Do any Westerners have experience working with Singapore team members?
June 21, 2013 11:33 AM Subscribe
I collaborate remotely with a technical team who are based in Singapore; I am based in North America.
The Singapore staff all speak English as their native language (it's not a second or foreign language). However, making simple requests or explaining is usually excruciatingly hard.
Any reasons why this might be so?
Simple change requests within a document are ignored, often repeatedly. When collaborating on some simple database stuff, simple processes are ignored in favour of more complicated (but easier) processes.
We're working folks who are well-educated, and have a great work environment. They're technical, but also creatives as well (so I don't think it is a left brain/right brain conflict).
I'm wondering if there is some sort of cultural code to crack.
I worked with a technical person in Singapore for a couple of years and he was an excellent person to work with once we figured each other out. I'm used to an immediately responsive collaboration team, but being, what, 12 hours or so ahead of me made that difficult for us. Plus, I had no visibility to the rest of his work load. Once we gave ourselves timelines and expectations (new request = 3 weeks and change request = 1 week), we got along much better. I also tried to make sure that all specs I gave him were completely obvious with little to no guess work, along with examples and test cases I expected to work (or give him complications). I had to hold myself up to a higher quality of output because otherwise there'd be a 12 hour or more delay before he'd be able to get me a response to it, causing that much more of a delay in finishing the request.
So, long story short, I did not run into a cultural code issue, just more of a time zone issue and a lack of visibility issue.
posted by jillithd at 12:29 PM on June 21, 2013
So, long story short, I did not run into a cultural code issue, just more of a time zone issue and a lack of visibility issue.
posted by jillithd at 12:29 PM on June 21, 2013
You would benefit from Global Team Cultural Training specific to the differences between North America and Singapore.
These cross cultural business training classes can be designed to train cross-border teams and specifically will reference the who / what / why / when / where of global business culture specific to your team locations, and the associated communication difficulties or cultural differences. I recommend Dean Foster , IOR or Aperian Global.
posted by lstanley at 2:18 PM on June 21, 2013 [2 favorites]
These cross cultural business training classes can be designed to train cross-border teams and specifically will reference the who / what / why / when / where of global business culture specific to your team locations, and the associated communication difficulties or cultural differences. I recommend Dean Foster , IOR or Aperian Global.
posted by lstanley at 2:18 PM on June 21, 2013 [2 favorites]
I know exactly what you're referring to. I'm an American who has worked extensively with that part of the world. Don't bang your head thinking it's something you can crack - you cannot. You can only respect this and adapt, or stop seeing this as an "issue to fix."
Speaking English does not = same culture. Their way of doing, listening, responding to instruction are products of their culture and education styles (vastly different than American systems). Multinational companies have learned it's better to find intermediaries who are "bi-cultural" and have them manage such issues through them. Perhaps you can do the same (if you can't let this go).
posted by Kruger5 at 2:23 PM on June 21, 2013 [1 favorite]
Speaking English does not = same culture. Their way of doing, listening, responding to instruction are products of their culture and education styles (vastly different than American systems). Multinational companies have learned it's better to find intermediaries who are "bi-cultural" and have them manage such issues through them. Perhaps you can do the same (if you can't let this go).
posted by Kruger5 at 2:23 PM on June 21, 2013 [1 favorite]
Singapore English is actually officially a different dialect of English. More different from American English than e.g. British English is. One of the main differences (from what I remember from attending the occasional seminar or conference presentation on it) is around how requests are made. It has a bunch of particles that are borrowed from other languages that are used to soften a request, or to make it clear how important something is, etc.
Singapore English speakers who are speaking English with an American probably are NOT speaking their native language/dialect, but rather trying to speak more standard English, so a bunch of these cues are missing. It might help you to read up a bit about Singapore English (you can probably find things on Google Scholar. If you find anything by Jock Wong, that will probably be quite accessible). That way you can work out how to be more explicit about the things that would have come across if you guys were actually speaking their native dialect.
