says Guillaume Sicard, President, Nissan India.
Still, systems and processes are the life blood of an MNC and many
expat CEOs fret over this issue. As Volkswagen's Michael Mayer says: "It may
take people take some time to get used to it, but it's important to understand
the rationale behind these systems since each one of us has to adapt to the
entity we represent."
We're all stuntmen
Where the West has adventure sports, Indian have daily life. As
managing director of Chyso India, a French manufact urer of chemicals used in
the construction industry, Giles Everitt has seen labourers atop skyscrapers,
painting the walls without a proper harness or life-line. "If there is one
thing I would like to change in Indian work culture, it is the attitude towards
health and safety," he says.
Why do we take so much risk? It is mostly lack of awareness says Ben S
almon of Assetz Property, who believes real estate developers are now creating
that. "Earlier, the cost of safety wasn't built in and construction labour
didn't see their job as a trade. That's changing, though we're still nowhere
near global standards."
We say what you want to hear
If someone says "I'm 99% sure I will be there," most of us know he
doesn't plan to be there at all. But for an expat CEO, such lines create big
misunderstandings. New Zealander Glen Peat of Hyatt Hotels used to take a
statement like "I'll be with you in five minutes" at face value -- and find
himself waiting a long time. "It's ingrained in Indian culture. It's not very
honest, but I've realised it's a way of being courteous," adds Peat.
We do everything at the last minute
The Indian attitude towards deadlines has been known to send many expat
CEO blood pressures through the roof. "It took time for me to adjust with the
time management of people in India," says Ricoh's Takano. "But if a deadline is
not being met, they would stretch and make sure things fall in place."
Guillaume Sicard of Nissan Motor India, used to be incredulous at the
confidence his Indian colleagues displayed as deadlines approached. "Time
management is quite fluid in India. They will work late hours into the night,
even on weekends, to meet the deadline. Americans or Europeans would never do
that. There they believe in a strict 8 to 5 pm working day."
Be that as it may, doing things at the last minute can lead to shoddy
quality. ThyssenKrupp's Michael Thiemann never takes that chance. "In India, up
to 95% progress, everything is done very well. However, the boring 5% remains
and that is where I get involved to make sure that the work is really done," he
says.
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