Being Multicultural Heikki Hietala HAAGA-HELIA

Why am I here? Because Taru thought I might be able to tell a story or two And because I have a varied and multicultural job history My education is Master of Arts (English Philology, Computer Science, Communication), University of Jyväskylä, 1993 Short multicultural CV: – Microsoft , Dublin, Ireland – McKinsey & Company , New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, München, Singapore, London, Paris, Silicon Valley – Lionbridge 2003, Tampere

The most important thing On slide 1, I will reveal what is the most important thing ever: - LEARN - The best thing about multicultural work is the opportunity to learn – Things – Attitudes – Methods – New ways to think and act

Things Finland is small and very efficient Many other countries handle things like time, office equipment, travel, schedules etc. Very differently Be prepared not to be surprised by anything Also, do not think the Finnish way is always the best – It may be efficient and effective, but it may not get the best result – And when outside of Finland, you are a guest somewhere, so don’t force-feed your own opinions to people

Attitudes You will be surprised by the attitudes that people have on almost everything There is nothing you can do about attitudes – Bear in mind they are continental, national, related to location, and personal What you can do is see how they affect the work, and more importantly, the results That you can do a lot about, by showing how results can be made better with adjustment of attitudes.

Methods Methods are, like attitudes, national and related to line of business German IT professionals are very different from Indian IT pros That difference in methods can be used to your own advantage, as soon as you understand why people act as they do Then you can adjust your own way of working to suit the counterparts That makes them feel good, because they don’t have to adjust, but in a way, you play them on.

First example – Microsoft teamwork Main Job: localize Excel 3.0 into Finnish with focus on function-based macro language Secondary job: help Italians who simply could not understand dialog box localization, without knowing any Italian Team: only Finn in a team of 12 people Key learnings: – Focus on the task – You will never know everything – Act nice to people, otherwise they will not act nice to you – Do not walk with your hands in your own pockets – Share all you learn, because then you learn some more Swedish Excel 3.0a – listen in - share

McKinsey & the IT bubble Job: webmaster for E-Commerce intranet site Team: me, myself and I Responsibilities: global Key learnings: – Be yourself. Be a Finn if you are, and don’t apologise. – Let everyone else be whatever they are – Focus on the task, not on the team, and bring all your own knowledge to the task – Respect the others’ background and skills Brewed with Perkele Brewed with Perkele - Smiling Indians – Rafiq and conflict management

Lionbridge - circus 55 team members, 36 languages and nationalities Extreme pressure from client to get test results Key learnings – Focus on the task – Let nationalities be visible as soon as you have results – Think of ways to bring people closer to each other even if there is no clear way to make teams – Think of things outside everyone’s national interests – Be courteous, tolerant, and observant of other people’s religion, but do not let that get into conflict with the task at hand Pesäpallo as team sport – prayer room – unclean disk drive

Make things easy for yourself Be confident in your own cultural background. – Finns have long been thinking they are inferior to Swedes and others, but that is simply not true. Enjoy getting to learn new cultures. – What can you possibly lose by understanding why and how someone else does something? Try to have fun while you work. – The silliest things sometimes make a difference (I translated Finnish idioms literally when needed, and it worked: instead of saying ”I have a vested interest”, I said, ”I have my own cow in the ditch”. Imagine the surprise, and I got their undivided attention. – (If you want to hear about the fox’s tail in the armpit, just ask)

And these too Learn to bang your own drum – Finns are bad at this too, but they are getting better at it – If you do contribute something, make sure you own it later on too Think twice before speaking out on a negative issue – Many cultures handle negative feedback very differently from Finns. We just say it up front, but India and Asia as a whole are absolutely from a different planet on this – You must be able to deal with negative issues, but learn to do it so

Final words Praise in public, complain in private – If you absolutely must give negative feedback that is beyond daily things, never do that publicly – You never know how the tables will turn one day And the key thing is this: ~ YOU are the world’s best YOU ~ No one can take your place, so enjoy it, make it work for you, and have fun while doing it