The Cinderella hour in Kolkata

Hi everyone

Today I came across an article about what was named as “the Cinderella hour” in Kolkata in Aftenposten, the leading Norwegian newspaper.

The article is written by the journalist @Helene Skjeggestad so all credit goes to her. Translation is done by me, so all translation mistakes is mine. Here it goes:

India with is growing middle class is described as the country of the future. With more than 700 million people below the age of 30 this is where we will find the consumers of the future. The economy indicators are still pointing upwards (even if the rupee is currently in recession, my comment). Foreign companies, including Norwegians are still rushing to the country.

It is the strong contrast between this glamorous picture of India that makes the gang rape from December last year so difficult to understand. A 23 year old student went into a bus with her boyfriend. Here they got attacked by six people. He got tortured. She got tortured and raped. Then they get thrown of the bus and she later dies because of her injuries. Last week four of the culprits was sentenced to death last week (one of them have already committed suicide and one of them is a juvenile, my comment). Is this possible to understand?

India is a vast country with a huge population and has always been a society with a lot of differences. The country has always been divided in many ways, like caste, religion and not least gender. While the government and rest of society have done a lot to eliminate the differences between the different castes and religions over the last 20 years or so, little have been done to eliminate the differences between genders. But after the rape in December and its fatal consequences there have been a lot of protests both in Delhi and in other cities in India. Official statistics that has previously hidden are now available. This shows that the number of rape cases has doubled from 1990 to 2008. The next question is then; what can be done with this?

The discussion has many similarities with comparative discussions in Norway. Do women have a responsibility in order to not put them self into dangerous situations? A new report from the organization Invisible Women mentioned in

The Guardian this week says that the responsibility is at the government. The infrastructure in the cities must be improved with safer public transportation and street lights. Others have pointed to the dangers that the many public toilets represents. In the report it is stated that “public toilets for women are dark and unfriendly”. This is applicable to both the cities and the countryside. In May most of the rapes that was reported in the state of Bihar happened in public female toilets. In Mumbai they have trains that are only for women (I think this is a slight mistake in the article. There are separate compartments for women, not separate trains. My comment). In Kolkata they issued a curfew after a rape case last year and recommended women not to walk alone late in the evenings. The curfew, which has got the nickname “the Cinderella hour” by the locals, is still being debated.

Neither separate trains nor self-imposed curfews solve the real problem between genders in India. It can also be argued that these precautions increase the differences and increase the problem. We can hope that one of the authors of the report from Invisible Women, @Nilanjana Roy is right when she says: “The rapes might not stop, but this conversation isn’t stopping either”.

Talk to you soon

Karsten

Norwegian management model

Hi everyone

During my years as a blogger I have written a number of blog posts about differences between India and Norway. I have written about difficulties for Norwegian companies to do business in India due to differences in culture and I have even written about differences in management styles in India and Norway.

For about a year now I have taken an executive management study in IT-management. Here management and different management models have been essential. Based on this I have started to ask myself if there exists any specific Norwegian model for management. And more important; can this Norwegian management model be a reason why Norwegian companies fail in India?

Some time back I came across a book called Den norske ledelsesmodellen (the Norwegian model of management). In this blog post I will give a quick review of this book. A discussion on how this model work in a country like India will come in a later blog post.

The book starts by asking if there exists any particular Norwegian management model or if management is universal. Based on research it seems quite clear that the Norwegian managers seems to be less strict, more involved, delegate more and act more as a coach than foreign managers. The Norwegian management model has evolved because it has shown to be a management model that works. Management the Norwegian way quite simply give results, both in Norway and abroad. The Norwegian management model is very much connected to the idea about the welfare state. The idea about equality has its roots far back in the history. Way back in 1739 elementary school was mandatory for everyone! This means that Norway was one of the very first countries where children from all societies should get some fundamental education. It is also important that the Norwegian farmers to a much higher degree than farmers in rest of Europe maintained their own land rather than to be connected to a landowner.

In Norway there has always been a huge degree of cooperation between the government, the employer and the employees.  The labor organizations have been strong and made sure that the workers have been able to “stand up against” the employers when needed. This also affects the way the Norwegian companies are organized and helps to break down the hierarchies in the organizations.