(I am a linguist, but I am not a Singapore English specialist.)
posted by lollusc at 5:35 PM on June 21, 2013 [1 favorite]
Singapore English speakers who are speaking English with an American probably are NOT speaking their native language/dialect, but rather trying to speak more standard English, so a bunch of these cues are missing. It might help you to read up a bit about Singapore English (you can probably find things on Google Scholar. If you find anything by Jock Wong, that will probably be quite accessible). That way you can work out how to be more explicit about the things that would have come across if you guys were actually speaking their native dialect.
(I am a linguist, but I am not a Singapore English specialist.)
posted by lollusc at 5:35 PM on June 21, 2013 [1 favorite]
Are they contractors from outside your organization? Your comment on easier-but-more-complex options and ignored documentation took me back to some painful experiences with an offshore contract developer team in India.
At times they were more interested in a) prolonging the contract and b) putting in the minimum possible hours so they could finish up a second contract they had taken on the side than in getting our work done. Smart guys, did solid work when focused, their priorities weren't always the same as our priorities. When you're out of sight and just a name on an email it can happen. Video conferences and getting forceful about time and quality milestones helped for us.
posted by N-stoff at 7:50 PM on June 21, 2013
At times they were more interested in a) prolonging the contract and b) putting in the minimum possible hours so they could finish up a second contract they had taken on the side than in getting our work done. Smart guys, did solid work when focused, their priorities weren't always the same as our priorities. When you're out of sight and just a name on an email it can happen. Video conferences and getting forceful about time and quality milestones helped for us.
posted by N-stoff at 7:50 PM on June 21, 2013
I work extensively on cross-national teams, but from the other perspective; I liase with teams *from* Singapore.
While cultural issues may exist - for one, people in the IT industry here often don't read details and rush to judgment more often than not - if you have things such as "simple processes [being] ignored in favour of more complicated (but easier) processes", it is also an education problem; a lot of companies aren't really trained or experienced in large-scale project management.
Also, a lot of firms really haven't discovered offshoring as such. I was sitting on a conf call yesterday, where a colleague spent most of his time giggling at a cross-location colleague's accent. Whole I told him to sort his shit out or he'd have to leave the team, it is frustrating that I needed to have such a conversation in the first place.
The only way I found that will work is to have a clear task plan, have clear quality metrics, and a complete crackdown on rambling. CR's and design docs and such have to be set in stone; absolutely no cultural excuses to not follow what's written in an agreed upon document.
If you have process problems, you may have to send someone down for a short time to make sure you have valid processes in place.
posted by the cydonian at 11:21 PM on June 21, 2013
While cultural issues may exist - for one, people in the IT industry here often don't read details and rush to judgment more often than not - if you have things such as "simple processes [being] ignored in favour of more complicated (but easier) processes", it is also an education problem; a lot of companies aren't really trained or experienced in large-scale project management.
Also, a lot of firms really haven't discovered offshoring as such. I was sitting on a conf call yesterday, where a colleague spent most of his time giggling at a cross-location colleague's accent. Whole I told him to sort his shit out or he'd have to leave the team, it is frustrating that I needed to have such a conversation in the first place.
The only way I found that will work is to have a clear task plan, have clear quality metrics, and a complete crackdown on rambling. CR's and design docs and such have to be set in stone; absolutely no cultural excuses to not follow what's written in an agreed upon document.
If you have process problems, you may have to send someone down for a short time to make sure you have valid processes in place.
posted by the cydonian at 11:21 PM on June 21, 2013
I suspect this has more to do with the people than the country/culture. I have a lot of business dealings with China, and I thought dealing with American vendors would eliminate a lot of the shortcomings I deal with in China, but there have been a surprising amount of shortcomings with American vendors too. So in a sense I agree with phunniemee that these sorts of problems are all too common regardless of country, but I'm not sure it's due to laziness. That might be part of it, but it's probably some combination of that plus incompetence, disorganization, work overload, poor training, poor management, and not caring. I feel your frustration.
posted by Dansaman at 12:16 AM on June 22, 2013
posted by Dansaman at 12:16 AM on June 22, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
People are lazy.
posted by phunniemee at 12:01 PM on June 21, 2013 [5 favorites]