Culture, as defined by outsourcing (part 3)

Based on the ACM Queue article, culture already plays a crucial role in selecting which countries to outsource when creating a distributed team to work on a single project.

Cultural differences are seen to arise in terms of team composition - the members of the team, what motivates them, and how they develop trust in each other.

One purpose of creating distributed teams is to capitalize on the expertise of each particular country. For example, a team from India may be solid technically in programming while those from the Philippines are valued for their superior graphic design skills.

But according to the ACM article, a critical issue is how to encourage trust among these teams so as to enforce teamwork and achieve results the shortest amount of time.

When working with multicultural teams, first impressions play a key role, even before these teams start getting things done. The cues for the correct perception of trust from either abilities or membership come from first impressions of a person's attire, gestures, and so forth.

But in outsourcing, these details somehow get overlooked because of nature of interaction between these teams - which is usually done virtually or through videoconferencing.

As an example, the article pointed to a multinational videoconference that introduced new development teammates to each other wherein participants naturally assesed each other by their dress and posture, which is dependent already on culture.

Had the team members traveled to meet face to face, they would have attempted to dress appropriately to the location where the meeting took place, alleviating some of the wrong first impressions generated at this event.

Motivation is also cited as a crucial factor when enforcing trust among distributed teams. Some countries are highly-motivated while others tend to be more laid-back and give importance to establishing relationships with people.

Again, blame it on culture. Many Americans in business and technology careers are headstrong and very agressive while in other countries, such as those in Asia and even in many parts of Europe, people take some time to get to know each other (and understand each other's strengths and weaknesses in the process) before proceeding to work on a project.