Some of the people interviewed in the book stress the importance about recruiting good people. A good manager is a person who achieves results by help of others. The most important is to build a team or an organization where people really work together.  It is also interesting to read about what is part of the management role. The importance of giving good feedback to the employees is being stressed. All people in an organization must be confident of their importance for the organization is something that one of the managers stresses. The more confidence a coworker feels the higher will the revenue and customer satisfaction be is being stressed. Research shows that management based by confidence also increases the morale for the coworkers.

It is interesting to observe the experiences that Norwegian managers have with international management styles. One person say: “It is more difficult to be a manager I Norway than in Sweden or Denmark. Norwegians don’t really believe in authorities, they ask questions and everybody have to be convinced. Not everybody do what they are being told either, even if they say OK”. Hierarchies are more dominant in other countries than in Norway. Even our neighbors Denmark have organizations with much higher hierarchies. One person says that the Norwegian management style will be inefficient in some other countries. In some cultures it is seen as a signal of lack of confidence if the boss starts to ask questions to their subordinates. One example from Romania shows this. The CEO of the Norwegian company visited one of their factories in Romania. There were some points in the presentation from the marketing manager that the CEO was uncertain about. He then asked the country manager about this during the lunch but got no answer. Suddenly the country manager disappeared from the lunch. When he came back he said: “Problem solved. I’ve fired him”.

The conclusion to this must be that the Norwegian management model is very much based on equality between the managers and the subordinates. Everyone will have a say and it is actually important for managers to have the confidence, or maybe I should say trust, of their subordinates.

Do you have any experiences with this? Any disagreements?

Talk to you soon

Karsten

My learnings from seminar about opportunities in India for Norwegian companies

Hi everyone

It has been a while since I wrote about the seminar regarding opportunities in India for Norwegian companies. You will find my report here and a summary of the panel discussion here.

After the seminar I have spent quite some time reflecting about it. What did I actually learn there? Is India a success story for Norwegian companies? If not, what can be done different?

Like most other things in India, I don’t think it is any very simple conclusion to any of those questions. If we ask whether or not Norwegian companies presence in India is a failure or not, I’m quite sure that the answer will be fixed. It is no doubt that some Norwegian companies, like the Kongsberg Group, who spoke at the event, have been in the country for quite some time and also do quite well there now. Telenor is about to do well there now. They recently won a license in Myanmar. I can only guess, but it is probably not a wrong guess that their experience from India have helped them in getting this license and that it will also help them to operate well in that country. But I still feel that the presence of Norwegian companies in India in not at all that huge. If I remember, right, I was told that in Mumbai only, there are about 5000 French people! Haven’t counted the number of Norwegians, but I would guess hardly more than 20-30. And when I read Norwegian newspapers and listen to Norwegian business people, India is not really the country I notice the most.

Why is it like that? One reason I think, is that India has been named as a “difficult” country to do business in. It feels much easier for Norwegians to do business in markets that are closer to our home soil. The difficulties in India are probably, at least to some extent, true. But instead of saying it is difficult I would maybe say that it is different. Most of the speakers at the seminar mentioned the diversity of India, and that companies have to plan for long term in order to have success in India. This is something I really have to agree to. But I think it is more to it than that; in order to succeed in India you have really be prepared for the unexpected and to be able to take quick decisions. And I really wonder if that fits with the usual Norwegian model of management. If you look at the most successful Indian companies, or rather corporations, most of them are family owned.  The patriarch of the family is also the CEO of the company. And he (mostly a he) is the one who will make the final decision. I’m just not sure if Norwegian companies, where consensus management is quite important, manage to make decisions quick enough when some big shifts happen.

For many years I have been very interested in sailing and have followed a number of the around the world races. I read a book about the Norwegian challenge “Innovation Kværner”. The title of the book, written by the captain of the boat, was “Responsible for the irresponsible”. He wrote that when you sail a race around the world you just can’t prepare for everything that can happen. But what you can do is to prepare for how to handle unexpected situations. This is exactly the same as what I think is important if you want to do business in India.

Two other things I took back from the seminar is the Norwegian naivety and the importance of understanding the market or rather the culture you will be working in.

If we take the naivety first, I absolutely agree with those that say that Norwegians are naïve. We like to think that things are exactly the way they look. But this is very rarely the case. And maybe even more so in India than in many other places. It is absolutely possible to live in India and think that it is a heaven, with a driver, a maid, a couple of people cleaning your home, air-conditioned car and office and so on. But that is just the surface. As Dr. Amit Kapoor so brilliantly said it, India is much more than that.  And in order to succeed in India you really have to dive below that surface and to understand the country and the people there!

Any thought or suggestions?

