Wednesday, August 24, 2005
They Should Have Just Asked Me
Back in 1989, I did a project in China. It was one of the more frustrating consulting contracts of my career. It is very dificult to find common grounds with the Chinese for communication purposes. We were discussing waste water treatment system designs, and they sketched it up almost exactly backwards. They were so concerned that I was wrong they made me sign my designs to show I alone was responsible (this in spite of the fact they were paying big money on a daily basis for precisely this expertise).
Anyway, they simply had such an incredibly different view of the problem that they could never get their heads around what I was saying. That's why I find this story entirely unremarkable.
Anyway, they simply had such an incredibly different view of the problem that they could never get their heads around what I was saying. That's why I find this story entirely unremarkable.
There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that whereas North Americans tend to be more analytic when evaluating a scenario, fixating on the focal object, East Asians are generally more holistic, giving more consideration to the context.Of course, if they had just asked me, four professors and countless grad students would not have had grants to live off of and pay their way to China.
