[00:00.000 --> 00:11.200] And without further ado, I will now turn it over to yield the floor to Claude. [00:11.200 --> 00:12.200] Thank you very much, sir. [00:12.200 --> 00:13.200] Can you hear me? [00:13.200 --> 00:14.200] Does this work? [00:14.200 --> 00:15.200] All right. [00:15.200 --> 00:16.200] It's working. [00:16.200 --> 00:17.200] Thank you. [00:17.200 --> 00:18.200] Okay. [00:18.200 --> 00:22.800] I'm here today to talk about cultural relativism as a prism for constructing cross-cultural [00:22.800 --> 00:24.800] communities. [00:24.800 --> 00:30.200] And let me start first by saying that the opinions expressed in this talk are mine. [00:30.200 --> 00:36.040] They don't necessarily reflect FOSDEM, my employer, or the projects that I work on. [00:36.040 --> 00:42.480] And in the course of this talk, there may be images or phrases that offend, but any [00:42.480 --> 00:47.760] such offense comes from lack of knowledge on my part and is unintentional. [00:47.760 --> 00:49.760] So who am I? [00:49.760 --> 00:52.280] I'm Claude Warren. [00:52.280 --> 00:54.920] I am a member of the Apache Foundation. [00:54.920 --> 00:58.760] I've been a member and a leader of cross-cultural teams. [00:58.760 --> 01:01.680] You can see my social media links there. [01:01.680 --> 01:03.560] I'm not on Wikipedia. [01:03.560 --> 01:04.560] That's my father. [01:04.560 --> 01:08.480] And if you look my father up, you will also find a link to my mother. [01:08.480 --> 01:12.720] And if you look them both up, you will find that they went to Northwestern University [01:12.720 --> 01:18.680] where they became immersed in the practice and theory of cultural relativism. [01:18.680 --> 01:22.840] They were students of Melville Herskovitz, who was himself a student of Franz Boas, [01:22.840 --> 01:28.240] who we will get to in a moment, but just tries it to say that both of my parents were cultural [01:28.240 --> 01:33.120] relativists and I grew up in a framework of cultural relativism. [01:33.120 --> 01:37.440] So let's start by defining culture. [01:37.440 --> 01:39.160] Culture is learned behavior. [01:39.160 --> 01:41.760] It's what you learn in your social framework. [01:41.760 --> 01:47.120] So it's what you learn from your family, from your friends, from your school, your city, [01:47.120 --> 01:51.000] your state, your country, they all have culture that influences you and helps you develop your [01:51.000 --> 02:00.960] culture, activities you participate in, any place that people gather, you develop a culture. [02:00.960 --> 02:06.920] So as an example, culture is not that you eat, but what you eat. [02:06.920 --> 02:10.120] On the left here is a picture of a durian fruit. [02:10.120 --> 02:12.040] Comes from South East Asia. [02:12.040 --> 02:15.360] There are signs in the Singapore transit stations that say don't bring this in the station, [02:15.360 --> 02:17.640] don't bring it on the vehicles. [02:17.640 --> 02:21.560] It's an acquired taste, I tried to acquire it, I couldn't. [02:21.560 --> 02:28.160] I'm told that it is just absolutely lovely once you've acquired that taste, but to me [02:28.160 --> 02:34.320] it smells like rotting flesh and I couldn't get past it. [02:34.320 --> 02:37.760] So the second one obviously is a cow. [02:37.760 --> 02:42.960] Most of the people in this room are going to look at that cow and say cow, milk, cheese, [02:42.960 --> 02:47.800] butter, maybe leather, beef perhaps. [02:47.800 --> 02:59.720] But if you're Hindu, that's a sacred animal and none of those things will come to mind. [02:59.720 --> 03:06.120] So let's look at another culturally determined perception. [03:06.120 --> 03:11.640] So it's not that you perceive time, but how you perceive it. [03:11.640 --> 03:19.240] So the Amaya people in the high Andes perceive time that the past is in front of them. [03:19.240 --> 03:22.560] So for about seven generations as they're talking about people, they will speak as though [03:22.560 --> 03:27.520] that person is in front of them and then beyond that time goes left to right. [03:27.520 --> 03:30.920] But this means that the future is behind them. [03:30.920 --> 03:37.760] So for us, back to the future is a great play on words and a fantastic movie title. [03:37.760 --> 03:43.960] For the Amaya, it's the way they perceive time, it's the normal way to perceive things. [03:43.960 --> 03:50.600] So