Time orientation creates many problems in India and US business relationships that impact bottom line results. If you are working with an offshore team in India, you likely are experiencing unknown delays that are impacting your timing and budget.

Learn how to SOLVE this challenge right now! Our online academy offers a course to learn exactly how to manage offshore teams in India.

Different Time Orientations = Late project delivery.

A very common complaint from US managers: “no communication was sent regarding deadline risks.” This is a common problem but it also has a solution. Before your projects fall off the schedule you designed, take heart that most projects will be late without ACTIVE and ENGAGED cross-cultural management. In other words, don’t wait for the communication. Take action!

Indians feel very differently about time than Americans. The direct result? Your schedule is not interpreted in the same way in India. Time is not as important and is ignored. Projects begin to slip on deadlines.  Your budget blows up, bigger and bigger, and now the boss wants to know why things are going WRONG.

This is a direct result of business culture differences. When business culture differences exist, global leaders need a set of skills they can use to effectively navigate across cultures and develop the right tools to keep schedules on target and budgets under control.

Learn how to manage the offshore team by establishing a clear set of deadlines for a project that you can rely on.

India has a very different business culture from the US. This causes challenges that are not intentional, but none the less are extremely frustrating and make a lot of Americans feel like their project is spinning out of control.

This does not have to be the case – everyone can manage teams effectively if they have the right techniques and are aware of the challenges India’s business culture brings to the table.

In India time is perceived very differently.Time is somewhat irrelevant to the average Indian. There is little consideration about when something will happen, rather there is a sense that it will happen “when its supposed to.”

This sense encourages Indians to double and triple book their days with the intention that the meeting that is the MOST important being the one that he will attend when the hour arrives. This leaves many Americans waiting on empty conference calls completely confused about why no one has showed up — and further furious that she is wasting her time waiting!!

This doesn’t have to be the case! Learn how to master this challenge RIGHT NOW in our Online Academy.

What Indian pharmaceutical firms invested in the US during 2011? This video profiles 4 deals that are key to checking out the trends for why Indian firms find the US to be an attractive M&A destination.

These firms are covered:

• Zydus Cadila
• Suyra Pharmaceuticals (completed in 2010 but new trend to notice)
• Bafna Pharmaceuticals
• Sun Pharmaceuticals (started well before 2011)

The health demographics inside India are at the core of why many Western and Indian firms see India as a hot market.

This video talks about three areas:

1. Total population. India’s population will rise to 1.53B by 2030 becoming the largest on the planet.
2. Emerging middle class purchasing power. Conservative estimates peg this at 300M members by 2020.
3. Disease Profiles. Most important when considering how the market will shape. Indians have a propensity to the following diseases inherent in their genetic markup.

These three things make a compelling case for entering India with products and services that address these concerns.

I was interviewed today by The Deal about the current state of cross-border M&A in India and the US. We focused specifically on Pharmaceuticals where there is a lot of opportunity but challenges as well. My next post will focus on my predictions for the future in this area.

Sarah Hashim-Waris, from The Deal, wanted to know:

What advice do you have for foreign VCs looking to invest in Indian pharma firms?

Most merger and acquisition deals fail because of business culture differences. This problem is magnified by a thousand times if the two companies are from different countries. We have seen many, many deals fail or simply hobble along because of India and US business cultural differences. Address these differences from the start of the engagement from negotiations down to delivering the first joint product, by educating the deal team and the staff in global competencies.

Why is India’s pharmaceutical market so attractive to American Venture Capitalists?

India’s market has 3 important factors: Talent and Demographics of growing middle class that can pay for medical remedies.

Talent: India has a history of ayurvedic and homeopathic medicine and for thousands of years has pursued remedies for ailments. There are established pharmacy schools. This talent pool can be tapped by multi-nationals seeking a 24/7 research development cycle or start-ups that want to acquire cheaper labor for a new project. These opportunities are not being leveraged as aggressively as is possible because of challenges in safely sharing IP. This is why many firms make direct acquisitions instead of considering alternatives. Developing systems to leverage global research networks while avoiding the difficulty of intellectual property exchange is the next step in these deals.

Demographics: Emerging middle class, an estimated 300M by 2020, will have resources to pay for remedies to well known health problems. Click here for a video on the third factor: health demographics in the Indian genetic map cause an increase in Diabetes, Heart Disease and High Blood pressure.

On the flip side, we’ve also seen Indian firms investing in U.S. pharmaceutical firms – why?

