What makes a GREAT Project Manager and how to build leadership skills?

I was asked by Project World & World Congress for Business Analysts organizers two questions (full interview will be published on PW&WCBA Blog soon.

1.   What are characteristics of a GREAT project manager?

   2.    How do you as a project manager build leadership skills?

So what makes a great Project Manager? Projects are people not equipment or PERT diagrams, so for me the most important competency of a great PM is people focus. A great Project Manager builds relationships, is interested in others’ success. He or she is emotionally intelligent, gives positive and constructive feedback, coach and teach other to perform their best, is exceptional communicator and listener and provide formal and informal recognition.

I agree with Daniel Goleman, that emotional intelligence is crucial and “without it, a person won’t make a great leader". "I have found, however, that the most effective leaders are alike in one crucial way: They all have a high degree of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence. It’s not that IQ and technical skills are irrelevant. They do matter, but mainly as “threshold capabilities”; that is, they are the entry-level requirements for executive positions. But my research, along with other recent studies, clearly shows that emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of leadership. Without it, a person can have the best training in the world, an incisive, analytical mind, and an endless supply of smart ideas, but he still won’t make a great leader”. More in HBR article “What makes a leader?”.

IBM study (already mentioned in one of my article) reveals that creativity is the most important leadership quality followed by integrity and global thinking  (1500 corporate leaders, from 60 nations and 33 industries were pulled on what drives them in managing their companies in today’s world). Creative leaders are more prepared to break with the status quo of industry, enterprise, and revenue models. 

How do I unlash creativity, build integrity and think globally?

• I support and reword creativity & innovation. I’m open to new ideas and give the team freedom to try new ways of working or new tools or processes.
• Build trust and high level of honesty – I trust people until I’m proven wrong. 
•  Find or create some rituals or common symbols – special designed t-shirts or hats, morning coffee together ( I really liked the idea of NTPM 2013 hats, and PMI “I’m PMI” T-shirts etc)
• Create positive work environment.  Add some fun to work – integration/team building activities, interviews with team members on their passions, hobbies or achievements (both from work and outside) 
• Formal and informal celebration. Birthdays, milestone/project accomplishments.
• To understand the cultural differences and make relationships I try to visit a country where my team members are based – very often at my own expenses. If cannot effort a visit  try to find out more on cultures through reading, speaking to people or visiting a restaurant representing the ethnicity of a team member.
• Coach and mentor rather than control
• Focus on personal development and knowledge sharing – encourage team members to  taking part or speaking at conferences and then sharing the knowledge and experience with others

 Join me at PW&WCBA in September and save 20% with code: PW13MK

Successful teams across borders – PART 3 - working collaboratively!

It’s not about communication but collaboration! Effective communication is a tool for working collaboratively and building a high-performing team. In fact, research has shown that effective teams often communicate less than other teams because they have developed a shared understanding.

So, what are the criteria of collaboration?

• Ownership of shared goals,
• Relationships with a purpose,
• Commitment to one another’s success (T.E.A.M = Together Everyone Achieves More).

And why collaboration is so difficult? Because, in order to collaborate effectively we need to break a lot of boundaries. And breaking these boundaries is more difficult when connecting through electronic devices and face-to –face communication is limited. 

What kind of boundaries need to be broken? A few examples below:

Individual (age, gender, ethnic background, personal, native language, assumptions, values etc). If you are working in another country you probably experience quite often people speaking their native language and you have no clue what they are talking about. Maybe about you? How do you feel?

Geographic ( time-zones, political environment, culture, different country value system  – example: students in Poland cheating during their exams)

Task – related (different understanding what’s need to be done)

Organisational (hierarchical, political, etc). Functional organization promotes silo thinking, where collaboration is very difficult. The goals of departments are more important than project objectives, so practically it is  not possible to implement a project management framework where multifunctional cooperation is critical!

Technical (different technology or standard).

“The Handbook of High-Performance Virtual Teams” I had mentioned in my previous post gives us a 5 step framework how to overcome these boundaries:

1. Create a collaborative organisation. Both work structure and processes need to support collaboration. Build your structure to eliminate the silo thinking. The work can be done in modules (teams work on their parts and then meet to review/implement what has been completed or iteratively – engage in back-and-forth development cycles).

2. Create a supportive culture. Each of us is unique! We see the world through different lenses - we have different backgrounds, were brought up in different countries, studied different subjects, were exposed to different cultures etc. 