Talk to you soon

Corporate Responsibility in India

Hi everyone

Last week I wrote about a seminar regarding opportunities in India for Norwegian companies. This week it was another seminar… This time the host was NICCI and the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO). The agenda for this seminar was corporate responsibility and how to work in a responsible way in a country like India.

The tone was set by Mr. Erik Lundeby from NHO. He looked back in history and talked about how corporate responsibility has evolved in Norway. Some 150 years ago companies were very much involved in building societies in Norway. As Norway today is very much a developed country this is not that important anymore. But one important question for Norwegian companies is what to do when they want to establish themselves in countries where the society is not that well established? In some countries corruption is a big issue. And in some countries it is expected that companies take a huge responsibility in helping the society. If you look at a company like Tata, they have for a long time been famous not just for their earning but also from what they give back to the society. Check out the book Tata – The evolution of a Corporate Brand to read more about this. NHO have made a guideline that can be used for Norwegian companies. I would highly recommend that everyone read this guideline before entering a foreign market.

After Mr. Lundeby Ms. Gunelie Winum from Ethical trading initiative Norway spoke. She has firsthand experience in working with Norwegian companies that are cooperating with countries like India and showed a very interesting case study from India. The actual company, Beer Sten, traded with stone from India and was accused for using a subcontractor that were using child labor, didn’t have the right security and infrastructure for their employers and so on. By help of IEH the Norwegian company turned this situation around completely! It was very interesting to hear about the learning from that case. She stressed that long term partnership is important if you want to improve working conditions for your sub-contractors. This echoes much of what was said in the panel debate last week. A social audit is not really what you’re looking for. What you really need doing she said is to integrate this into the corporate culture for both the companies. She also suggested calling it ethical assessment not an ethical audit.

The last speaker was Dr. Bimal Arora, Chief Executive Officer in Center for Responsible Business (CBR). Being and Indian and working from India, he has some extremely good insight into the diversity of the Indian business. There were a number of really good points to take from his lecture. One of them is that India is one of the countries in the world with the maximum number of laws. This makes it difficult to set up a business there. This applies both to multinational companies and to small Indian companies. If you plan to ever set up a business in India you have to be aware of this fact. Representing an international company you of course have to work according to all the laws in the country. But you also have to be aware that if your partner in India is a very small company you can’t really expect them to know all the different details about every single law. And this applies even more for subcontractors to your Indian partner. These small companies will not have any CSR strategy or anything like that. It will be your responsibility to implement this in a proper way.

After having been involved with the a number of NGO’s in India and different CSR initiatives in Capgemini it was very interesting to hear how these experts talked about the topic. My support for the Nani Kalis will surely continue, but I will also continue to ask myself if there is something more I as an individual can do…

Talk to you soon

Karsten

 

 

 

Panel discussion at Indian Seminar

Hi everyone

Yesterday I wrote about the first part of a seminar regarding opportunities in India for Norwegian companies. That blog post triggered a number of comments, which I’m surely very happy about. Part of the fun in writing a blog is to get people to comment on what you write and to be part of a good discussion. Hopefully there will be even more comments on this post.

The panel discussion started off with an introduction to the business that Telenor and Kongsberg Group do in India. Both of these companies are quite large companies (at least large in a Norwegain scale) and they have both been in India for some time.

Hilde M. Tønne, EVP in Telenor Group gave us some very interesting insight into their operation in India. Even after having been there for a number of years she said that they are still in the middle of building up their business there. Right now Telenor are doing very good in India. They are in six telecom circles, which she described as being in the “growth region of the growth region”. However, Telenor had to learn about India the hard way. They anticipated that India would be very much like the rest of Asia, which was totally wrong! In order to get success in India they had to have a very clear message, which in case of Uninor, Telenors brand in India, is to be there for the masses. Telenor had to work extremely innovative to balance their cost structure with the aim to deliver to Indian working classes. When they started up in India, they considered India as one country and didn’t realize how diverse it actually is.

Pål Helsing from Kongsberg Group said that they had a quite different approach when they entered India. But they have been there for a much longer period than Telenor (more than 30 years). Kongsberg Group already had their IT-infrastructure in place when they entered India, so they didn’t had to do the same investments as Telenor had to do. The biggest challenge for them initially was communication he said. In order to cope with that they had Indian colleagues working in Norway for quite some time. This helped very much in filling the communication gap. One challenge in doing this is that these people became very attractive when they went back to India and that a high degree of turnover had to be expected. This fits very well with my experience from the IT-business. You have to have a plan to overcome the communication challenge and you also have to have a plan for how to cope with retention.

