What do Germans think about Indian style of working?
Germans are incredibly competitive in skilled sectors. Being on time at work and meetings is appreciated. The hourly productivity in Germany is very high. 7 AM to 3 PM could be their office time. People prefer focusing on work, completing tasks and getting back home on time. This gives them a reasonable time to spend with family. They also pursue their hobbies each day after work hours. That’s the secret of their balanced life.
Indians are good at work, and there is no denying in it. If you give them a task, most likely they would do it. The quality of deliverables may be influenced by whom he needs to submit the work (respect for hierarchy, a dominant trait of Asians) and how motivated he felt in doing the work. Germans think Indians as intelligent and hard-working that they are!
Rohit, project manager, successfully delivered a transformational project for a German client. ‘Absence of criticism is a sign of appreciation’, Rohit knew this from what he could gather about the German culture. During the concluding meeting of the project, the German counterpart asked Rohit if he wanted to know his observation on the cultural differences between them. ‘Straightforwardness’, Rohit thought.
“Yes, that would be insightful!” Rohit responded.
“If you give a work that requires 40 hours to complete for one person; do you know how a German would approach it?”
“I am all ears”, said Rohit, resisting an Indian nod.
“A German would divide the work in 5 days; he would work for 8 hours a day. By the end of 5th day, his work would be complete. If you ask him in the middle of the week about the progress, he would have completed work almost proportionately to the time elapsed. Work-Life remains balanced; no work pressure kicks in.”
Rohit appreciated the way Germans work.
“You want to know my observations on the Indian way of working?”
Rohit nodded (too hard for Indians to go away with their nodding habit) with a smile, knowing where the conversation was heading.
“Indians are amazing folks. They don’t look at the 40 hours of work as 40 hours. They look at it as five days. The first day, they may think about the assignment, open documents, procrastinate. Having lost a day, the second day, they would look at the whole work to assess how much time he would take to complete. He may work for 4 hours that day.”
“Third day is crucial, and he would do significant work here — almost 25% of the work stretching work hours. I commend the flexibility Indians display but compromising on the work-life balance on day 3. In the last two days, he would extend by all means and the work would get completed.
I never doubted the quality, nor I got worried about the delivery, but you guys are doing the work in 3 days when you had five days to do it! Why you guys kill yourself towards the end of the week rather than proportionality dividing the work and making consistent progress?”
Rohit smiled. “Your observation is spot on, in most cases if it not a critical work and not dependent on others, your observation could be the reality. It is to do with our culture. When we are sure about the task, we will start it to meet the deadline. In this case, we started on Day 2 or 3. We tend to direct our efforts towards meeting the timelines.”
“On a lighter note, we study like that during Engineering. Our cricket team chase runs similarly. Pressure brings the best out of us. When we are sure about ourselves, we chase against the time.”
Do you guys agree? Do you work like an Indian or a German?
True incident, name changed. The article is part of the ‘Culture maze series’
#Culturemaze #CulturalDiversity #Immigration #7UntoldSecretsofLivingAbroad