Indian firms are looking to invest in the US for three primary reasons:

• Purchasing access to FDA approved facility that can be immediately leveraged to make generics the firm is already making in India.
• Access to retail channels such as Walgreens, Rite Aid, Walmart, that can be leveraged to bring Indian products (medicinals) from India.
• Acquire pharmaceutical IP from the US that can be sold into the Indian market.

Last year, Abbott Labs acquired Piramal Healthcare Ltd.’s generic-drugs unit…How is M&A in India’s pharma sector looking?

Last year almost every major Western pharma firm such as Pfizer, Abbot, Glaxo made an acquisition in India. The trend for this year from the US to India has slowed because most major players made a move last year.

For those not following the Hilton battle in India’s courts now is the time to TUNE IN. Hilton just lost the rights to their own trademark in India. The judge based his decision primarily on one thing: how long Hilton had been doing business in India. Unfortunately for India the answer was 2007.

Hilton was fighting, Hilltone Hotel, who sued them for using a “deceptively similar name.” Hilltone won.

In the judge’s statements, according to Live Mint, were very specific:

“I am of the opinion that judgement of the learned trial court is not required to be stayed because, admittedly, Hilltone Hotel is pursuing their business under the registration, which is made prior to the registration of the Hilton,”

In other words, 2007 entrance to India does little to help their case against an entity that has been operating since 1973 in India.

This is very important news for American firms toying with the idea of entering India. To protect marks, entering sooner rather than later is the new precedent. You will not be competing against international trademark standards, but how long your firm has done business in India under that name. Consider the following:

• Is there already an entity that has a simliar name in India?
• Is this brand in your industry?
• Should you create a sperate brand just for India as a subsidiary?

There are many solutions to the path that Hilton found themselves on. Particularly in the hotel business its not clear why Hilton didn’t create a speciality name brand for India….I suspect they had little idea that this was a possibility.

What do Americans really want in business? Its July, the time of year America celebrates its birth making it the perfect time to talk about what Americans ARE and what it is that they WANT.

I get asked this question a lot, but the wrong people are asking me: it should be the Americans asking. When you understand your own culture well, really understand it, its a lot easier to figure out how to adapt to identified differences in other cultures.

Lets start with Truth a core concept to American Society.

Americans are extremely truthful. The foundation of American society is truth, justice for all. There is a belief that “truth reins” all else threaded through all aspects of American society.

Americans seek out truth with methods such as “looking someone in the eye” to see if they are lying. Does this work? Maybe.

It doesn’t matter.  Its the allegiance to the idea that is important. Most foreigners have seen this in movies such as Jack Nicholson yells out “You can’t handle the truth” in a Few Good Men. There is a no tolerance policy for being untruthful. We don’t get mad about the action in America, we get mad about people trying to hid it. Case in point: Anthony Weiner. Americans didn’t really care so much about what he did on Twitter, until he tried to lie about it. This drives us insane. We do not like things that are “assumed” and not discussed. We have a president who smokes casually, but he talks about it. Americans hated Bush because he felt like a lair at the end of his presidency.

In American business transparency is first, foremost and last. Again we love a good scandal because we seek out the truth. Even the slightest notion that something may not be truthful is pursued. This is the basis of many TV shows in the US, particulatily lawyer oriented shows. This is also why people don’t like lawyers: they hid the truth.

I see this in negotiations–global counterparts believe that the Americans are holding a “silver bullet” when in fact most Americans negotiators prefer to get all of the “cards on the table” at the start of a negotiation. While this does not always serve them, particularly when negotiating with India and other relationship oriented cultures, it is nevertheless the preference.

The truth about Americans is that we are very direct and straightforward. We are as we appear, for better or worse.

The underlying problem in all international relationships is cultural differences. We think its process – we WISH it was process!  When we perfect the process we wonder if we need different people. In the end what we don’t want to face is that we don’t know how to build commitment. We don’t know how to engage, empower and create a spark inside our India based teams.

Commitment is the foundation for teams to accelerate around a mission. One of the ways we judge commitment is to read sincerity. The skills we typically use to gauge sincerity do not work in India or the rest of the BRIC.   The three ways we judge sincerity are Voice, Body Language, and Smile.  .

Lets start with Voice. Americans judge commitment by an enthusiastic voice.  This assumption is based on living in a culture where its OK for people to show, or not, their enthusiasm inside the workplace.  It’s ok for people to express their displeasure with an assignment.  This is not the case in the BRIC!  One of the ways employees are measured in the BRIC is by their loyalty to their boss, and therefore their boss’s objectives.