to tell somebody from the Amaya culture to go forward to the future would sound just [03:50.600 --> 03:55.960] as ridiculous as somebody telling us to go backwards to the future. [03:55.960 --> 04:01.920] Okay, so now that we have some idea of the kinds of things that are involved in culture, [04:01.920 --> 04:05.120] let's look at cultural relativism. [04:05.120 --> 04:10.640] So cultural relativism is the idea that you can only understand beliefs and practices from [04:10.640 --> 04:13.840] within the construct of the culture itself. [04:13.840 --> 04:18.960] Now this is separate from moral relativism, which we're not going to talk about today. [04:18.960 --> 04:24.000] Cultural relativism has been used recently to make arguments for the continuation of [04:24.000 --> 04:28.880] human rights offenses on the grounds that are culturally based. [04:28.880 --> 04:35.320] And anthropology, cultural relativism is a means to get outside of your culture and [04:35.320 --> 04:36.320] understand another. [04:36.320 --> 04:40.600] So it's how do you step outside of your culture and get rid of those biases so that you can [04:40.600 --> 04:44.160] understand what's happening in another culture. [04:44.160 --> 04:48.840] But for people who are managing cross-cultural teams or multicultural teams, we can use cultural [04:48.840 --> 04:54.200] relativism as a prism through which we can discover miscommunication and we can discuss [04:54.200 --> 05:00.080] interactions between members. [05:00.080 --> 05:06.480] Cultural relativism was first defined as a, first recorded as a concept by Herodotus, [05:06.480 --> 05:11.000] who was a Greek historian from 484 to 425 BCE. [05:11.000 --> 05:14.400] And he was writing about Darius the Great. [05:14.400 --> 05:20.000] And Darius the Great was a Persian ruler from 522 to 486 BCE. [05:20.000 --> 05:24.520] Darius was inquiring about funerary customs in his empire, and as you can see, his empire [05:24.520 --> 05:26.880] was fairly vast. [05:26.880 --> 05:32.640] Now it turns out that in the eastern edge of his empire, the funerary custom was funerary [05:32.640 --> 05:34.520] cannibalism. [05:34.520 --> 05:37.440] And on the western edge, it was cremation. [05:37.440 --> 05:43.440] And when those two populations were told about the custom of the other population, they [05:43.440 --> 05:48.840] both were dismayed and abhorred the other process. [05:48.840 --> 05:55.880] This is the first recorded case of this concept of cultural relativism. [05:55.880 --> 06:02.920] Now it was established as axiomatic in anthropology in the early 20th century by Franz Boas. [06:02.920 --> 06:09.640] Franz Boas was appointed professor of anthropology at Columbia University in states in 1899. [06:09.640 --> 06:12.600] He is called the father of American anthropology. [06:12.600 --> 06:19.560] And he first articulated the idea of cultural relativism in 1887. [06:19.560 --> 06:21.760] But he didn't coin the term. [06:21.760 --> 06:23.360] That felt of Alan Locke. [06:23.360 --> 06:29.120] Now Alan Locke is a distinguished, is the first African American Rhodes scholar. [06:29.120 --> 06:36.440] He was reviewing this book by Robert Lowey. [06:36.440 --> 06:41.880] And Robert Lowey was a student of Franz Boas and was writing about cultural relativism. [06:41.880 --> 06:45.520] He was a cultural relativist as opposed to a cultural evolutionist, which was popular [06:45.520 --> 06:48.440] in the Victorian era. [06:48.440 --> 06:54.640] And when reviewing this book, Alan Locke was talking about Robert Lowey's extreme cultural [06:54.640 --> 06:55.640] relativism. [06:55.640 --> 06:59.600] And that's the first time the phrase occurs in print. [06:59.600 --> 07:03.800] Okay, so why do we care about cultural relativism? [07:03.800 --> 07:09.440] Well, we care about cultural relativism because the tools that anthropologists and ethnographers [07:09.440 --> 07:20.240] built to understand the culture, we can use to find the friction points between cultures [07:20.240 --> 07:23.280] in our cross-cultural teams. [07:23.280 --> 07:27.160] And those friction points are going to lead to misunderstandings. [07:27.160 --> 07:32.640] And misunderstandings can lead to a cohesive breakdown within the team where people on [07:32.640 --> 07:37.520] the team think they're being undercut or that other people are working against them, sabotaging [07:37.520 --> 07:39.720] their efforts. [07:39.720 --> 07:42.760] It can also lead to a misunderstanding of what your work assignment is. [07:42.760 --> 07:45.680] What is it that we're trying to build? [07:45.680 --> 07:50.840] And if you get that wrong, your app to build the wrong tool altogether and your project [07:50.840 --> 07:55.960] will have high potential to fail. [07:55.960 --> 08:00.320] And as I said, it can cause failure of the project. [08:00.320 --> 08:07.000] So let's look at a couple of examples of cultural relativism in action. [08:07.000 --> 08:08.000] Poplight. [08:08.000 --> 08:14.960] Well, as it says here, with the exception of people with color vision deficiencies, everybody [08:14.960 --> 08:16.920] perceives color the same way. [08:16.920 --> 08:25.200] The light enters your eye, hits the cone, nerves fire, brain gets the message, color. [08:25.200 --> 08:29.120] Except some languages have no word for the color green. [08:29.120 --> 08:34.440] They instead use the color yellow or blue. [08:34.440 --> 08:40.640] So for those cultures that use those languages, stoplight only has two colors. [08:40.640 --> 08:46.000] And the phrase go on green makes no sense. [08:46.000 --> 08:51.800] In Irish, the color of a person is the color of their hair. [08:51.800 --> 08:52.800] Okay? [08:52.800 --> 08:58.960] So Eric the red, okay, he was an Irish, but you get the idea. [08:58.960 --> 09:04.360] If you want to speak about a person of color, so a dark, complexed person, that person [09:04.360 --> 09:07.520] is blue. [09:07.520 --> 09:16.400] So the translation of black lives matter and blue lives matter into Irish becomes the same [09:16.400 --> 09:19.240] phrase, right? [09:19.240 --> 09:26.040] So a distinction that is so important and so prevalent in American U.S. culture is lost [09:26.040 --> 09:31.000] in translation. [09:31.000 --> 09:38.600] So talk about icons, phrases, and gestures are all culturally centered and that is rather [09:38.600 --> 09:42.840] obnoxious, so let me make him stop. [09:42.840 --> 09:50.760] All right, so the thumbs up gesture generally means okay, all good, let's proceed, something [09:50.760 --> 09:53.360] along that line, some sort of approval. [09:53.360 --> 10:00.040] However, in some cultures that is a rude gesture. [10:00.040 --> 10:04.880] In ancient Rome, it was contrary to popular belief, the symbol that the gladiator should [10:04.880 --> 10:07.920] be put to death. [10:07.920 --> 10:19.360] In addition, in online forums, the definition has begun to modify and it is changing from [10:19.360 --> 10:25.960] approval to really a passive aggressive way to shut down a conversation. [10:25.960 --> 10:34.040] So all of this indicates that symbols, the meaning of symbols drifts over time and space. [10:34.040 --> 10:40.600] Now I moved from the U.S. to Ireland a little over 10 years ago and discovered that there [10:40.600 --> 10:45.200] are two countries separated by a common language. [10:45.200 --> 10:51.680] For example, the phrase just about, as in I just about caught the bus. [10:51.680 --> 10:56.720] Now in the U.S., you would say I just about caught the bus, that means I ran after it [10:56.720 --> 11:00.520] and it left without me, I missed it. [11:00.520 --> 11:05.080] In Ireland, I just about caught the bus means I ran after it and my gosh, I managed to get [11:05.080 --> 11:08.600] on the thing and I got a lift. [11:08.600 --> 11:15.720] So they describe the same phrase, both in English, both in the Western culture, describe [11:15.720 --> 11:22.160] two sides for opposite outcomes of the same event. [11:22.160 --> 11:27.320] So idioms are obviously another source of misunderstanding. [11:27.320 --> 11:33.680] So phrases like, there's more than one way to skin a cat, which means there's more than [11:33.680 --> 11:41.640] one solution and is perfectly acceptable in a lot of cultures, but there is obviously [11:41.640 --> 11:48.200] a chance of misunderstanding here, I actually had somebody ask me why would you skin a cat? [11:48.200 --> 11:56.760] Valid question, but I don't know, it's just one of those things I learned in my culture. [11:56.760 --> 12:01.360] And then we'll get to the nodding head guy now, in general we think of that as the nodding [12:01.360 --> 12:07.720] head meaning yes, but in Bulgarian culture that means no, and in fact shaking your head [12:07.720 --> 12:12.800] from side to side means yes, go figure. [12:12.800 --> 12:18.600] Now one more example here is that in some cultures it is acceptable and appropriate to [12:18.600 --> 12:24.120] interject a short word at the end of sentences of speakers during expositions. [12:24.120 --> 12:27.760] So this indicates that you're listening, you're paying attention. [12:27.760 --> 12:33.480] Now in English you can see this when people say yes at the end of somebody's sentence [12:33.480 --> 12:35.920] all the time. [12:35.920 --> 12:40.720] The BBC television show Antiques Roadshow has examples of this all the time. [12:40.720 --> 12:45.520] This is a very valuable place, yes, yes, they know that, but they're just, you know, let's [12:45.520 --> 12:47.600] keep the conversation going. [12:47.600 --> 12:54.200] However, in other cultures that's considered very rude to interrupt your speaker. [12:54.200 --> 13:05.960] My example three, there are words and phrases that are unacceptable in certain cultures. [13:05.960 --> 13:10.320] There are symbols and phrases that it would like to use them here would probably get me [13:10.320 --> 13:16.800] reported for a violation of the code of conduct and derail this entire conversation. [13:16.800 --> 13:22.440] Yet those words and phrases are acceptable in other cultural settings. [13:22.440 --> 13:28.320] So what cultural relativism teaches us is that when in a multicultural setting, if one [13:28.320 --> 13:40.040] is confused or triggered by a symbol, gesture or phrase, one should ask what it means. [13:40.040 --> 13:46.040] So Nelvo Herskovitz, judgments are based on experience and experience is interpreted [13:46.040 --> 13:48.680] by an individual in terms of their culture. [13:48.680 --> 13:56.880] As I said, Nelvo Herskovitz was a student of Franz Boaz and my parents' instructor. [13:56.880 --> 14:05.080] So let's look at a couple of examples of cultural relativism in cross-cultural teams. [14:05.080 --> 14:11.200] I worked on a project where we were transitioning the development from one culture to another, [14:11.200 --> 14:13.680] from one team to another. [14:13.680 --> 14:16.320] Really we're separate cultures. [14:16.320 --> 14:21.360] In the one receiving culture, it was not permissible to show failure. [14:21.360 --> 14:27.880] This was a career limiting move, don't fail, don't show failure. [14:27.880 --> 14:31.280] It was also not acceptable to disagree with somebody who was perceived to be of a higher [14:31.280 --> 14:34.600] rank or status. [14:34.600 --> 14:38.440] And we're trying to do open source development where everybody does everything in the public [14:38.440 --> 14:41.640] so that you can see what's happening. [14:41.640 --> 14:46.200] So this was a problem for us as we're trying to move this across. [14:46.200 --> 14:52.280] And so we came up with a couple of techniques that we used in this project to get around [14:52.280 --> 14:53.280] this problem. [14:53.280 --> 14:55.200] And the first problem was actually understanding what the problem was. [14:55.200 --> 14:58.800] You know, it was like, well, I don't want to check that into the source code control [14:58.800 --> 14:59.800] system. [14:59.800 --> 15:00.800] I don't want to do this. [15:00.800 --> 15:01.800] I don't want to do that. [15:01.800 --> 15:02.800] Why? [15:02.800 --> 15:03.800] Because we just don't do that. [15:03.800 --> 15:08.320] And then you have to work a little bit, you find out what the problems are at the base [15:08.320 --> 15:13.120] and figure out how you can work around this, work a solution. [15:13.120 --> 15:17.640] So what we did was we made it safe to fail, and we exhibited failures on the original [15:17.640 --> 15:18.640] team. [15:18.640 --> 15:21.440] And one of the things we did was, you know, our source code control system, you would [15:21.440 --> 15:24.440] check stuff in any branch, and it would build the branch. [15:24.440 --> 15:29.920] And most of the time, that's going to fail if you're working on a development branch. [15:29.920 --> 15:31.840] So we exhibited that. [15:31.840 --> 15:33.640] We showed you, look, this happens all the time. [15:33.640 --> 15:36.360] All of the developers that have been working on this team, this always happens. [15:36.360 --> 15:38.760] Don't worry about it. [15:38.760 --> 15:41.000] Nobody's going to look at your failures unless you