What is obvious or logical for Poles might not be so obvious for someone from other continent or even another country. Example: when we need to work on something on our own for a couple of hours and we do not want our client to wait and watch our hands we usually suggest to go for a coffee or shopping and come back – don’t we? We don’t really mean that someone needs to drink coffee (maybe does not like) or go shopping, but this is a polite way of saying: “leave me alone please as I need to concentrate on the task and will feel uncomfortable you watching me when working”. But in some cultures the second, direct answer would be more appropriate. Let me share one more example. A few weeks ago I was having dinner in a restaurant with my friends. When we finished our dessert, the waitress asked if we liked it. My friend answered: “the sauce was very sweet, I expected coffee sauce to be not so sweet. “Mine was delicious, very sweet too, but I love sweet” I responded.

A culture can be defined as a shared set of values, believes and norms and to change it takes time, so remember:

ü  Recognize the differences the culture creates – be interested and open!

ü  Changing culture is changing how people act!

ü  Team Charter can help!

ü  Culture of creativity is important element of building a collaborative culture! More on creativity in my next post!

3. Knowledge sharing & Management system. Create a culture of information/knowledge sharing and make it available for everyone. I use the sharepoint or dropbox for storage shared documents, the HUB or other social media/blogs for exchanging and sharing information, raising questions etc and wikis sharing knowledge.

4. Define New Leaders

Today’s leader builds relationships, is  interested in others’ success,  is emotionally intelligent, gives positive and constructive feedback, coach and teach other to perform their best, is exceptional communicator and listener and provide formal and informal recognition. Moreover, focuses on process and outcome, and by that we do not mean “task focus”, control or micromanagement, but rather keeping himself and team on track and motivated (trust). And last but not least is a learner by nature – demonstrates attitude “what can I learn?” rather than “who’s to blame?” and recognizes and respects cultural differences.

5. Align and sustain support system

Both hard and soft infrastructure is crucial and leadership is a key element of the support system, followed by learning and measurements. As a leader make decisions and model behaviours that promote team effectiveness. Tip: Align the support system with needs of your team!

Successful teams across borders – PART 2

"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships." Michael Jordan

The last post I have finished providing 6 challenges of global teams:

• Distance
• Time
• Technology
• Culture
• Trust
•  Leadership

In this article I we will explore each of these challenges. A lot of tips, techniques and frameworks come from “The Handbook of High-Performance Virtual Teams” (see the picture for the whole title and authors) and are supported by my own experience and examples.

DISTANCE

The main issue with distance is lack of face- to-face interaction, which is crucial to build trust, monitor performance, motivate and understand the cultural differences. Not sure what’s your experience but I feel more connected to my local office and people from my floor or building than my team, although all of them belong to different teams and we have no work interaction at all. But we share the language (not all of us speak Polish, as there are around 30% foreigners working in my location but they try to learn the language and understand our culture), norms, dress codes etc. It’s much easier to build team/community identity when based in the same building. I get involved in many local initiatives and really feel as a part of this great community. Feeling trust is about following the norms/ practices, willingness to share knowledge and cooperate with others and desire to stay with the organization.

When team members are dispersed communication is more challenging and you need to be more disciplined about keeping in touch and sharing information as it does not happen automatically! As I’m based off site have experienced it many times – changed priorities that have impacted my project and I was not aware of, people leaving the company – everyone knew except me! Tip: plan your communication carefully when having employees working off site as they might feel isolated as I did on many occasions!

TIME

The main issue with the time when real time communication is required is restriction of time – everyone trying to use 2 - 4 pm GMT time slot to invite people from 3 continents – Asia, Europe and US, so you need to schedule your meeting early in advance and if need to reschedule might take a while! On the other hand the advantage is 24 h workday.

Some tips:

ü  Check where people you want to invite are located and adjust the meeting time accordingly

ü  Show respect – ask if you need someone very early or late

ü  Be careful when rescheduling at a very short notice – someone from US might have got up very early to attend your meeting and finding out it has been cancelled might be very frustrating – happened to me once and now I’m more conscious about it.

TECHNOLOGY

Challenges:

ü  must learn how to use it

ü  might be incompatible (people from different locations might use different technology).

Remember: Technology is useful, but less important than techniques to interact!

CULTURE

"Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster." Prof. Geert Hofstede.

Do not assume the sameness – what is normal for you might not be normal for others. We are all different! There are regional, generational, departmental, functional, organizational plus cultural differences, which increase with virtual world as more boundaries need to be crossed. Additional to these a team creates its own culture.