Bottom Line: Be aware that enthusiasm may be a show rather than a commitment.

Body language is another tricky read, especially since most of you reading this are not working inside these countries and relying on phone or video conferencing which can mask body language.  Body language across cultures is difficult.  There are some motions, such as putting your hand forward toward someone’s face that mean ok in one culture and get lost in another.  Another example is eye contact. “Look me in the eye” we say to people in thinking this will compel the truth to come forward. Americans tend to seek out eye contact while in the BRIC cultures direct eye contact is typically a show of defiance.  By looking down you are displaying your respect for authority.

Bottom Line: Body language in the BRIC is different.

Smiling is another quality we seek out in the American work place.  When people on our team are smiling they are engaged.  In the BRIC, smiling is not as persistent.  These cultures think Americans smile too much!

Bottom Line: Smiling is not an indicator of sincerity. Its typically a sign of trying to please you.

Remember these simple rules when judging commitment. There are many ways to begin to build commitment but the first step is to identify areas where you may be incorrectly judging your level of success.

“India: A Flawed Miracle” series continues this week in the Wall Street Journal. The writer explains in vivid detail the challenge organizations face when trying to hire in India. This is not something people talk about – but they should. The WSJ writes that 75% of India’s technical graduates are unemployable. I add that of the 375,000 that are employable great investment is made to develop these candidates into a workforce inside organizations. Wipro invests months into new employees, but they are not alone. The top outsourcers I interviewed recently for Outsource Magazine all have comprehensive programs to develop staff.

We often hear about the great opportunity India offers. Its much more complex than setting up an office and putting a want ad in the local paper.

Inside the outsourcing vertical in India, teams are assembled to focus specifically on attracting talent. These teams identify candidates when they are still in high school. They follow them through, assist them in testing to get into college and offer them internships while they are there. In short, without a strategy inside India, its impossible to attract and retain top talent.

One of the big areas that this article did not touch on is the aspect of branding. Without a strong brand like Infosys, Wipro or HCL it is very difficult to attract the top talent in India. We offer assistance at IndiaThink to firms entering India. When hired as advisors, we focus on developing a brand inside India. Brand development is critical because top talent wants to work for both a brand and its executives (who therefore also need a brand).

For more information on what the top outsourcers are doing to attract and retain talent inside emerging markets. Highly recommend you review the following articles.

http://www.outsourcemagazine.co.uk/articles/item/3747-how-outsourcers-manage-human-capital

http://www.outsourcemagazine.co.uk/articles/item/3767-how-outsourcers-manage-human-capital-part-2

Mike Bloomberg, New York City’s mayor and founder of Bloomberg has set a new tone inside the city’s office: Mind the clock. The Mayor has installed count-up clocks which are started when the meeting begins to give employees a sense of how much time they are spending.

According to the mayor’s press secretary; “We’re always looking to find ways to make things work faster….”We’re not here to site around and meet with each other — we’re here to get things done.”

This device called TIM: Time is Money. It is a great illustration of the American mind set. Most of us don’t have a clock planted right near the meeting table counting down the seconds, but we do believe that wasting time is a bad idea because time equals money.

When we work with India and try to push our time objectives forward, difficulties arise. Today I will talk about the difficult of getting India to deliver on time. To learn how to solve this cross-cultural challenge quickly check out the training program in the Online Academy.

In the US we spend a lot of time trying to determine how long a project will take. Inside a project plan we hedge against risk if it can be identified. Often, we don’t include differing interpretations of time in this risk. Why should we right?

The problem is when cultures don’t have the same understanding of time, they react differently. In India, the sense of time, called time orientation, is different. Its based on the Hindu philosophy that time is ever evolving. Time continues from this life to the next. Time is not wasted in India. Instead, the focus is on getting things done as they come, which can be detrimental to a project plan.

A few ideas on how to manage this difference:

1.) Consider your plan for completion. What kind of gates are included for you to track progress?

2.) Review the emails you recently received from your team. Are there hidden message about timing included? Indians are indirect communicators who rarely come forward with a blanket statement about deadline failure.

3.) Does your team understand the implications of their work against the rest of the project? Often the project work inside one team plugs into another. This needs to be clear up front when working with India.

4.) Do you have a formal method for tracking your project’s timing?

To learn how to effectively manage time differences in India, a real cross-cultural challenge, attend the course in the Online Academy.