Today I had a very interesting day. Yeah, I know this is not facebook where one updates what he did every moment of his life...Nevertheless, i want to pen down some ideas that i had during the day.
What made today's day special, was the amazing interactive session at my office in Germany, which has been appropriately named "Collaboration towards Excellence". The idea was to understand and figure out ways in which Indians and Germans can work together as a global team to ensure success.
There were many view points that people held as to how to improve the collaboration between cross continental teams and topics as mundane as the Speed of the LAN link between Germany and India, to highly sensitive issues like the worry about the losing their jobs to cheaper countries like India were discussed.
I thought a bit and did a bit retrospection. I had worked in cross continental teams and worked for very long durations and done things of significant technical value and not just low value, unimportant donkey jobs like in many cases. The key thing what an Indian needs to understand is why should a German ship his work to India.Most think that cost is the biggest motivating factor for Germany. Sure that is one of the key factors. However, Germans unlike Americans, have a very long foresight. They would not invest a dime, unless they are for sure that they see long term benefits. Which means, like many of think, if we keep saying that India is cheap and please ship all your work to India, we would be in for a big surprise.
Why a German would really ship work to India is because he sees India as a growing market, which he doesn't fully understand. It is better to employ a local guy, who understands the local needs to deliver a localized product. This means, if you want your product to be shipped all over the world, you need to build all over the world small pockets of people who share the same ideals, same principles and same vision as the base at Germany. Unless of course, you always would like to ship Germans to all over the world and keep them there to do your work.
The other reason why many countries ship work to India is because they want to get their best brains do something else. Yes!!...And This doesn't mean only the crumbs come to India. How could this be true? Well, it is true because the crumbs at Germany, are actually fairly advanced technologies in an Indian context. ESP in vehicles, for example is quite a common thing in Germany, a special luxury in India.( Though, the Mahindra XUV already has something like this!! Yeah we are catching up too :-)).
Indians on the other hand have to accept the cultural differences from these western countries, blend it with our own and take the best of both worlds. Frankness, honestly and Transparency are things one can learn from the west. Hard work, Quick learning and Adaptability are things which are the core strengths of an Indian.
Collaborations are needed. Clearly, the world is shrinking. We cannot hold on to our cultural, physical and mental barriers and continue to survive in business. (unless of course you are selling hotdogs at a park!!). Growth has to be mutual. Only shipping garbage to India will ensure that one day you have a huge pool of garbage that starts to stink...and the west by then would have forgotten the art of cleaning the garbage.
Thoughts to ponder about....
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