'In the end, it all works'

With growing globalisation and the tendency of mid-level and senior leadership to work across geographies, the cultural context of one's job is as important to corporate success as other factors. In the book under review, Aarti Kelshikar offers a bird's eye view of the uniquely Indian aspects that define and sometimes mar such prospects for those moving to India for work.

From attitudes to hierarchy to work-life balance, Ms Kelshikar probes dominant modes of action and reaction among Indians and how a knowledge of these can help the expat find success here. The book is breezy and filled with anecdotes, shunning an academic tone for one that combines self-help and gentle nudging.

Ms Kelshikar is deeply perceptive on topics that most Indians will immediately recognise. The chapter on personal relationships at the workplace delineates how Indians give more importance to “connect” than process, reaching out for help to those with whom they are comfortable. This mindset also results in such warm behaviour as people visiting colleagues' homes when a personal tragedy strikes, an idea that Ms Kelshikar reminds is nearly unthinkable in the West.

This stress on the personal extends to less salubrious outcomes, such as when personal questions related to marriage and children are asked without batting an eyelid. Ms Kelshikar maintains -- and demonstrates through examples -- that what may seem like an intrusion into privacy to the expat is often just a harmless foray into typically Indian interests and a desire to know how the foreigner is settling in.

The chapter on hierarchy is similarly engaging, bringing out the paradoxes of how Indians approach seniority at work. On the one hand, Indians like to be heard and will often make a beeline to put their point across when the boss is watching. On the other, they will ultimately do as they are told if the instructions have come from the top. This demonstrates both a need to impress and a respect for leadership, a trait that is common to other Asian cultures.

The flip side, Ms Kelshikar points out, is the impressionable expat’s tendency to mistake respect for camaraderie. As one of her sources says, “People are going to like it if you are approachable. However, if you are too approachable or familiar, people may lose respect. If I had to do it again, I would have been more formal and used some of my authority outside my vertical.”

In other words, the corporate world hews to that Indian truism: Whatever is true for India, its opposite is also true. A hyper-awareness of hierarchy can have other deleterious consequences, as when cross-functional teams fail to achieve much. While the problem may be more pronounced in the public sector and at lower levels, Ms Kelshikar concedes that an inability to work outside of organisational silos remains widespread.

That said, Ms Keshikar spreads this analogy too thin, as when she quotes the principal of an international school on why Indians like to stick to their job descriptions at the workplace: “Sometimes I think this tendency in some Indians…has to do with their deep belief in reincarnation. As if this is the life assigned to a certain role, and so that’s what this will be.” While Indians certainly have their eccentricities, beware the smooth expat’s ladling of every such quirk with bromides. 
 

The book is weakest in curating the challenges faced by Indians who repatriate. Although it is true that someone who has spent many years aboard and is used to a certain lifestyle may find the going difficult back home, that situation perhaps does not obtain with as much frequency today as it did in the past, both due to better living conditions in India and the higher turnover among globetrotting employees.

The book is more interesting — and useful — when it discusses changing attitudes to work among the young, from something as simple as sartorial preferences to more serious concerns such as the outlook on failure. Ms Kelshikar presents this as a generational thing but I would like to believe that the globalisation of television content must be given some credit. How can anyone who has watched The Office, with its madcap bunch of characters straining to outdo one another, take work with the seriousness our parents did?

Ms Kelshikar also doffs her hat to the uniquely Indian ways that classmate networks operate and work for the benefit of their members. While professional advancement is a feature of such networks across the globe, in India these communities also help with personal matters as when the son or daughter of a classmate moves to a new city. Ms Kelshikar dovetails this into a larger discussion of how community — which in the workplace can seem overbearing to the expat — responds to concerns borne of particular Indian necessities. 

How India Works is a precise compendium of the challenges that the expat, with some pluck and understanding, can transform into triumphs at the Indian workplace. Ms Kelshikar ends her book with an apt cliché for everything Indian: “In the end, it all works.”

How India Works  

Making Sense of a Complex 

Corporate Culture

Aarti Kelshikar

Harper Business, 

187 pages; Rs 399