Cross Cultural Sensitivity

We started our day out at HealthAsyst by attending a workshop on "Cross Cultural Sensitiviy" ran by a consultant. The workshop met through about 1:30pm.

The approach to workshop took was to learn about yourself and then also learn about your Indian counterpart by using a questionare called "Windham International Cultural Model". I learned that I was different from the sterotypical Indian but not hugely different.

There are certain cultural aspects of India that may help explain why Indians may act differently from an American. For example, Indians prefer a hierarchy, Americans less so. This has something to do with Indians large extended families. An Indian will still go to their parents for decisions even when they are self-sufficient, married, have children etc. This may help explain why an Indian may not appear to be working independently.

Indians like harmony. This means that they are less likely to be direct or object to ideas they may think are silly. Doing so would impact harmony but it is necessary in a thriving creative team.

None of these types of things seem very insurtmountable to being able to working together. In fact, a good process should be able to overcome these issues.

Developing long distance capabilities is certainly doable. One issue that is more difficult to deal with is the time diffference issue. This really requires that written communication be thoughtful, detailed and clear. The window for direct communication is only a few hours a day. Early in the morning for US (7pm - 9pm) and evening (6pm - 8pm) for India. Contrast that with working with our Cary team who we can contact all day long if necessary.

We also learned today the TOUCHWORKS V11 was really developed using a classic waterfall model. I'm not sure that the HealthAsyst people understand what is being done in the US to stablize the product and the collection of resources from the other company BU's to plug holes. They do have a sizeable issues list that they are working on.

Thats it for today I think. Simon is not feeling well either something he ate or just jet lagged.

Tomorrow we will be looking more at some of the quesitons that Russ, Bobby and myslef came up with for them. I'll publish those tomorrow for you.

By the way my cell phone does work here. Cheaper to communicate via computer.