Doing Business in India: The Importance of Cultural DNA
by Gurnek Bains, co-founder and chairman of YSC
One of our consultants was working with an American team of a company that was acquired by an Indian-owned group. A senior executive from India was sent over to help turn the business’s performance around, as it had been threatened with closure unless things improved. The consultant found the Indian executive to be a talented and incisive individual who had a clear, nonnegotiable view of what needed to be done. He regarded the culture in the American subsidiary as soft, overly focused on consensus, and prophesied the collapse of the business unless it changed. However, the executive had built virtually no relationships with other members of the senior team—and as a consequence, his strongly held views, while creating ripples of tension and consternation in almost every meeting, gained only modest acceptance and traction within the business.
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Excerpted from Cultural DNA – The Psychology of Globalization (Wiley) by Gurnek Bains, co-founder and chairman of YSC, a corporate psychology consultancy with 20 offices around the world.
