What Nelly learned from Pachisi's project

At the begginning of the project, I didn't get a clue about the goal of the project.
After watching Outsourced which was a nice movie full of good intentions, i tried to put myself onto Todd shoes.
As far as I have chosen international business at studies, I'm fully open to globalization and regular delocation of the workforce.

Working on Pachisi, especially with a team which was physically far away from me was pretty challenging.
Because beside the fact that we couldn't manage to have a conference call, we manage to submit the project before the deadline.
And I'm quite satisfy about what we managed to do.
The project helped me to have more informations about the taiwanese culture, the people the business behaviour and perception of time, life and work.

Obviously from UCR side everything was pretty well organized.
Here in France, it was much more difficult to get people together on the project.

Defenetly this experience was really good because i was far to expect, i could have manage to work that way; now I now distance is not a barrier to business. Nowadays with communication facilities we can do really great.

To conclude the french team was quite inexistant an UCR pretty well managed especially by Kathy and Maggi who devoted theirself and did an amazing job.

It was a really good experience and I'm happy I did it; I will even welcome the opportunity to work on such a project again in the future.

By the end of the project, I discoverered a new way to work in team and one of the biggest challenge for me was actually to get together that way and develop a project with a simple idea of relocation.

My thoughts of the outsourcing project

It was really unexpected that we finished our outsourcing project!! I could still think of the beginning of the project. I totally had no idea what we were gonna do. What’s the project outline? What would we have to shape the wiki blog? How would we present our project? There were too many questions in my mind. All we could do was put the information we found on the wiki, and then manage our project gradually. It was totally a different, special and interesting experience from other courses. Luckily, we did it finally with the French team.

The most difficult part of the project was that worked with the team on the other side of the earth. At the beginning, I felt that the French team was so lazy and had so many excuses (just as Hongling post the stereotype that Taiwanese see French…haha!) It’s true that we had different time and different schedule. However, things went better after the French team did the midterm. Although we never had interaction with the two member of the French team, at least we all talked to Nelly on line together. That was an improvement and the French team did a lot contribution on the wiki.

Another difficulty was that this was an online work. We did everything online! This could be awful or could be awesome. It might hard to know others thoughts by typing words. It may mislead us.
By experiencing this international work, I leaned that communication was a key factor. We have to try to know others including their backgrounds and cultures before we start. Then we can know how to schedule the work will be more effective.

What I thought about the outsourcing project

This was a rather unique experience. Class is interesting in itself in that we are so multicultural. I think I am very spoiled having grown up in California, where nobody looks the same and where everybody has some type of different background. It is weird to think that in some places everyone looks the same and does the same thing. Stereotypes...I guess I fall into them myself--NorCal, veggie, eco-friendly, over-educated?
Anyway, after getting beyond the stereotypes and the generalizations is when we really get to learn about individuals. It is hard to learn about people when they are on a different continent nine hours ahead and even harder to work with them. I started out stereotyping the "French" until I realized we weren't working with French people. We were working with a diverse group of people from all over. Communication was the main difficulty and the lack of clarity with the project made it hard to focus. But we overcame and succeeded and now we just have to finish up.
Things I wish we would have done or that I should have thought about in the beginning:
1. Logistics, really engaging the French. I know hindsight is 20/20, but we could have gotten more organized and more cohesive sooner. Also, having contact earlier might have gotten everybody involved.
2. A plan. We were feeling around in the dark, trying to figure things out on the fly. We should have started out with a strategy, and a goal, but we didn't . We put a lot of work and energy into the website before we knew what we were doing. We came up with some good ideas, but they would have been executed so much better if we had planned.

My thoughts on the outsourcing project

Finally, we finish our outsourcing project. My first feeling, international project is hard, a lot harder to conduct than I thought. Too many uncertainties are involving in the whole process. For our management training, we all know uncertainty is bad for most types of business because it generates additional risk for the performance. Our management job is to keep the company’s operation under the control that minimizes the risk at all cost. But in an international environment, this is almost impossible because not everything can be under your control when you are dealing with international business affair. There is physical distance, time difference, culture difference, and many other barriers, you name it. The final result is not only decided by your effort, your team effort, but also someone else that you never know in your life before. I am a very conservative type person, and I hate this kind of feeling. When the project nears the deadline without any process from other side, it feels like the worst time ever.

In order to complete a international project with teams in different region,

First, keep the ideas flowing between the teams. Teams need to set a good communication channel, and the frequent communication is mandatory in order to complete a good project in time. Our leader Cathy is really doing a great job to keep our French’s teammate up on the pace with us.

