Best Practices in Managing Cross Cultural Concerns

Dear friends,

Today we will move quickly into the case study with the team I introduced you to yesterday, with the names and positions held by each team member. We already know that:

- John is the Manager of the entire Mexico presence of his USA based corporation and is
National Manager of the Monterrey site. John's office is in Mexico City where he lives as well.
John travels to the jobsite twice a month unless concerns on the site require his presence.
To that information we add the following:
- Aimee is the Belgian team member and he lives and works ouside of Brussels, Belgium. He has
taken the engineering position with the team as his company has the contract to do the
engineering on the Monterrey, Mexico jobsite. Aimee will travel once a month for a week to
the Monterrey site and otherwise he is available virtually. Aimee has a team made up of
engineers from his company some of whom are Mexican and many are German. The
engineering team is temporarily, for perhaps three years, living and working at the Monterry
site. Aimee reports to Edwin.
-Samir is the team member from India whose work is to create and maintain
the communications within the jobsite and to all other parts of the globe with vendors, end
users and all who wish to communicate with the facility in Monterrey. Samir reports to
Edwin and for three years will live in Monterrey near the jobsite.
-Edwin is the Norwegian team member who is the on site manager of the Monterrey site. Edwin
reports directly to John.
-Kevin Chu is the Taiwan team member who is responsible for all human resources in
Monterrey. He reports to Edwin and has a dotted line responsibility to John in Mexico City.
Kevin lives and works in Monrterrey and has global virtual contacts to fill the human resources
requirements.
- Maurizio is the Italian team member and he is responsible for all procurement for the
Monterrey job site. Murizio lives temporarily in Monterrey near the jobsite and reports to
Edwin. Maurizio's company has the contract for the hunman resources requirements for the
Monterrey project.
-Andrejs is the Lithuanian member of the team who is the financial officer in Mexico, working for
the parent company in Cincinnati, Ohio. Andrejs has a home and family in Cincinnati, Ohio, but
for now all of his family are with him in Mexico City for the three years that the project in
Monterrey will require. Andrejs was born, raised and educated in Luthuania and is now a USA
citizen.

Why are all of these details important in the case study?

The concern that has arisen on the jobsite is that there is a problem with two of the vendors supplying electrical materials to the Monterrey jobsite. The quality of the materials being delivered to the jobsite are a full two grades lower than what was negotiated by Kevin Chu and his procurement team. Secondly one of these same vendors is delivering the below grade materials at least two weeks late, so not in the timely manner set out in the procurement agreement.

With Best Practice Number One in mind as described in yesterday's blog entry, namely the fundamental importance of creating an awareness in each team member of what is a cross cultural concern on the global work site, what do you see as potential issues that will be part of the resolution of the procurement issues that have arisen on the Monterrey project?

Until tomorrow for further discussion and sharing of the case study for this Cyberweek 2010,

Jane

Jane E. Smith
LiSimba Consulting Services Inc.
Building Relationships for International Business Success
www.lisimba.com
jsmith@lisimba.com
Telephone: 612-802-1240