ask them to. [15:41.000 --> 15:44.440] I mean, if you want somebody to come in and say, you say, I can't understand why this [15:44.440 --> 15:45.440] is failing. [15:45.440 --> 15:46.440] Can you help me out? [15:46.440 --> 15:47.440] They're going to come look. [15:47.440 --> 15:49.000] But otherwise, they're going to ignore that. [15:49.000 --> 15:50.000] Don't worry about it. [15:50.000 --> 15:51.000] It's safe. [15:51.000 --> 15:59.240] We pointed out that developers were not allowed to change the main branch of code, couldn't [15:59.240 --> 16:01.000] check stuff in directly to it. [16:01.000 --> 16:04.360] There really wasn't a way to break that. [16:04.360 --> 16:07.680] There were permission controls in place that were going to prohibit that. [16:07.680 --> 16:11.800] And in fact, if you were able to do that as a new developer, come in and put something [16:11.800 --> 16:15.920] in the main branch of code, then you had just found a bug in the permission system and you [16:15.920 --> 16:18.440] should be congratulated. [16:18.440 --> 16:23.480] We showed that all developers were following the same process. [16:23.480 --> 16:29.520] There weren't senior developers doing something different, had more ability to do stuff. [16:29.520 --> 16:33.000] We're developing code and they did have permission to do stuff that was different. [16:33.000 --> 16:40.720] But development of code, development of what the project was always the same for everybody. [16:40.720 --> 16:45.080] We also said that no code would be reviewed unless it was in the version control system. [16:45.080 --> 16:47.320] So this gave us the advantage we're a distributed team. [16:47.320 --> 16:50.080] You got to be able to look at the code and know that we're talking about the same code, [16:50.080 --> 16:55.200] the same lines, all of those great things that people we know about. [16:55.200 --> 17:01.200] And as a secondary effect of this, it meant that when desktops and laptops crashed, we [17:01.200 --> 17:06.640] had the code in the version control system, so a great benefit there. [17:06.640 --> 17:08.920] Nothing really out of the ordinary. [17:08.920 --> 17:14.000] We also made it safe to disagree. [17:14.000 --> 17:27.960] And doing this was probably an anathema to some agile purists here because we made it [17:27.960 --> 17:34.080] so that in the stand-up, we would have discussion and dissent. [17:34.080 --> 17:38.880] And so normally your agile thing is, what am I doing today, what did I do yesterday, [17:38.880 --> 17:41.560] what's blocking me, done. [17:41.560 --> 17:44.640] Now we're going to have discussion and dissent. [17:44.640 --> 17:50.320] And what this did was it meant that the new members were able to see how within the team [17:50.320 --> 17:54.880] we would discuss these issues and we would bring these problems up and talk about them [17:54.880 --> 18:00.240] and that this was okay, it was acceptable and over time they began to open up and to [18:00.240 --> 18:06.720] disagree and to present their perspectives on things and ask questions. [18:06.720 --> 18:13.800] And it really, they became very strong contributors to the project. [18:13.800 --> 18:20.440] And the other piece here is ask the questions and those indelicate questions need to be, [18:20.440 --> 18:25.840] it needs to be acceptable to ask indelicate questions. [18:25.840 --> 18:30.560] And this is because if I don't understand what you've said and I'm trying to understand [18:30.560 --> 18:41.880] that, at some point I'm going to ask a question that to you is going to be rude, not acceptable. [18:41.880 --> 18:45.840] And it needs to be okay for that to happen because we can't figure out where that point [18:45.840 --> 18:49.360] is and what that issue is if we can't talk about it. [18:49.360 --> 18:53.800] So you've got to be able to both ask the indelicate question and you've got to be ready to receive [18:53.800 --> 18:57.280] the indelicate question. [18:57.280 --> 19:04.960] Okay, so the net result here was we established a project culture. [19:04.960 --> 19:09.320] And the project culture wasn't, this is our culture and it's great, it's better, come [19:09.320 --> 19:10.960] do what we do. [19:10.960 --> 19:15.560] It was this is the culture of the project and let's make this work and let's all contribute [19:15.560 --> 19:18.840] to it and we can change the culture