Tips:

ü  Show respect and personal interest to other cultures

ü  Try to visit a country where you have an employee at least once

ü  If cannot effort a visit  try to find out more on cultures through reading, speaking to people or visiting a restaurant representing the ethnicity of a team member.

TRUST

Teamwork depends on trust! Communication (keeping people participating and informed) is a key element of trust. Trust is connected with identity (following specific norms/ practices, willingness to share knowledge and cooperate with others and desire to stay with the organization). It’s crucial we know who we are working with to interpret the behaviour and reactions.

In virtual teams fundamental cues about personalities might be absent if you do not put enough effort to get know each other. Trust is based on knowing and being known by one another and comes from believing in the individual expertise and even most important from sense of accountability, keeping commitments to each other Building trust takes longer when we are not meeting every day and lack of social communication. We need more time to identify team members’ habits and skills.

Tips:

ü  Show interest in your team members achievements, both work related and personal, support and promote them amongst other team members

ü  Make only commitments you can and will keep!

LEADERSHIP

A virtual leader needs to be both a leader and a member.

Challenges:

    ü  Ensure performance

    ü  Mentor and coach

Tips:

  ü  Do not control but coach individuals how to control themselves!

        ü  Use appropriate technology - e-mail is not the best tool!

        ü  Learn and respect other cultures – plan a visit to a country where you have employees or organize a team meeting where individuals are able to talk about their cultures. When I’m in UK I bake or bring Polish bread and we eat it for second breakfast (around 10-11 o’clock) –people in the kitchen not familiar with Polish eating habits usually ask: “early lunch”? And hear my answer: “No, second breakfast”.

       ü  Build trust

       ü  Network outside a project or work related stuff

A virtual leader is a mentor who shows a high degree of empathy towards their team members and is able to use authority without being perceived as inflexible!

Successful teams across borders – PART 1

On the 13^th of June I took part in a debate on motivation in virtual teams. The debate started with the presentation: " How to keep high motivation in virtual teams" by Bożena Wujec, the owner of InSpired, and was a part of Forum Wsparcia IT (IT Support Forum).

Expert Recommendation

During this very interesting debate we all agreed that globalisation is a fact and whether you like it or not, today’s workplace is not longer defined by its bricks and mortar walls. Managing global teams is both challenging and interesting. Although most of us agree that having a globally dispersed team makes sense, but in order to work together well a few conditions need to be made.

I have decided to write a series of articles to walk you through challenges, tips, tools and techniques on how to become globe smart. These will include some theoretical background including studies and experience from my last 7 years when working mostly virtually as both  a leader of global teams (PM) and a virtual team member. So let’s start the journey!

To start with, will share some statistics from The American Society of Training & Development and the Institute for Corporate Product’s studies (2008, 397 respondents from different continents):

•        29% agreed that providing global learning is essential
•        82% use global team for revenue generation
•        70% to maximize stakeholders value
•        61% for global visibility
•        56% to improve performance

Sharing corporate values and conforming to local customs were critical factors for successfully leading a global team (Paradise, 2008).

Benefits of working globally teams – from company/project perspective:

ü  the best skills and expertise regardless the location
ü  24 h coverage
ü  reduce office overhead
ü  adapt an as-needed approach (save time and money)

Benefits from team member perspective:

ü  flexible hours

ü  working from different locations – from home/ office in another location

ü  possibility of working from another country

ü  getting experience in  another cultures, languages etc– opens many doors of employment around the globe.

It’s all about collaboration! Another studies reviled (Frost & Sulivan, 2006), 946 decision makers from different continents, that employee productivity increases as a result of collaboration. The study also found that collaborative tools reduced the cost of travelling to in-person meetings, increased opportunity to work with people from other locale, supported productivity and responsiveness regardless of location, allowed team work to flourish, and helped managed the demands placed on these distributed teams. All teams must collaborate, so do distributed teams!

Global team need to bridge distance, culture and time to accomplish their work. Very often we are provided with technological tools, but not training and support on cultural awareness, decision making, communication skills and virtual meetings facilitation.

For me the most frightening thing when started working virtually was chairing meetings by phone – teleconferences. Still challenging, especially with new teams/ projects, when you do know people, struggling with pronouncing unfamiliar names and do not know what they are talking about, but need to take notes.

Telecons – What problems have we experienced?