Second, a big picture with a complete general guideline for the project is necessary before team members take their role in the project. Without a good understanding of the common goals and missions, team won’t develop a good project in time. This outsourcing project develops really slow at the beginning because no one has the idea what it should looks like, or how it should be done. The international project must generate a common goal that gives common motive between teams.

Third, take the advantage of the internet technology. This is my first class that 90% of the works are done online. We are chatting on MSN, exchanging files through e-mail, developing our projects on Wiki. Honestly, I really like it, a very efficient approach to finish things. No wasting on any sort of resources, including time.

Last, there is no such thing as common standards across culture. Every culture is different, and culture makes people different. Never assume you knew something before you actually study it, and study hard. Online resources only provide you opinions, not the true answers. Different resources are publishing different opinions toward the same topic. Some are correct information, others will only lead you to the wrong direction. I will never forget the Mona’s reaction on how she is rejecting one of the team’s presentation on Arabic world. We have to change our point of view when we are dealing with foreign culture. We must allow us to stand in their position to seek the answer for the question. Our outsourcing project achieves it.

I think us, Pachisi team, done a great job.

What Maggie learned from Outsourcing Project?

This oursourcing project has been started for a month. Honestly, it's not easy to do this project with team mates at another side of the earth.

The first and the main reason I think is that no one exactly knew how to do it and how it should look like. But good thing was that all teams put their works online. So we sometimes went to visit other teams' website, combined all their ideas and then added ours to finish the homework.

Another reason is that the time difference. We had only one discussions with French members on GTalk. Neither did we, they didn't clearly understand the whold structure and the frame of the project.

I heard from other teams that they finished all work by themselves, without French members' any help. Luckily, we had three French members who contributed a lot to this project at the fianl two weeks. But another two members.....we, and even those three French members, just didn't know where they were. It's a problem for international project to successfully move on if we can't find the right access to commnicate with each other. Though we all have internet, it's still hard to get them and make they work together.

But just like Dr. Pence said, we need to find out the reason French memebrs were not interested in this project. Perhaps we didn't let them know what their roles were, and how they could help. After Cathy send out the survey to all of us, we were more clearly understand the roles of each other. Nelly, the leader of French team, made the time schedule on wetpaint so that everyone could know what should be done at what time. Thus, we knew what we could expect to see every week. What I learned is to make all messages visible and understandable to all. Get things transparent so others could come in to help.

One more thing just came thought my mind. All homework in this class are demaned to finish online. The process of discussion, the decision making, and the result should all be put online and shared with others. Though it's comfortable to stay in warm and cozy bedroom and discussed homework on MSN, I may still prefer to meet face-to-face :( Primarily because it easier to express some ideas with hand gestures or by drawing the frames on paper/whiteboard. On MSN, sometimes conversation splited into different topics and hard to focus on any of them and connect all pieces of message together.


Over all, we finished the Outsourcing project!!!!! This experience is a good lesson for me to work with others in the virtual/digital world. Now I know what problems I may confront and what could I do to make the process better. I also know that I still have lots to learn and to figure out the better alternatives of those problems.

To the finish line!

Hi All,

Things are coming together. Thanks for all of the hard work. If anybody needs help, just let me know. We were reminded in class yesterday to make this personal. Nelly, Mimoza, and Hongling:you all came to France as outsiders. What was your first impression of a French manager? You will have gone through a similar experience as to how our "manager" will be seen by the Taiwanese. Beyond that, what happens to a French manager when you take him away from France?
good luck

Stereotype

I almost could take part in the meeting last night, then I got some message from Nelly about the conversation, seems you had a great time!

Here is an approach of stereotypes about French with taiwanese eyes,  and I also added stereotypes about Taiwanese, wish it would be helpful.

The taiwanese see the French as…

 

1. Lazy: Frenchs are lazy, even they have lot of  vocations, they still always on strike.
2.  They are rude and anti-american, they don`t want to speak english, distent and difficult to meet.
3. Dirty: they don`t take show often, French women use perfume instead of taking a bath. Most of the public toilets in France are unacceptable.
4. All french people are smoke sigarettes.
5. Visiting franch is too expensive.
6. French men are always chaising women and they are very romantic.

 

The French see the taiwanese as…

 

1. Reticent: They always keep thing inside, hard to communicate.
2. Unthinking they think only when they are in group.
3. They work too much, they don`t know how to enjoy life.
4. They are complicated, a word for this stereotype in French is “Chinoiserie.”