Integration Now

A report for a top-priority client came back today with an embarrassing criticism.  My client noticed that some numbers in his report didn’t add up.  He sent an inflammatory email asking for clarification and a guarantee that our data was sound.  I frantically reviewed the report to assess the damage and found that the main culprit [...]

Wake Up Call

Scott Thurm’s Theory & Practice column in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal is music.  His article, “Behind Outsourcing: Promise and Pitfalls,” describes how the complexities of outsourcing relationships are often so great that some firms scrap their outsourcing plans altogether.  Thurm references the failed outsourcing deals of J.P. Morgan Chase and Dow Chemical in 2004 and the reversal of plans [...]

Bring the Oscars to Mumbai

Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore just announced that the Academy Awards have officially gone green.  The celebrities showed up in hybrid SUVs and the technicians and crews committed to recylcing and waste reduction.  I typically roll my eyes when Hollywood takes credit for being one step ahead of the rest of us and even now I [...]

The Ethics of Outsourcing

After the Enron debacle most business schools know better than to graduate MBAs who haven’t taken a course or two on business ethics.  I’ve always loved philosophy so I registered for extra ethics courses while I was at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business.  They were all great classes, and I ended each course more conflicted about [...]

Vegetarian Paradise?

I’ve been a strict vegetarian for about 10 years now.  For me that means no meat, fish, or fowl–not even stock.  It’s tough being the only vegetarian in my circle of friends and colleagues, so I was anxious to get to India and be amongst my own kind or at least in a paradise of traditional [...]

HR Hypocrisy

The case on IBM vs. expunged Internet porn addict is bugging me.  I think most pornography is socially destructive and gross but I resent hypocritical corporate restrictions to our freedom while at work.  I’m particularly sensitive to this now after having been inconvenienced by arbitrary corporate restrictions while visiting my offshore team in Gurgaon.  Social [...]

The Toyota Way

I love cars, so I was all over the 2007 International Auto Show and enjoyed a recap of the coolness on CNBC this weekend.  Ever since the show it seems Toyota is receiving lots of coverage from business analysts who are touting it as the highest quality automaker with uniquely effective management.  The New York [...]

India Prep

If you take a job with a firm that has an offshore division, you’ll likely find that your employer will require that you stay with the firm for at least three months before investing in sending you to India to meet your offshore colleagues.  So for about three months, you’ll learn their names and titles [...]

Managing Teams, NOT People

As I posted earlier, I’m just not sure that the cultural differences between workers in NYC and Gurgaon are as great as they used to be before the outsourcing rush.  Aside from our writing styles, I really don’t think we’re all that different individually.  We seem to be similar intellectually and professionally, and our work [...]

Literally Writing, NOT Speaking

In international business courses, we talk about the impact of cultural differences on communication.   Experts advise aspiring Western managers to curb their tendency to speak cavalierly and abruptly when meeting with Easterners who tend to be more reserved in speech and presentation.  I’m not sure how relevant these “tendencies” still are but I have observed [...]