Analytical Diaries

We all know that the people we spend time with can be a strong cultural influencer.

Raphi's off-shore lunch

In the days of off-shoring frenzy, a lot of us spend  time with Indian, Chinese or Eastern European colleagues. Obviously our social interaction extends to those colleagues using video-chats and social networks globally. It isn’t hard to believe, that we are culturally  more integrated with these foreign co-workers, than we have been ever before.  If you extend this to our eating habits, you can start to judge the quality of your offshoring relationships by a number of funny factors:

• Number of virtual friends – If you use your off-shoring contacts to globalize your social networking contacts, that hints towards a good working relationship. Would you want Facebook buddies that you detest during your working hours?
• Lunch Menu Selection – have you ever spend four weeks in Delhi, Pune or Hyderabad, in Shenzhen or Shanghai, in Prague or Wraclav to train your in-house processes to cheap(er) labor staff? If so, you also got used to some local habits and local food.  Whether the food is spicy or fear generating, or whether the nights are shortened by vodka rich sessions, you certainly will take home some new and exciting habits.
• Rooting for new sports & music – I bet you have never cheered for the US Krickett team or the Indian Schwinger champ. As soon as Alphorns become fashionable in mainland China, this process of cultural exchange driven by off-shoring becomes mutual.

If you are as optimistic as I am about looking at our mid-term cultural awareness, then off-shoring and out-sourcing is a real benefit to our global social development as an open and tolerant society. While the world becomes flatter each day, there’s a good chance that it remains as colorful as it always was.