Cowboys and Indians: Impacts of Cultural Diversity on Agile Teams
Underestimating the impacts of cultural diversity on your team can be disastrous, creating barriers and even team breakdown. Most leaders aren’t even aware of the influences that different cultures can have on team dynamics. These impacts can be even more pronounced on agile self organizing teams.
Discuss our journey & lessons learned at a major company in the transportation sector:
Pre-awareness - clueless state
o some “camps” building, suboptimal performance, communication hampered – thought to be attributed to different personalities.
The awakening – forced thru Best Shoring
o Best Shoring announced at company
o Cultural Diversity expert engaged to help thru the journey – attended initial diversity session
o the aha occurred (before the infusion of offshore resources) – “I already have a culturally diverse team”
o Awareness that peoples cultural orientation shape they way they communicate, collaborate, take responsibility, give and accept feedback, respond to authority figures, accept risk, or respond to change. Impacting foundational principles for Agile teams.
o During a retrospective with the current team truly understood how deep the resistance was regarding the Offshore model (considered a threat to their livelihood, only prepared to go so far…)
The discovery process – what are these cultural biases and how do I manage? Given the resistance how do I rebuild the team and still meet our business objectives & commitments?
o Compared Indian cultural values to Agile values
o Identified potential challenges and areas to leverage
o Developed extensive on-boarding plan focused on merging a culturally divergent team (near shore & landed offshore)
Execution of plan – timing was the pits – resources landed right before go-live!
o Cultural Expert worked with the current team (Calgary Cowboys) and my new Indian team members – helped to align expectations
o Developed team norms with newly formed team
o Watching a Russell Peters comedy video about cultural diversity was a great hit!
So how are we faring?
o Team seems to working fairly well together. Some cultural biases still creep in that I have to be alert for (hierarchical impacts, providing very specific very blunt feedback, watch for signs of miscommunication – not responding in the way anticipated)
o No major resistance from Calgary team – reframed perspective by discussing how they can add value.
o Team socials are still not well attended by all – still puzzles me.
o Working towards my goal of building a high performing culturally diverse team.