“The hidden costs of Culture in Offshore Projects- Best practices to overcome geographical and cultural distances”

 PROTON business school successfully conducted the 17th Global MDP at its Indore campus on the 28th July, 2010 and at its Ahmedabad campus on 29th July 2010. Gracing the occasion was a special guest form Germany, Ms. Iris Becker. The Chief Mentor of PROTON business school Mr. Sandeep Manudhane accorded a floral welcome to the esteemed guest. An entrepreneur at heart, Ms. Iris Becker has a rich experience of more than 20 yrs working across different continents and cultures. She has founded several companies in Germany, UK, India and Switzerland. Her passion is to bring together and create a working environment that encourages people of different languages, cultures and continents to enjoy synergies. Not only is she an entrepreneur, but also a respected offshore consultant and a guest lecturer at several universities in Germany. Ms. Becker gave deep insights about the hidden costs of culture with regards to offshore projects and also enlightened on ways to overcome geographical and cultural distances.

Ms. Becker threw light on the importance of local language while working on offshore projects. She said, “Never underestimate the importance of local language.” While defining culture, Ms. Becker said that “Culture is the attitudes, beliefs, traditions and values shared by members of a social group. It is passed from older to younger members and it is the behaviour, cognition and perception of the people.” Adding on to this, she also said that culture is instinctive and is learned. Further she said that the nature, culture and the personality are the three levels that exist in human mental programming.

Ms. Iris also spoke about the ‘iceberg model’ and its relevance in studying the diverse cultures across the globe. Emphasizing on the result of effective communication, Ms. Becker said that German and Swiss Companies describe their experience with Indian providers as having a high level of expert knowledge, quality certification level and on-budget performance, but at the same time she said, that there exists a major cultural differences and differences in working habits. Talking about the performance of the intercultural teams, Ms. Becker said that increased creativity, a wider range of perspective, continuous learning process and greater flexibility results into increased effectiveness and higher productivity. However, difficulties of communication and comprehension and geographical dispersion could lead to decreased effectiveness and lower productivity as well.

“Cultural Diversity can lead to better performance when team members understand, combine and build on each others ideas and thus recognize and value differences. In offshore projects cultural costs derive, when team members go through the ‘ethnocentric stages’ and thus don‘t recognize the potential of their global colleagues”, said Ms. Becker. Having said this, she reinstated that Ignorance or negligence of cultural differences often leads to conflict and could paralyze a whole team. Ms. Becker assured that technical expertise, proper infrastructure, effective relationship management effectual project management are the criteria for the success in offshore projects. This cultural gap could be bridged through relationship building. Therefore, to gain more knowledge about bridging this cultural gap, cross cultural training is the need of the hour.

It was a very enriching experience for one and all. The session dwelt upon some surveys that were conducted by Ms. Becker as part of its roadmap. Discussions on the same provided various dimensions to several possible outcomes.

At the end of the session, the guest was presented with a token of appreciation. Also, she felicitated the Global MDP Quiz toppers and interacted with all the Protons personally. Indeed this Global MDP session was a great learning experience for all present at the Swami Vivekananda Auditorium at PROTON business school.

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