and do all of the things that we do. [19:18.840 --> 19:23.120] But make the culture of the project and live by that. [19:23.120 --> 19:32.320] So the second example, this all occurred in western culture and the conversation occurred [19:32.320 --> 19:33.320] on Slack. [19:33.320 --> 19:37.880] And basically there was a conference coming up and I said, what time do the doors open? [19:37.880 --> 19:42.760] I want to know what time do we start and close at the end of the day. [19:42.760 --> 19:45.840] And I was told, oh you go to this website and you'll see the times. [19:45.840 --> 19:53.200] So I went and I said, can't get there unless I'm registered. [19:53.200 --> 19:56.240] If you're not registered, why do you care? [19:56.240 --> 20:00.400] And so my co-workers came to me and said, well that was rather rude. [20:00.400 --> 20:06.400] And I thought, well, all right, yeah, I can see that as it could be rude. [20:06.400 --> 20:11.280] But I had worked with these guys for a number of years. [20:11.280 --> 20:14.440] They're planning a conference, they're under a lot of stress because we're getting close [20:14.440 --> 20:15.440] to the time. [20:15.440 --> 20:20.520] And they're trying to get through all their questions in a day to see, you know, you're [20:20.520 --> 20:23.040] coming in, you're going to get through all the questions, get those answers out the door, [20:23.040 --> 20:24.040] get to the next process. [20:24.040 --> 20:29.160] Let's see if we can get this project done and get this conference running. [20:29.160 --> 20:36.800] So the people I've known for a long time, and to me it would just take too long to say, [20:36.800 --> 20:40.840] I don't see why anyone attending, not attending the conference would be interested in starting [20:40.840 --> 20:41.840] times. [20:41.840 --> 20:43.520] Can you elaborate on why you want to know? [20:43.520 --> 20:44.520] All right. [20:44.520 --> 20:49.080] So yes, that would be a much politer way to say that. [20:49.080 --> 20:52.200] But I understood that they didn't have the time. [20:52.200 --> 20:59.480] So what I want to point out here is that the written word, it is often difficult to understand [20:59.480 --> 21:02.640] what's meant in the written word. [21:02.640 --> 21:08.320] You have no vocal or facial cues, and then I want to point out that those are culturally [21:08.320 --> 21:09.800] based as well. [21:09.800 --> 21:11.300] All right. [21:11.300 --> 21:18.960] So let's look at how to succeed, to find the culture of the project, not just in terms [21:18.960 --> 21:21.000] of words, but in actions. [21:21.000 --> 21:27.960] You want to talk about inclusivity and sensitivity, and you want to do the training for that? [21:27.960 --> 21:28.960] Brilliant. [21:28.960 --> 21:29.960] That's great. [21:29.960 --> 21:31.440] That tells you what to do. [21:31.440 --> 21:38.120] But it's the practice and the execution of the training that builds the culture. [21:38.120 --> 21:40.800] Practice makes the culture. [21:40.800 --> 21:43.920] You need to consider cultural differences when we're talking about discussions. [21:43.920 --> 21:45.840] We're going to have discussions about things. [21:45.840 --> 21:50.600] If you're talking about planning documents, you're trying to do planning for your project, [21:50.600 --> 21:54.880] you talk about use case definitions, you talk about documentation. [21:54.880 --> 22:03.880] Any of those things are rife, fine fields for finding cultural conflicts. [22:03.880 --> 22:09.400] Make it safe to disagree and to ask questions. [22:09.400 --> 22:12.920] Make it psychologically safe to fail. [22:12.920 --> 22:27.160] And the disagreements will surface the misunderstandings before they become, before the misunderstandings. [22:27.160 --> 22:34.480] The failure is a result of a misunderstanding that didn't rise to the level of a disagreement. [22:34.480 --> 22:39.280] So you make it safe to disagree, but then it didn't come up, and then you get a failure [22:39.280 --> 22:44.200] because there was a misunderstanding that wasn't a disagreement. [22:44.200 --> 22:46.520] So you want to explore both of those, in any case. [22:46.520 --> 22:53.640] You want to explore them both as possible friction point between cultures. [22:53.640 --> 22:58.600] So when you see either of those in your project, as you're working your teams, think about [22:58.600 --> 23:03.640] is there a cultural difference that might be contributing here? [23:03.640 --> 23:05.840] So exhibit the culture of the project. [23:05.840 --> 23:07.920] Again, practice builds culture. [23:07.920 --> 23:13.040] I can't stress that enough. [23:13.040 --> 23:14.040] Management has to lead by example. [23:14.040 --> 23:21.440] If I like to say no executive washrooms, do everything in public, failure must be public. [23:21.440 --> 23:24.320] By public I mean, obviously, if you're working in a corporate environment, that's going to [23:24.320 --> 23:27.120] be within the firewall of the project. [23:27.120 --> 23:37.000] Management work items, with the exception of personnel and other legally encumbered topics, [23:37.000 --> 23:38.760] must be in the public within the project. [23:38.760 --> 23:39.760] What is management doing? [23:39.760 --> 23:40.760] What is our goal? [23:40.760 --> 23:46.400] That's really going to help facilitate the communication up and down. [23:46.400 --> 23:53.800] Treat everyone, every objection, every suggestion, every point of view with respect. [23:53.800 --> 23:58.840] Assume that everyone working on the project is working towards success, and never attribute [23:58.840 --> 24:04.600] to malice what can be explained by ignorance or cultural difference. [24:04.600 --> 24:12.880] So in closing, when we're connected to others, we become better people, and the art of cross-cultural [24:12.880 --> 24:17.720] team management is to be a better person. [24:17.720 --> 24:24.320] So if I've offended anyone with any image or phrase during this talk, please accept my [24:24.320 --> 24:31.280] apology and understand that it was unintentional, but also let me know so that I can adjust my [24:31.280 --> 24:34.000] approach in the future. [24:34.000 --> 24:35.000] Thank you. [24:35.000 --> 24:36.000] Thank you, Claude. [24:36.000 --> 24:37.000] That was lovely. [24:37.000 --> 24:38.000] Very much appreciated. [24:38.000 --> 24:41.000] If you are open to taking questions, we certainly have some time for questions. [24:41.000 --> 24:42.000] Oh, dear. [24:42.000 --> 24:43.000] Okay. [24:43.000 --> 24:44.000] Okay. [24:44.000 --> 24:55.000] Would anyone like to ask a question of our speaker? [24:55.000 --> 24:56.000] Excellent. [24:56.000 --> 24:57.000] I'm headed your way. [24:57.000 --> 25:08.600] I should have spoken slower. [25:08.600 --> 25:11.280] Thank you for a wonderful talk. [25:11.280 --> 25:16.320] I wanted to ask you if you were in a position where you were leading a project or a team [25:16.320 --> 25:22.440] that is very multicultural, and those things also keep changing, you get new people, some [25:22.440 --> 25:29.560] people leave, and it's just a great diversity in the team, how would you approach learning [25:29.560 --> 25:34.640] more about their cultures and what is and isn't acceptable, and then trying to find [25:34.640 --> 25:37.280] a mesh that works for everyone? [25:37.280 --> 25:38.280] Okay. [25:38.280 --> 25:45.680] So the question is, if you're having a multicultural team where people are coming and going, lots [25:45.680 --> 25:52.960] of cultural change from the people that are in the team, how do you find a way to understand [25:52.960 --> 25:59.400] what everybody's culture is and what's acceptable for everybody? [25:59.400 --> 26:02.840] I think to answer the second part, I'm not sure that you can find something that's acceptable [26:02.840 --> 26:12.240] to everybody, that there's always going to be somebody who's a little tweet, I suppose, [26:12.240 --> 26:18.000] by things that go on, but it is being open to realizing that the problem is there, it's [26:18.000 --> 26:25.440] the first part, and then asking questions, and basically I think if you want to talk [26:25.440 --> 26:31.480] about documentation or something like that, then it would be documenting how you are open [26:31.480 --> 26:36.480] to these, how these questions can be asked, and what makes this a safe space to ask these [26:36.480 --> 26:37.480] questions. [26:37.480 --> 26:42.720] I don't know that there is a generic answer that says, this is how you do it, and it works [26:42.720 --> 26:49.000] across everything, because there are just so many differences. [26:49.000 --> 26:54.680] I have lots of great horror stories if somebody wants to come ask, but then they're all different, [26:54.680 --> 