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With cultural dimensions such as Power Distance, Individualism, Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Long Term Orientation as she sites the research of professor Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede, Michael Minkov and their research teams.
Jennifer brings her years of experience as a Business Analyst, Change Manager, and QA in a Global organization as well as some research by country helping us to understand the different cultures we are working with.
Show Notes:
- Host: Ron Smith
- Contact info for Jennifer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferbedell/
- Referenced Material: https://www.hofstede-insights.com/models/national-culture/
Audio Attribution:
- license
- title: JENNY’S THEME
- creator: Jason Shaw
- audio source
- changes were not made
- Music: www.hooksounds.com
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Ron is a Project Manager with Chalder Consulting Inc. www.chalder.ca
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/rondsmith
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Transcription of Interview
Ron: [00:00:03] This is the managing project’s podcast with your host Ron Smith. Join me as I talk practitioners and thought leaders in the world of project management and related topics. Visit managingprojects.ca for more information.
Jennifer: [00:00:18] Welcome to the third episode of managing projects. Today we have Jennifer Bedell from Halifax who’s working with ADP. Jennifer will be presenting at project world that is happening in Moncton New Brunswick on November 27 and her title is managing change in a global environment. Let’s get to the interview.
Ron: [00:00:40] Good morning Jennifer Badell.
Jennifer: [00:00:43] Good morning Ron. How are you today.
Ron: [00:00:45] I’m very good. I’m very good. How are you.
Ron: [00:00:48] I’m great. I got a good night’s sleep last night so it’s awesome.
Ron: [00:00:53] I was reading your profile on the conference page and your profile mentions that you work for a global company ADP and you’re often on calls in the wee hours of the morning. Midnight calls and then and 6:00 a.m. calls that you must be or you must be a fan of the coffee!
Jennifer: [00:01:13] I do like my coffee or my tea as the day prescribes. But yeah. I mean it does happen on occasion that all have these conference calls very late. And again early morning. I try to avoid that whenever possible. But when you’re working globally Sometimes this happens and you might just have a nap in the middle of the afternoon to make up for it.
Ron: [00:01:36] Yeah. Most of my experience has been around Indian based companies when I have calls at night. So I can totally relate. You’re a trooper. You’re a trooper for doing that.
Jennifer: [00:01:49] You know one of the advantages that we have actually is a lot of our colleagues in India are working shift work so that they’ll sometimes do the late nights and we get to work during the day. So it’s OK because it helps you know they’re good.
Ron: [00:02:01] They’re good to do that. From your bio 15 years experience in business analysis, change management, and quality assurance. I understand that the presentation you’re giving which is on Monday November 27th Moncton New Brunswick. The presentation that you’re going to give is titled managing change in a global environment. You seem to be the the perfect person to give this talk! Tell me a little bit about why you’re giving the talk and maybe a little taste for for people see if they might want to attend your session.
Jennifer: [00:02:34] Sure. So I picked this topic mostly because hey it’s what I do. A lot of it I learned kind of by doing and being introduced into a global organization and basically kind of jumping in with both feet and starting to meet with people across the different regions. As the topic suggests it’s managing change across a global organization and some of the things that I’ve found is depending on who I’m working with or what area of the world I happen to be working with, as I’m introducing something new I’m getting very different responses. So I did a little bit of research and found a gentleman by the name of Geert Hofstede. I think I’m pronouncing it correctly. He’s actually from the Netherlands. And he did research beginning in the 60s on some different dimensions of national cultures. So when he came up with six different categories of how different countries collectively handle certain situations or certain types of things. So it’s not to say that everybody in that country behaves that way or thinks of things that way. But generally speaking he’s found some some commonalities with the people in that particular country. And I’ll give you one example of one of the things that I’ve noticed. Power distance is one of the dimensions that he talks about and he’s got graphs on his Web site that will show you where the different countries fit. The countries that are generally dealing with are Canada, US. I’m dealing with Prague, Czech Republic quite a bit and and China as well. So one of the things that I found in terms of power distance it basically means how accepting is that culture of inequalities and power. So for example a director has more authority or more power than a manager. And in China that’s extremely high. So when I’m introducing a change in China, I go to a director and I say we need to we need to start doing things this way. The director will instruct their team and the team will take it up and just do it no questions asked. Where as in Canada and US that power distance is much lower. So here it’s going to be well you know I just don’t really want to. Why do I have to do it. I look at the way it was. So very different responses just based on that one dimension.
Ron: [00:05:25] That’s really interesting. So you’re bringing me back a little bit so it sort of mentioned that I did a little bit outsourced work. I did work with an Indian outsourcer. And what struck me in the work that surprised me was that they didn’t want to bring bad news up the chain to authority.
Jennifer: [00:05:46] Yes.
Ron: [00:05:47] And I found that so I found that out the hard way. It was it’s a shame. Maybe I should have listened to your session ten years ago. All the companies around are dealing with some kind of Indian outsourcer model. It was a very difficult lesson to learn because they literally didn’t want to tell you what the problems were. You couldn’t help them.
Jennifer: [00:06:13] Yeah. And on the other side of it when you’re talking about asking for a change or introducing a change you’ll hear Oh yes no problem we’ll do this very agreeable. when you check back in a month, it hasn’t been done but they don’t want a challenge right. It’s just not.
Ron: [00:06:36] I knew that they were working really really long hours and they really wanted to please you and try their hardest but they didn’t want to be seen as not being able to do it.
Jennifer: [00:06:47] So yeah and I’ll just highlight what the six different dimensions are I don’t go into the detail on all of them in my talk but I do I do touch on the ones that affect response to change. The dimensions are power distance which I said is acceptance of inequalities and power. Individualism which is kind of like every man for himself whether it’s sort of that it takes a village to raise a child or not. There is masculinity which is kind of a tough one to understand or even explain in today’s society but it’s the word that was used to describe basically whether a culture is more caring or more you know assertive. Uncertainty avoidance is how willing to accept something that is being introduced if you don’t have all the details. Long term orientation: are you willing to accept kind of a short term pain for long term gain. Indulgence versus restraint. You can probably guess where we are in North America on that one.
[00:08:05] You’ve been listening to the Managing Projects podcast. Be sure to visit us @ ManagingProjects.ca for show notes including links to books and resources mentioned. And don’t forget to sign up for email notifications so you are the first to know about new episodes. You can also follow us on Twitter @Manage_proj. If you enjoyed the show please leave a review on ITunes as it helps other people to discover the podcast. Thanks for listening.