Culture and communication in an outsourcing environment

I think we need to stop for a moment and reflect over cultural and communication differences between India and western countries. Not being an Indian myself, but living in Scandinivia and working in a company which does indeed make heavy use of offshoring to India, I have much experience on this topic.

To start with, let me explain how we have done it so far in my work: We had a few job interviews with Indian staff and invited them onsite for three months, with the aim of getting acquainted and handover the basic technical knowledge to be offshored. It was very helpful to meet face to face, and learn that we shared the same sense of humor, views on the bigger topics of life etc. This personal get together made it possible at a later stage, when the guys had returned to Kolkata, to maintain communication mainly over Instant Messaging and the phone. Instant messaging works exstremely well, as an educational tool, as it is possible to easily recap and document the learning afterwards, simply by copy pasting the conversation.

With regards to culture, we found the Indian guys to be very polite and skilled - and all in all, it was a very pleasant and constructive experience. What we, as westerners, learned was, that you guys often say "yes" and "ok" when discussing, without necessarily understanding the full context at the time. This is something we needed to learn, as they same words indicate "understood" in Europe. Also we needed to learn, that turning your head left and right means "yes" in India, while in Europe it means the direct opposite - this was merely a humorous situation until we got aligned :-)

Please don't read above as a generaliation of neither Indian people nor Westerners - after all it's only *one* experience.