27:11.240] and they all have different solutions. [27:11.240 --> 27:15.360] You talked about the challenges that you saw in your projects, where people think in a [27:15.360 --> 27:21.920] very hierarchical way and don't want to engage or interact with someone that they perceive [27:21.920 --> 27:28.480] as higher ranks, and also people wanting to do everything in a perfect manner, and your [27:28.480 --> 27:37.000] resolution to that was to flatten the structure, enable communication, and everyone can fail, [27:37.000 --> 27:40.320] which is a very western way of thinking. [27:40.320 --> 27:42.880] So you try to bring them across to your culture. [27:42.880 --> 27:47.800] Have you ever tried to do it the other way, tried to engage in a project or let the project [27:47.800 --> 27:56.360] go in a more hierarchical way and make sure that people were rewarded on not making errors, [27:56.360 --> 28:02.560] and if so, what were your experiences? [28:02.560 --> 28:04.640] That's a really good question, and yes, it was. [28:04.640 --> 28:07.760] It ended up being a very western way of looking at it. [28:07.760 --> 28:12.720] I recognize that. [28:12.720 --> 28:17.280] I will say in defense of this one project is that we were moving from the western framework [28:17.280 --> 28:21.280] where we were working, and the project was working, and everybody was sort of depending [28:21.280 --> 28:26.600] on the project working, that all of our users were sort of dependent on the way the project [28:26.600 --> 28:34.080] had worked, so there was a lot of pressure to sort of stay the same course. [28:34.080 --> 28:41.200] Have I worked in other, if I think about it, I can probably come up with one, but no, it's [28:41.200 --> 28:45.400] probably the most honest answer. [28:45.400 --> 28:52.800] I haven't had a, I have worked in very hierarchical structures, that US corporate structure works [28:52.800 --> 29:00.560] that way, and that's why I'm an open source, that's about all I can say, without getting [29:00.560 --> 29:02.280] myself in serious trouble. [29:02.280 --> 29:03.280] Hey Claude. [29:03.280 --> 29:04.280] Hey Ferdinand. [29:04.280 --> 29:07.280] Fancy seeing you here. [29:07.280 --> 29:11.760] So you work for Ivan, which is originated in Finland, is there any fun story that you [29:11.760 --> 29:15.760] can share from the very Finnish culture that Ivan has? [29:15.760 --> 29:16.760] No. [29:16.760 --> 29:17.760] Well done, sir. [29:17.760 --> 29:18.760] I saw a handout here. [29:18.760 --> 29:19.760] How do you get from that? [29:19.760 --> 29:20.760] I don't know about that. [29:20.760 --> 29:21.760] Thank you. [29:21.760 --> 29:33.280] I would say, and it's not an exact answer, but in reference to the previous thing, so [29:33.280 --> 29:37.440] in some cultures, like at the meeting, you never actually discuss the thing, all the [29:37.440 --> 29:41.560] conversations happen in one-to-one conversation around the meeting, and you show up the meeting [29:41.560 --> 29:44.320] and the leader says, we should do this, and everyone says yes. [29:44.320 --> 29:48.240] But the meeting doesn't happen until a consensus is already gained, right? [29:48.240 --> 29:55.520] And that's actually, when there's a very controversial decision, I found that to be [29:55.520 --> 29:57.000] like actually a useful technique. [29:57.000 --> 30:00.520] Like I know that if we just have the meeting straight up, like we're going to have a huge [30:00.520 --> 30:01.520] argument. [30:01.520 --> 30:07.120] So like I go and talk to each of the people individually, I try and sort of canvas a solution [30:07.120 --> 30:11.240] so that then when we actually have the meeting, everyone has already agreed. [30:11.240 --> 30:16.600] So that's at least one situation where we can learn from other kinds of cultures and [30:16.600 --> 30:17.600] import that. [30:17.600 --> 30:18.600] Yes. [30:18.600 --> 30:19.600] Yeah, I would agree. [30:19.600 --> 30:21.120] It makes for very short meetings. [30:21.120 --> 30:22.120] I love that. [30:22.120 --> 30:23.120] All right. [30:23.120 --> 30:24.120] Folks, we're going to go ahead and begin to transition to the next speaker. [30:24.120 --> 30:25.120] Thank you. [30:25.120 --> 30:26.120] Greg Claude. [30:26.120 --> 30:27.120] Very much appreciated. [30:27.120 --> 30:28.120] Thank you. [30:28.120 --> 30:45.120] Thank you very much.