Both the companies stressed the importance of having local management in India. Being global, acting local is a statement that Kongsberg Group uses. They also both said that their companies are so large that they can cope with the situation of high turnover. This will not be the case for smaller Norwegian companies. Here it would have been very interesting to hear what smaller companies like Devant have done to succeed in India. These companies will probably have to have a quite different strategy than the large companies have.

The panel discussion was rounded off by Torgeir Reve asking all the participants about what are the biggest pitfalls for Norwegian companies in India. Harald Nævdal was quick to state that the Norwegian culture is naïve and that this will easily be a huge threat. It is important to have some basic understanding of the culture you are working in. The representatives from both Telenor and Kongsberg Group stressed that it is important to be patient and professional when you work in a company like India. Anthony D’Costa mentioned the fact that Norway is not part of EU as an issue. Norway is being considered as a small country and will not be the one that is most interesting for India to deal with. Amit Kapoor also mentioned that companies have to be there for a long term and also to understand the diversity of the country. Where in India you decide to establish actually depends on what kind of business you are in and your strategy for the country.

I had planned to finish this blog post with some concluding words. But it has already been quite long, so I will create a different post with my reactions from this seminar.

Talk to you soon

Karsten

Report from event regarding opportunities for Norwegian companies in India (part 1)

Hi everyone

As I wrote in a previous blog post, last Thursday I was at a seminar about opportunities for Norwegian companies in India. This seminar was indeed very exciting and it is even clearer to me now than before that Norwegian companies still have a lot to do in terms of taking their opportunities in India.

The seminar was opened by Professor Torgeir Reve from Norwegian Business School. He said that India do have an important role as a change maker in the global economy. Until now China has been known for manufacturing while India has been known for its service industry. Will this change?

The next speaker, secretary of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Jeanette Moen started by mentioning chess, and the upcoming world cup match between Magnus Carlsen and Vishy Anand. This she said, is one of a very few examples where India and Norway actually compete. Except from that, the relationship between the countries is more based of collaboration. The Norwegian government launched their India strategy back in 2009 and from 2002 to 2012 the trade between the two countries has quadrupled!

After this introduction by the two Norwegian speakers the scene was handed over to two Indian experts in this area. First Anthony D’Costa Professor at Copenhagen Business School talked about drivers, trends and sectors in the Indian economy. He talked about the evolution that has happened in India since its first economic reforms back in the 1970’s. Foreign investment to the country has been tripled from 2005/06 – 2009/10. He also talked about the enormous talent pool that India have and that the service sector stands for about 1/3 of the export today. But he also pointed at some challenges for India:

–          Import of oil is enormous.  In order for India to continue to be competitive they have to think about alternative energy. It is too costly to import that much

–          Most people in India is still employed in what he call the informal sector, which means that the work is not organized at all and that there is no security for the workers at all. 52 % of the workforce in India today is still at the agriculture sector

–          Purchasing power is only at a very few hands

–          India is ranked extremely low (number 134) in human development

He was followed by Dr. Amit Kapoor from the Management Development Institute in India. This guy was an absolutely firework at the stage! He used a lot of irony in his speech which leads to some other blogger writing a quite negative story about his presentation. To me his was just brilliant! He started off by saying that only 5 million people in India work in the IT-sector and that this hardly brings anything good to the country, but only to the few people who work in this sector and get their money from there. He also said that 95% of the population doesn’t know English, so that the idea of India being a country with a lot of English speakers is, well, bluntly, bollocks! Further on he said that Indians doesn’t make any innovation, they always try to take short-cuts.

But he also had some very interesting ideas about what are the biggest opportunities for companies that want to succeed in India. The biggest opportunity he said is the healthcare. Today India has a very rapidly growing number of people in their 40’s or 50’s that have good income and then a good fortune. They will be able to and willing to pay a considerable high amount for people taking care of their health when they get older. But as he stressed, it has to happen “the Indian way”. Huge hospitals are nice and fine, but the main problem with healthcare is not the doctors at the hospitals. The problem is the infrastructure. If you get a heart attack in an Indian metro you will probably die before you get to the hospital. He suggested that instead of building only big fancy hospitals there is a need to build smaller hospitals at the streets. Hospitals that people can actually reach quickly. This was one example of how your business plan has to be adjusted to the Indian market. Another example is the cigarette industry. For the many poor people in the country, buying a pack of cigarettes is a too big investment. It is then quite common to see small cigarette shops at the streets where people sell single cigarettes! Another example of the same is Unilever, a company that understood that they had to go away from their “selling in bulk” strategy and sell their items in small quantities. This was the only way to get success at the Indian countryside.