Ø  People with own agenda taking over the meeting

Ø  Silence

Ø  Language

Ø  Lack of body language

Ø  Covering topics/reference (we are looking at the top right corner of the document xyz)

Ø  Reaching consensus

Ø  Controlling behaviours

A few tips on chairing telecons:

ü  Have a clear agenda/purpose

ü  Select carefully participants - invite only people that might contribute to the discussion/decision

ü  Pick time that is convenient and considerate for people in the various time zones

ü  Encourage input from people who don't normally talk much.  That makes sure that everyone, regardless of location, stays included. 

ü  Make a rule: if people on the line can't get into the conversation, tell them to push a button on their phone to make a tone sound and you will stop and listen to them.

ü  Ideas for dealing with Identification of Speakers:

o    Introduction at start of call

o    Have picture somewhere – put faces to a name

o    Politely ask who spoke

o    Include in ground rules – Say your name before you speak

o    Roll call

o    Summarise at the end and check

CHALLENGES of working globally can be divided into two groups: given & created.

I.              Given to the team / characteristics

1.     Distance

2.     Time

3.     Technology

Distance and time represent measurable conditions that are dissolved by technology.

II.            Created and sustained by the team

4.     Culture

5.     Trust

6.     Leadership

Awareness of cultural differences and connections, development of trust and leadership capabilities are crucial in order to build high performing teams.

In next article will describe these 6 challenges in more details.

What self sustainability has in common with Agile? NTPM PART 2

“The room was wonderful, the meals were great, the hotel staff was courteous. Of course it was real pleasure to visit the beautiful area of Sopot once again. The conference itself was well managed. Everyone was accommodating and enthusiastic. I made some excellent contacts,” said John Styffe, the speaker of New Trends in Project Management 2013 conference.

Peter Taylor with “Strategies for Sponsorship” kicked off the second day of the event (or third counting “The Project from Hell” workshop). He started with statistics on project success factors. According to Standish Chaos Report “Executive Management Support” is the most important project success factor. Standish believe that “The most important person in the project is the executive sponsor. The executive sponsor is ultimately responsible for the success and failure of the project. I remember one of the conferences I attended many years ago where I learnt that “a good project sponsor can make for a bad project manager, but a good project manager cannot make for a bad sponsor”, so truth! We all look for a “balanced” sponsor: involved, objective, supportive and reactive. What’s your experience with project sponsors? More on sponsorships can be found in Peter’s new book: „Strategies for Project Sponsorship”.

I really enjoyed John Styffe's presentation on “Self Sustainability in the work place”. John describes  sustainability as “a state of mind where one takes ownership of their ability to survive, exist, grow, develop and prosper be it as a corporate employee or as a business owner”. I liked it so much as it has answered one of the questions I ask myself. Before I let you in on it I will share a personal story. 

Almost every day I hear about achieving work/life balance – some tips, books, debates etc. From time to time people accuse me of working long hours and not having work/life balance, which really used to upset me. Do I need to? What does work/life balance mean? I enjoy my job, project management is my passion, but I have a few more hobbies: felting, jewellery making, sport, travel, home design, so I’m not obsessed with the projects as find some time for other thingsJ. Do I need to worry about the balance? I think that’s a dilemma for many people. And I have a piece of advice on it for all of you, which I found in one of the Citrix webinars “The Rewired Resolution Eight Ways to Work Smarter, Live Better, and be More Productive” by Camille Preston, PhD AIM Leadership, LLC: 4. STOP: Worrying about work/life balance. START: Focusing on doing more of what energizes you and less of what depletes you. I love it!

Let’s come back to John’s speech which answered another dilemma I had. John shared an interesting graph – see the picture below.

So, when you work intensely for a couple of hours/days/weeks you need a break: a coffee/lunch break or a day/weekend or after a 2 week sprint maybe 1 “hack” day. Do you know that in Spotify to promote learning and innovation, each team is encouraged to spend roughly 10% of their time on “hack days. During hack days people do whatever they want, typically trying out new ideas. Some teams do 1 hack day every second week, others save up for a whole “hack week”. Hack days are not only fun, they are also a great way to stay up-to-date with new tools and techniques and sometimes lead to important product innovations! 

More on Scaling Agile @ Spotify can be found here.

We all need these breaks and these breaks need to be free from worries. I know a lot of people that are on high Beta state all the day – even having breaks look at the watch and think about their workload. And how about me? Just discovered during John’s presentation - I switch between Beta and Alfa states easily. Work intensely and take breaks, move from Beta to Alfa state, recharge my energy and come back to work again at full pace. Of course, work longer than 8 hours, but what I gain is: wide open vision, wide perspective, clear mind and positive and caring emotions! Great! This is my secret and I know the answer now. Thanks John.

