Corporate Dossier asked expatriate CEOs to describe the most incorrigible traits of Indian work culture. The list we've compiled might upset us but yet interesting....
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 sec tors 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. More @ ET: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/corporate-dossier/argumentative-too-emotional-are-indians-tough-to-work-with/articleshow/45638709.cms?curpg=2 ------ Cheers, Radha Clean India Campaign: Let us also chip in! 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