As mentioned in the previous blogpost, we want to enlighten the great possibilities to work in teams with a variety of cultures and time-zones. When working with TIQQE, you will work with four nationalities from three countries and in two time-zones. We are Swedes, Philippines, Italians and Chinese. And we’re really, really, proud of that.
So, to manage that kind of spread, both geographically and culture wise, how do we at TIQQE work to overcome the gaps and misinterpretations that (of course) comes with that?
Let us start with our friends in the Philippines. When they onboard a team, they will attend a ”Western Culture” training. And Yes. It’s needed.
Because no matter from what angle you look at us in Sweden from the outside, we do things differently., We might think that the way we do things (everything between how we want to be managed and lead to how we’re running companies) is the norm for the world, but believe me. It’s not.
So when a manager from Sweden says ”I would really appreciate if I can have that piece of work on my desk on Wednesday”. We actually mean that ”I expect that it will be on my desk on Wednesday”. This can be interpreted in two ways, depending on the receiver. If it’s a Swedish person – he or she will have it done by Wednesday. If it’s a person from any other culture, it’s probably not that important since it’s just appreciated so it might wait until next week. To say the least, we Swedes are not always so crisp in our communication.
When we recruit into teams, we look at your personality, competence, how nice you are, your willingness to learn new things and your ability to grasp and understand the business that you’re going to work for. We found that teams where there’s a mixture of personalities, time-zones and competences are the strongest. Therefor we’re not looking for a copy of anyone already amongst us, we’re looking for unique people.
So that’s before. What happens when you start?
Lets say that you’re about to be part of a TIQQE-team. You’ve been interviewed and the team wants you to start. First thing is that there is a ”meet and greet” where you just sit down and converse with your new team-members. The human connection is essential for succeeding.
You will get an overview of the plan within the project so you will get an understanding for the work, and together with the team you will find a ”Goldielock-task” that you can execute (not to hard and not to easy) so that you feel that you’re contributing and that it’s not that scary with the new assignment.
We have a goal that a new team-member should be able to deploy something into the AT-environment the first day.
This is how we do our team-introduction. Both very simple and quite difficult.
Now you might wonder how we work and make sure we stay connected during our days?
To get the inside-story, look out for part three!
Read the first part here