And some thoughts from Daniel Walsh, who closed the conference.

20 international speakers, 3 thematic tracks and 20 presentations and workshops made the decision which session to attend very hard. 

NTPM 2013 summary PART 1

2^nd New Trends in Project Management conference organised by PMI Gdansk Branch took place in Sopot, 8-10 May and gathered around 100 participants. 20 international speakers, 3 thematic tracks – Agile, Risk Management & PM tools, networking and entertaining activities made the decision which session to attend very hard.

Before conference delegates had a chance to participate in “The Project from Hell” workshop, designed by Peter Taylor and Michael Finer, the authors of „The Lazy Project Manager and the Project from Hell” and facilitated by highly experienced trainers Anna Erdmanska and Marzena Imilkowski.

“It's often said that mistakes provide great learning opportunities. In my opinion it’s much better to avoid mistakes in the first place especially while working on the projects. The Project from Hell workshop was a grand experience. From my point of view this training is helping project leaders to determine failure factors of a project in very unusual way. During the one day training session we were analyzing a failed project case study giving our recommendations to save project and ensure future success. I believe that this format has made the training more effective since I had a chance to ground the learning experience in a practical and experiential nature of the workshop.” Ewa Gasior, ESC 2013 Project Manager, the workshop participant.

The first day of the conference was opened and closed by agile evangelists, Michal Raczka started with presentation “It’s not agile, it’s YOU!”

Take Aways by Michal Raczka

And  Ray Arell finished sharing his experience in implementing agile approach of work. We have also learnt that Ray’s 3 children use kanban boards to plan their daily activities! If you interested in using personal kanban read the blog.

Culture by Ray Arell

As all presentations and workshops were so interesting it was difficult to choose which one to attend. This time I had decided to follow the risk management track. A workshop by Agnieszka Mrozik and Rafal Rudnicki started with a short introduction to risk management and followed by the groups’ discussion on Terminal 5 case study. Some of you might know the case, but for those who do not know two quotations from newspapers – first just before opening the terminal and the second 3 weeks later.

“The new terminal delivered ... on time and on budget by BAA, the airport operator, is one of the biggest infrastructure projects undertaken in the UK. Terminal 5 is a significant step, it is a fantastic piece of infrastructure. It will allow us to transform the customer experience. March 11th, 2008”

"Pressure mounted on airport and airline bosses responsible for the chaos at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 on Monday as ministers accused them of damaging the reputation of UK plc and national pride. Criticism in parliament of the “fiasco” at the £4.3bn showpiece terminal came as the government revealed it would take up to a week for British Airways to return 28,000 misplaced bags to their owners. March 31st, 2008"

Success or failure? I thought failure till the time I met David Hancock, responsible for creating and delivering the risk management system for the Terminal 5 project. I got his point that companies do not really care about reputation as long as they make profit. The chaos at the airport lasted only for one day and BA predicted it but did not want to spent more money on additional testing as 6 month testing was already completed. Remember when planning risk responses consider 4Cs (Costs/Consequences/Context/Choices). Your choice is based on costs, consequences of doing nothing and context!

In his presentation David also introduced 3 types of problems:

1. Tame - straight-forward simple linear causal relationships and can be solved by analytical methods
2. Wicked - have high levels of system complexity and have interrelated or interdependent problems needing to be considered holistically
3. Messy - characterised by high levels of behavioural complexity, but what confuses real decision-making is that behavioural and dynamic complexities co-exist and interact in what is known as wicked messes.

Apart from T5, he also shared his experience from Olympics and Paralympics held in London in 2012, illustrating how risk was managed from the transportation perspective of getting athletes, officials and spectators to the Olympic park to enjoy the games and leave a great impression on all who came to the wonderful city of London and those that live there. An interview with David can be found here. 

And last but not least presentation on risk management I want to share with you was “Hubris and Happenstance: the hidden risk of bias in projects” by Ian Whittingham, where we learnt that as project managers we are taught to focus on tangible risks, but we perform our projects within environments that contain a hidden, intangible risk, which is called bias.

