What are the kind of challenges you experience when you work in India? How can you best adapt to the new Indian working environment ? Here is the experience from 20 expats working in Chennai coming from different industries. The workshop was facilitated by Chennai Expats Expertise. To know more: http://chennaiexpatsexpertise.strikingly.com/

1. Executive Summary of the
1st Expats Collaborative workshop by
Chennai Expats Expertise is a professional network to share and develop professional skills.
It is open to working and accompanying expats,
from all nationalities and all professional backgrounds!

2. 5 nationalities
8 different industries
6 different functional
backgrounds
Outstanding discussions

3. In your job,
think of one thing
you find
challenging
Worried about offending or upsetting
Make people responsible of what they do
Make sure that my request will be achieved (answer is
always yes but delivery doesn’t match sometimes :-)
People giving very little honest feedback esp. when
things go wrong or project is late
RELIABILITY / RESPONSIBILITY
RELATIONSHIP / COMMUNICATION
Passivity of students.
Lack of responsiveness
Following-up through emails, escalating issues, …
Communication and understanding of expectations
Too much delegation, so that important work
is done by the least qualified people
How to put a positive and constructive
pressure to solve crisis
Solve the root cause of problems
Different values in terms
of education/social life
TIME
Meeting deadlines
Project achievement vs deadlines
Lack of time awareness
Slow motions in operations
BUREAUCRACY
The weight of the Indian
administration (private or public)
CLOSE MANAGEMENT
Repeat again and again the same teaching.
Check and see the same mistakes.
Excessive supervision required
INNOVATION
Try to bring something new
in an existing organisation

4. In your job,
think of one thing
that energizes you
Learning every single day about my job and
the cultural differences within my team
Having real cultural exchanges
with the students, the parents,
the teachers and the companies
Dealing with the intercultural aspect of my job:
dealing with the Indian potential to reach high
standards
Making connections and
learning to leverage them
Recruitment
Some people really able to excel
given the right environment and
encouragement
Hope? We all know what
is wrong and how to fix it
Team appetite
to learn
Enthusiasm an the ability
of my team to change
and work in a changing
environment
People willing to work
hard and go above and
beyond
The freshness of
Indian spirit
The innovation and
creation
I have to create new
processes from scratch
and ensure it is efficient
The positive attitude
Smile always
When we are doing
weekly workshops
with workers and
managers in the factory,
I am energized to see
and push team work,
involvement and success.
People never
complain
Great appetite to learn
and change
Watching the students succeed
Loads of energy
The positive
mood of my team
Far from HQ to build a
team from scratch and to
create efficient new
processes in a
challenging context
ENERGY
LEARNING
CREATING

5. This
picture
represents
how I feel
about my
job,
because…

6. Chatrooms
Out of the group discussions, four challenges
emerged to be of a great importance:
- Finding the right balance
- Selecting the best from both cultures (and coping
with the worst)
- Delivering the expected results and outcomes
- Building up team spirit and cohesion for efficiency
and performance improvement

7. Chatroom 1 – Finding the balance
Quick Summary of the challenge
• How to balance home office company requirements and
Indian office reality?
– “I always feel I am walking on a tightrope trying to balance
between the two.”
• How to balance between being culturally sensitive (i.e.
friendly) vs. maintaining authority?
A couple of tools / initiatives / best practices
• Break the work down in portions
• Encourage your Indian colleagues to give their opinions
• Give them autonomy within their comfort zone
• Designation is more important than real function : use it!

8. Chatroom 2 – Picking the best
Quick summary of the challenge
• Indian Best: reactivity, flexibility, motivation, willingness to work hard and learn
but no anticipation skills or ability to plan
• Things are not completed
• Don’t know to say NO or that things go wrong or they made a mistake
• Bureaucracy
• Hierarchy breaks innovation (good employees are threats to managers)
• No communication between teams
A couple of tools / initiatives / best practices
• Be pedagogical : spend time to repeat and make them rephrase
• Give the rules of the game : you want feedbacks, point of views, true info, you
belong to the same team
• Close management : detailed task definitions & instructions, regular follow up
• Find out who is experienced, leader, trustworthy in your team and use him as a
support
• Reward program : employees can nominate by email someone else who did a good
job or improved something => his name and action are mentioned at a monthly
meeting

9. Chatroom 3 – Being result oriented
Quick summary of the challenge
• Implement new process and create accountability
– How to make acheiving excellence a cultural value?
A couple of tools / initiatives / best practices
• Break down into steps (small chunks of info, delivered to
small teams) and continually monitor progress
• Clarify targets, co-create objective standards & reporting
dashboard
• Encourage individual accountability while nuturing a
culture of safety
• Create urgency
• Increase information sharing (up and down hierarchy)

10. Chatroom 4 – Building up team spirit
Quick summary of the challenge
Team spirit (or cohesion) is among the top factors in improving efficiency and performance, in India as
anywhere else.
In building team spirit, the main ideas we discussed were :
o The role of the team boss (importance of hierarchy) in giving the vision (common goal) and the
“spark” (exemplarity)
o The loyalty to the boss (as a person) rather than to the strategy (even if this is conflicting with long
term interest of the company)
o The need to understand each team member’s drivers (motivations) at work (notably if career and
status are the main drivers, it is often playing against team cooperation)
o The importance of investing in personal relationships (but this makes it more complicated in case of
conflicts, as you have to deal with emotions and egos)
A couple of tools / ideas / best practices
• Use you authority / hierarchy position to shift energy from “who is to blame in case of failure” to
collective / collaborative / constructive problem solving
• Find the persons who are already good team players (hopefully there are some!) and rely on them to bring
/ promote change in behavior through recognition of their skills
• “Babysit”: invest time and energy on a day-to-day and one-to-one basis to make sure behaviors are
changing
• Be practical rather than spending too much time on explaining: “show how”, “walk the talk”
• Set up collective goals and rewards collectively versus individually
• Convince: the best team players are the best managers !
• Respect seniority and expertise: team spirit does not mean everybody is equally competent; it means
everybody can have a specific contribution and shared knowledge and experience which will benefit all.

11. Discuss real situation
Participants had the opportunity to discuss in small groups
specific challenges that they are having in their roles. The
group supported the discussion by asking clarification
questions, sharing their own experiences and offering
possible actions.

12. The path is not easy
but what an adventure!
There is no better story
than an Indian story
Take the best of
everything and everyone
Challenges are the doorway
to determine creative solutions
Forget your
Initial idea(s) !
75% rule is key
Focus your energy
on small and clearly
defined tasks
Everything is possible
Always check !Start with regimentation…
get to innovation
Keep calm and
carry-on
First put them in a box,
their imagination will
open the box…
… In time
Rising Sun
Black coffee Sir?
Great Indian day to come
Patience is key
In India, you will loose
your mind but you will
also find the way…
Listen with your heart
Share Knowledge & experience about
how to get the best out of people
You will not change them.
Adapt yourself or burn.
Nothing is more important
than relationships. Nothing.
Everything is
negotiable

13. What next?
Join
“Chennai Expats Expertise”
Group on
• Post any questions?
• Share your initiatives and best tips!
• Share any good articles that you found in the newspaper.
• Forward the group details with your friends and colleagues!
We are happy to welcome in the group any working or trailing
expats here in Chennai. So spread the word!

14. Spread the word!
And stay in touch
chex.expertise@gmail.com