Tuesday, December 16, 2008

What are the traits in creative individuals and what influences these traits?

We find creative people to possess great amount of curiosity and openness on the one hand, and an almost obsessive perseverance on the other. Biological inheritance is a possibility, however what clearly come out is that early background has a significant effect on individuals. Interest and curiosity tend to be simulated by positive experiences with family, by a supportive emotional environment, by a rich cultural heritage, by exposure to many opportunities, and by high expectations.

In contrast, perseverance seems to be developing as a response to a precarious emotional environment, a dysfunctional family, solitude, a feeling of rejection and marginality. Most people experience either one or the other of these early environments, but not both of them. (Excerpts from Creativity, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

Monday, November 24, 2008

Is there cultural differences in companies doing global distributed work?

There exist cultural differences across national borders, so we need to be aware of the problems due to cultural differences, which can bring about communication problems and thus can affect knowledge sharing and also create misunderstanding. Hence, it seems logical that one needs to study and be sensitive of the cultures at national level.
Like to know if this is true also in the context of companies involved in global distributed work having people from different cultures and companies working together on projects?

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Can cultural issue be resolved completely?

In my opinion cultural issues can be resolved only to a certain level and never completely. One can put an effort in this direction by making sure that people are well aware of the culture of their geographically distributed development teams. It is important that people should be able to communicate the contextual information.
Any other thoughts on this?

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Mutual respect is key to manging culture bias

Understanding the culture of your client and-or partner in business and-or work is important. Many scientists have researched on the topic of culture bringing out valuable insights, especially in the context of national culture. The point I am trying to bring out here is that the mutual respect is of great importance and overcomes many issues related to culture bias.

I have been working with people from other nationalities and cultures. It would take me about two months to get a good handle on the way of working of these people. Keeping an open mind and keen observation has helped me to know the way of working and preferences of people from other cultures. In particular i would look for patterns of behaviors with reference to work situations. Once the patterns are identified I would adapt to match the frequency of my partner's way of working. This method has helped me to a large extent in managing work place culture bias.

I also realized that adapting to a certain way of working is not good enough, if one is seeking a sustained and successful collaboration. What is needed beyond adapting is to gain mutual respect. I have experienced that when there is a lack of respect then things don’t work well even if we adapt to the culture in consideration. The situation is like that of a forced marriage, very transactional and the spirit is missing. A good testimony of this is that i have at times done things which were against the customs of my collaboration partner, however, I was forgiven because of the mutual respect that both of us had towards each other and to our work.