9 hidden risks:

• Available data – A data-collection process that is restricted to data that is readily or conveniently available
• Conservatism – Failure to consider new information or negative feedback
• Escalation of commitment to a failing course of action – Additional resources allocated to a project that is increasingly unlikely to succeed 
•  Groupthink – Members of a group under pressure to think alike, and to resist evidence that may threaten their view
•  Illusion of control – When decision-makers conclude that they have more control over a  situation than an objective evaluation would suggest 
•  Overconfidence – Level of expressed confidence that is unsupported by the evidence 
•  Recency – Disproportionate degree of emphasis placed on the most recent data
• Selective perception – The situation where several people perceive the same  circumstances differently; varies with the ambiguity of the problem or task 
• Sunk cost – The inability to accept that costs incurred earlier can no longer be recovered and should not be considered a factor in future decisions

In summary, the great NTPM team, led by Przemyslaw Kotecki, provided the audience with the tools, the platform, the knowledge, the networking opportunity and the inspiration. Additionally in the evening the participants were invited to a networking event in Klub Atelier and  surprised by a tango lesson and performance by Iza Szoloch and Krzysztof Wojciechowski, teachers from Artorient dance school http://www.artorient.pl/.

Look for more in my next post –  PART2 coming soon, including Peter Taylor talking on project sponsorship, John Styffe sharing some tips on self sustainability in the work place and how this is connected to agile, Daniel Walsh.

Is it easier today to do the international business than 20 years ago? LIM 2013 PART II

Just to remind you (for more see PART1) this year EMEA PMI® Leadership Institute Meeting (LIM) gathered about 200 PMI leaders from 44 countries and 60 chapters and was held on April 19-21 in Istanbul, Turkey.

In this post, inspired by the closing speech of LIM: „Crossroads of Culture: How to do Business and Work Together in a Global Marketplace” by Avinash Chandarana, I would like to share my experience and thoughts from the short but enlightening trip to Istanbul.

Avinash Chandarana, as he has described himself on FB: “Passionate Learning and Development professional focused on helping others be successful. Building a high impact learning organisation is a quest; enabling talented staff to maximise all learning opportunities available: formal or informal; online, face to face, socially or on the job. Their development and success is my goal”

Avinash represents diversity through his personal and professional life experiences. Indian by culture, born in Africa and raised and educated in UK, leaves in Brussels and married to a Spanish woman. Do not need to convince you that his background exemplifies a broad understanding of the sensitivities and needs of the growing international and multi-cultural business environment.

Avinash presented the Lewis Model and I was surprised and proud at the same time to hear the same quotation* I used to describe my speech: “Successful Project Across Borders – How to Achieve Team Unity” I’m going to present at Project World & World Congress for Business Analysts in Orlando, Florida, this September. Coincidence or a good choice of the author? Does not really matter, I was really happy that we both read and quote the same book. BTW, recommending this book. 

According to Lewis there are 3 types of cultures:

• linear-active – data/result oriented, factual, decisive planners
• multi-active – dialogue oriented, warm, emotional, impulsive, relationship-oriented
• reactive – listener oriented, courteous, amiable, compromisers, good listeners

Let me tell you my story to describe these in more details.

I had only left Poland for Istanbul and landed in Frankfurt when I realized I left my laptop on the plane. Rushed to the Lufthansa customer desk, full of hope that would get my laptop soon. Almost crying tried to explain what happened, but the guy did not seem to listen to me just gave me a business card and instructed coolly: The Cabin Found Property office is open 7am- 7pm (that was 8 pm), please e-mail us tomorrow.”  I know, I had completely forgotten I was in Germany. For Germans and Swiss the procedures and plans count more than people feelings and emotions. They stick to facts and agendas – they could not do anything as the office was already closed. Taught for a person like meJ. By the way, I got my laptop back – you can be sure that when lost in Germany you get it returned.

Although Turks are closer to the reactive culture than Poles, but both of us are closer to multi-active  that Poles to linear-active or Turkish to reactive. Bearing this in mind went shopping to the Grand Bazar, where decided to make relationship first – lesson learnt from my previous trips. Believe or not, that worked! After a short, friendly conversation on the real and fake silk, not only managed to negotiate good price for two scarves, but also was treated to a delicious Turkish coffee.  

The journey was too short to experience the reactive culture. A tip: do not expect from Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Thai to confront nor initiate action or discussion. They prefer first listen to and establish the other’s position, then react to it and formulate their own. Face to face contacts are very important for them. 

The last, but not least question: Do you think it’s easer today to do international business than it was 20 years ago? See the answer below.

So, let’s start the discussion. I would like to hear your stories, challenges and tips on working globally.

* “For a German and a Finn, the truth is the truth. In Japan and Britain it is all right if it doesn’t rock the boat. In China there is no absolute truth. In Italy it is negotiable” Richard D. Lewis. "When Cultures Collide: Managing Successfully Across Cultures".