Dr. Kapoor also stressed the importance of not looking at India as one market. Your business strategy will have to be very different if your main market is the metro of Mumbai or if it is the rural area of Bihar. But, as he said, don’t try to promote your product as cheap! Tata Nano is an example of a product that failed because it was promoted as cheap. Indians are proud. Even the strugglers in Bombay will not accept to buy anything that is cheap. But if they can buy something that give good value for money, they will surely be more interested…

The first part of the seminar was nicely wrapped up by Harald Nævdal from Innovation Norway. He asked on important question: “Can Norwegian companies actually afford not to have an India strategy?” At the same time he stressed the fact that a successful entry into the Indian market will take time. Don’t expect to get success rapidly and immediately. But you have to start your planning now!

The seminar concluded with a panel discussion regarding how Norwegian companies can join the economic growth in India. Hilde M. Tønne from Telenor and Pål Helsing from Kongsberg Oil and Gas Technologies both have long experience from operating in India. I will write more about that second part in tomorrow’s blog post.

Any thought or suggestions?

Talk to you soon

Karsten

Innovation Norway India event

Hi everyone

Just a very quick one today.

This Thursday Innovation Norway will host an event about opportunities for Norwegian companies in India. The event is hosted by Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry, Innovation Norway and the Norwegian Business School.

Speakers at the event will be a mix of people from the academia, the event organizers and also from executives from Norwegian companies operating in India. After having worked for more than two years in India myself I do think that events like this is extremely important. India is still a quite unknown country for many Norwegian companies and the opportunities are many. But in order to succeed here you need to know a lot about the country and the culture there. An event like this is a perfect opportunity to learn from others who are in the same situation.

You can find the full program here.

I will try to conduct some kind of a live blog from the event and hopefully also to get some good pictures.

Talk to you soon

Karsten

Chess and politics

Hi Everyone

So far this blog has been without any posts about chess (I think). As I’m more than average interested in sport there has been a number of posts about cricket, football, sailing and even one about roller skiing. But now I think it is about time to even write about chess.

Norway and India doesn’t really have any huge rivalry in sports. It has been Norway against Sweden in cross country skiing and India against Pakistan in cricket. But this will change now! In November this year young Norwegian Magnus Carlsen currently ranked as number 1 in the world will play against Indian Viswanathan (Vishy) Anand in a world championship match in November! The match will take place in Chennai in India. This is of course not without controversies. Anand is actually from Tamil Nadu so playing in Chennai will be very much on his home ground.

Management team of Magnus Carlsen has criticized the selection of Chennai. Surely I can understand this. Chennai is hot. The food is different. He will be travelling to the other side of the world and so on. But why not look at the opportunities this brings instead of just looking at the challenges?

A match like this will surely get a lot of media attention (not only on this blog). Norwegian television and newspapers has already started to write about this match and more will surely come! Norwegian trade with India is increasing. In fact Norwegian Business Association (India) was launched as late as January this year. Establishment of such an association will surely affect the already increasing collaboration between India and Norway. The Norwegian government launched what they call the Indian strategy a few years back. This was done based on the fact that there is more and more business between Norway and India.

As you probably know, sport and business very much goes hand in hand in India. Just read my post about the 4 C’s of India for an update on this. I really hope that Norwegian officials and business take the opportunity that this match creates to show their presence in India and even uses it as an opportunity to build on more business in the country. Maybe chess and collaboration can be two new C’s when it comes to the relationship between Norway and India?

Talk to you soon

Karsten

How to overcome communication challenges in outsourcing

Hi Everyone

In a number of previous blog posts I have written about misunderstandings and miscommunication.  Currently I’m doing some studies at the University of Oslo. As part of this study I have read a number of research articles regarding outsourcing and challenges that exists there. Quite a number of the articles points to communication as one of the main challenges.

In this blog post I will try to sum of some of my experience in the area and to give some experience on what can be done. As this is a blog post and not a research article, I have omitted quotes from articles and such. That will eventually come in some later more in-depth posts.

