Showing posts with label culture shock example. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture shock example. Show all posts

Monday, September 13, 2010

Just What Is Culture Shock?

I'm bad at definitions but I'll try anyway.Culture Shock is applying well proven rules to situations in life, without making allowances for differences in thinking where the rules have been tested and where they are or will be applied. That's it lol simple isn't it? I'll tell you a real life story where directors and VP's made this very silly mistake and this is first HAND.....
I used to sell eqpt for a company, a multinational giant where I came across an my overseas colleague-an American.A product which was in high demand was marketed aggressively by yours truly and we had a no of enquiries. Customers were asking me why we were not quoting. This product was made in the US, Texas and the man in charge was very cooperative for the first 3 or 4 months.Then he stopped co-operating all together. Now, in the US-people close deals fast but in India the land of the ubiquitous Jains, Agarwals, Baids etc take forever to make a decision. As one unit was priced around Rs 1 crore, they took even more time. But my US colleague naturally thought that we are making HIS LIFE MISERABLE BY ASKING FOR BIG QUOTES AND THEN JUST SLEEPING. You can't blame him either....

The end result was that the management stopped the marketing in India of what could have been our most successful project. This is what is CULTURE SHOCK . If only our country head had told the American the true picture then this would not have occurred. But the Indian sales head did not as he thought it was pretty obvious. Well..it was obvious for me and him, but not the American...