Once again, it’s time for LCW’s “DIN Game,” our live, interactive debrief of an intercultural incident on Twitter. The next edition will take place October 4th at 5 PM CST, and we’ll be using the hashtag #DINGame. For a complete description of how the game works, check out our previous blog entry: http://navigatingcultures.com/blog/?p=779. The intercultural incident we’ll be debriefing is posted below; we hope you’ll join us! We’ll be posting the results following the October 4th debrief.
An American, Julie Barton, is the newly appointed Sales Director for the Indian subsidiary of a U.S. based management consulting firm. Julie has been asked by HQ to increase the subsidiary’s sales by 20% by this time next year. Julie flies to India to meet the team in person, and for a meeting with Divyesh Kapoor, the Bangalore Sales Team Leader, to discuss strategy for achieving this goal for his team. Julie is looking forward to meeting him.
She’s a little annoyed when he arrives 20 minutes late, and says in a friendly manner that he had to take his son to school on the way to the office. Divyesh then starts chit-chatting – asking about her trip, what has she done since she arrived in India, her opinion about Indian food and the neighborhood, etc. Already frustrated about falling behind, she asks politely but firmly if Divyesh could get down to business. Divyesh looks genuinely surprised at this.
When Julie asks him to present his unit’s sales strategy, he launches into a lengthy discourse about the history of the Indian subsidiary, strategies of past Sales teams, and revenue estimates based on past trends he’s observed in the various service lines. Julie impatiently wonders when Divyesh is going to get to the business plan for the upcoming year. She tells him that although she appreciate his briefing, she’d really like to get to the action steps and time frames to achieve the upcoming year’s sales targets. Divyesh appears somewhat flustered, and immediately offers to put together a detailed report within a few days.