First of all I will point to the fact that it is important to know each other if you’re going to work together. Even more so when you work across different cultures. When you know each other quite well it is much easier to collaborate. Some cultures are much more sensitive to this than what the Norwegian culture is. When you work with people from this culture it is even more important to know each other.

Adjust the way you speak and confirm that the other person have understood you. This is probably one of the most important things I learned in India. There is no doubt that the English I speak today is different than the English I spoke two years back. I do probably speak slower now than what I did before. One trick I have found quite useful is to explain my message in different ways. Instead of just repeating myself and ask if the other part have understood me (in which the answer will most probably be “yes”), I do say the same thing two times but with different words. If the other person seems to be confused I know I have to rephrase myself again. If at the other hand, this leads to a fruitful discussion, I will know that the other person most probably have understood me.

Another tip is to create a communication plan. This is something I have missed in a number of projects (maybe due to the informal way Norwegians usually like to communicate?). To me a communication plan is basic tool for the project management. In addition to decide schedule for project meetings and such it should be clearly stated in this plan at what level the different decisions should be made. This is particularly important if you work with people from cultures where there is a very steep hierarchy in the organizations. Having a communication plan in place it will make it very clear for everyone who they have to talk to in order to get decisions to happen. Too often this has been unclear and too much time has been wasted because people have communicated at the wrong level. In Norway where we don’t care too much about hierarchies it is absolutely that a consultant speaks to, and even corrects a vice president. The same would not be accepted in a country like India. Here the communication has to follow the hierarchy and this must be precisely defined in the communication plan!

Do you have any other hints or suggestions? I would very much like to hear from you!

Talk to you soon

Karsten

Car breakdown – when things can go better than expected

Hi Everyone

A number of times I have written about Indian service. Sometimes I have had good experiences, but other times I have been quite frustrated by the lack of service I have got, and particularly that things have taken much longer time than expected/promised. My good friend Trond Skundberg wrote an article about this different understanding of time earlier this week. Well worth to read!

Last Saturday I should drive from Mumbai to Lonavla to meet my friends living in Pune. After five minutes on the road I realized that something was wrong with the car. First reaction is anger and frustration. I could see us not coming to Lonavla at all and wasting both my day and my friend’s day. After the first frustration was over, I started to think about what to do to fix the problem instead of being frustrated. Luckily I knew there is a garage just next to my old building, so I went there and hoped for the best. Fortunately the damage was easy to spot, so even I (who know nothing about cars) could explain it to the person in the garage (who knew hardly anything about English).

They quickly said yes, yes, this is something we can fix. After having heard this yes, yes before I was off course quite skeptic and thought that this would be both expensive and take a lot of time. They told me that it will cost about INR 2500, which was fair to me. They then told me that the car would be ready at 5.30 the same day. So no trip to Pune I thought. Then they asked again: “Do you want the car at 2.30 or 5.30?” A bit puzzled I of course answered 2.30. As any good Indian would have done, we went to a cinema to kill off some time.

After the movie was done, I expected that we had to go back to the garage and be told that the car would be fixed in a few hours only. But to my surprise it as already ready when we came there at 3 o’clock! I just paid and off we went! Really nice!

This thing about different understandings of time is something that is very often mentioned as one main barrier in IT-projects that are being conducted across shores. This small example shows that Indian actually is able to do things on time, and with correct quality! But if that does not happen, what do you do then? In the above mentioned article by Trond he gave a few suggestions. Here I would like to add a few more:

First of all you have to be aware that it is YOUR responsibility to make sure that things happen when you want it to happen. Yes, sometimes it can happen, like in the example of the car, but if it doesn’t it is your problem. Secondly you have to follow up on the progress of the work. Simply asking if the deadline will be met is not good enough. It is too easy to answer yes to such a question. You have to try to set up some measurable parameters for the progress. It is also important to keep in mind misunderstandings that easily can happen. You have the obvious wording mistakes, like “half five” which in English is 5.30 and in Norwegian 4.30 (half past five versus halfway to five). An expression like “next weekend” can also mean different things. I have made a habit of always saying things two times with slightly different wordings. If the person I spoke to seems to have understood it the same way both times, it is at least one indication that he/she have understood it correctly. Hope this tip can help you.

My “journey” both to the garage and to Pune last weekend was quite successfully. Above you can see my car parked in typical “Pune style”. If you find a sign that say parking is not allowed at that place, do park there! The sign will probably prompt the security people in the society to look after your car more than they would have done if it was parked some other place!

Talk to you soon

Karsten