Executive Summary of the 1st Expats Collaborative workshop by Chennai Expats Expertise is a professional network to share and develop professional skills. It is open to working and accompanying expats, from all nationalities and all professional backgrounds!
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Discover what happened during our first expats collaborative workshop !
What are the kind of challenges you experience when you work in India? How can you best adapt to the new Indian working environment ? Here is the experience from 20 expats working in Chennai coming from different industries. The workshop was facilitated by Chennai Expats Expertise. To know more: http://chennaiexpatsexpertise.strikingly.com/
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Transcript
Executive Summary of the
1st Expats Collaborative workshop by
Chennai Expats Expertise is a professional network to share and develop professional skills.
It is open to working and accompanying expats,
from all nationalities and all professional backgrounds!
5 nationalities
8 different industries
6 different functional
backgrounds
Outstanding discussions
In your job,
think of one thing
you find
challenging
Worried about offending or upsetting
Make people responsible of what they do
Make sure that my request will be achieved (answer is
always yes but delivery doesn’t match sometimes :-)
People giving very little honest feedback esp. when
things go wrong or project is late
RELIABILITY / RESPONSIBILITY
RELATIONSHIP / COMMUNICATION
Passivity of students.
Lack of responsiveness
Following-up through emails, escalating issues, …
Communication and understanding of expectations
Too much delegation, so that important work
is done by the least qualified people
How to put a positive and constructive
pressure to solve crisis
Solve the root cause of problems
Different values in terms
of education/social life
TIMEMeeting deadlines
Project achievement vs deadlines
Lack of time awareness
Slow motions in operations
BUREAUCRACY
The weight of the Indian
administration (private or public)
CLOSE MANAGEMENT
Repeat again and again the same teaching.
Check and see the same mistakes.
Excessive supervision required
INNOVATION
Try to bring something new
in an existing organisation
In your job,
think of one thing
that energizes you
Learning every single day about my job and
the cultural differences within my team
Having real cultural exchanges
with the students, the parents,
the teachers and the companies
Dealing with the intercultural aspect of my job:
dealing with the Indian potential to reach high
standards
Making connections and
learning to leverage them
Recruitment
Some people really able to excel
given the right environment and
encouragement
Hope? We all know what
is wrong and how to fix it
Team appetite
to learn
Enthusiasm an the ability
of my team to change
and work in a changing
environment
People willing to work
hard and go above and
beyond
The freshness of
Indian spirit
The innovation and
creation
I have to create new
processes from scratch
and ensure it is efficient
The positive attitude
Smile always
When we are doing
weekly workshops
with workers and
managers in the factory,
I am energized to see
and push team work,
involvement and success.
People never
complain
Great appetite to learn
and change
Watching the students succeed
Loads of energy
The positive
mood of my team
Far from HQ to build a
team from scratch and to
create efficient new
processes in a
challenging context
ENERGY
LEARNING
CREATING
This
picture
represents
how I feel
about my
job,
because…
Chatrooms
Out of the group discussions, four challenges
emerged to be of a great importance:
- Finding the right balance
- Selecting the best from both cultures (and coping
with the worst)
- Delivering the expected results and outcomes
- Building up team spirit and cohesion for efficiency
and performance improvement
Chatroom 1 – Finding the balance
Quick Summary of the challenge
• How to balance home office company requirements and
Indian office reality? – “I always feel I am walking on a tightrope trying to balance
between the two.”
• How to balance between being culturally sensitive (i.e.
friendly) vs. maintaining authority?
A couple of tools / initiatives / best practices
• Break the work down in portions
• Encourage your Indian colleagues to give their opinions
• Give them autonomy within their comfort zone
• Designation is more important than real function : use it!
Chatroom 2 – Picking the best
Quick summary of the challenge• Indian Best: reactivity, flexibility, motivation, willingness to work hard and learn
but no anticipation skills or ability to plan
• Things are not completed
• Don’t know to say NO or that things go wrong or they made a mistake
• Bureaucracy
• Hierarchy breaks innovation (good employees are threats to managers)
• No communication between teams
A couple of tools / initiatives / best practices• Be pedagogical : spend time to repeat and make them rephrase
• Give the rules of the game : you want feedbacks, point of views, true info, you
belong to the same team
• Close management : detailed task definitions & instructions, regular follow up
• Find out who is experienced, leader, trustworthy in your team and use him as a
support
• Reward program : employees can nominate by email someone else who did a good
job or improved something => his name and action are mentioned at a monthly
meeting
Chatroom 3 – Being result oriented
Quick summary of the challenge
• Implement new process and create accountability– How to make acheiving excellence a cultural value?
A couple of tools / initiatives / best practices
• Break down into steps (small chunks of info, delivered to