My Work Behavior - Slow or Fast

Organizational behavior is the study of human behavior in organizational contexts, with a focus on individual and group processes and actions

When it comes to more individualistic perspective, it can be referred as “Work Behavior”. The importance of work behavior grows as the global interactions between companies increase. Particularly in the context of India, it is more important because there are many IT service companies that work with many global clients.

                An interesting episode of difference in "work behavior" is introduced in “Culture at Work”:

                        “The U.S. team members are driven by the exact dates on the schedule,” explained Marianne Torrcelli, leader of an AT&T team working in Mexico and the United Kingdom. “The team members are disappointed and feel a sense of urgency when the schedule is not met. We believe that ‘Time is money’ and missed dated equate to potential jeopardy in project completion, which results in lost revenue. To prevent this, the American AT&T team responds quickly to jeopardy situations, focuses on critical issues, engages additional resources, and works extensive overtime. The job takes priority over family.”

 “But in Mexico,” Marianne observed, “as long as work items are being addressed-even if they are not on schedule-the U.S. team members feel comfortable that they will be completed at some point. The ‘schedule’ is not in jeopardy. We understand that in Mexico there isn’t the sense of urgency that American AT&T team members feel when they miss critical task delivery times. The Mexican team members have outstanding commitment and dedication to the project, but they place their family before work. The work can be done ‘manana.’”

              Then Marianne continues explaining on how British team members have mixture of both U.S’. and Mexico’s working attributes.

                           This caught my attention as I have experienced a similar situation when I was the head of SBU in a large Indian IT company in Bangalore and was working with many Korean companies. I noticed that there was a difference in sense of urgency between Indian and Korean employees.

 The tendency of speed in work achievement in Korea is little faster than in India due to the difference in sense of urgency. Of course this is not about the capacity or ability of individual performance but just tendency of time. It was measured through surveying Indian and Korean engineers with relative questionnaires.

 Looking at the Time Orientation, Korean engineers look little keener to it than Indian engineers.

Do you agree with this or not? You may not agree to this because it is shown in many studies that Indian engineers are agile and my personal experience also have witnessed that Indian engineers work hard at the company. But then above questionnaire was a relative study and not an absolute assessment.

I’d like to refer to my experience relative to time issue while I was heading a joint project with Indian and Korean teams together. While working with the two teams I noticed a gap in the definition of 'days'.

 For instance, May 31st is Tuesday and June 1st is Wednesday. It is viewed as a month gap between the two days to the Korean team but a single day to the Indian team. Hence Korean engineers were keen to complete their tasks by Tuesday. But it didn’t matter whether it was completed by Tuesday or Friday because Indian team regarded it within the same week of weekly plan.

 How about you? Is it a month gap or a single day gap?

To be frank, I don’t know which is correct or better. I was keen to regard it as a month during my earlier career but after three decades of my career, it doesn’t matter to regard it a day or a month. However we need to acknowledge the fact that such kind of gap exists when we are globally working together. Sometimes, it may be apparent even at our office amongst different individuals. It may be opt to happen between generations at the same office as well.

 The important matter is that we have to resolve the gap through communication or getting to know each other better. In order to make this possible, we have to know ourselves first. I am guessing most of people may not realize his/her own work behavior because they are busy working hard in their daily life. Just take some time and guess it. I may be keen to time or task which might be subjective.

 We have to appreciate that the tendency of time or any work behavior is not subjective or an absolute value. It is relative to others. One might feel that he or she is a fast worker but soon that person would become a slow worker to those who work faster than he or she. It looks like a race of runners on the same track. That’s why we need to realize other’s work behavior otherwise it will be stressful to work together because all people are different.

 I have been having trouble with the same issue because I have always considered people as per my standard. I know it should be corrected but it is not easy to change it in a day. But we have to keep trying to fill the gap as long as we are working together.

 How do we fill the gap? Of course there are many ways advised by experts but I would like to suggest to check your work behavior first with an assessment which will help you to adjust yourself first.

 I would like to refer to an Oriental wisdom saying, “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.”

 Go ahead and check your work behavior now!

 You can check it through our tool-Self Assessment of Working Behavior: click the icon “Behavior Analysis” in the bottom of www.jfsi.co.

 It has been developed after a 7-year research effort on the value system and behavior of Indian and Korean engineers.

 Please enjoy finding your stand in work behavior.