"All Day Staff Meeting"

While you learn about the different business cultures that exist around the world, no one ever tells you about this one. Let me just say before I go on to tell of this strange “all day staff meeting” as my grandmother called, it was an experience. I have never seen so much organization and social cohesion come out of such chaos and disorganization, but I guess that’s just the Indian way. It’s not that I wasn’t aware of some of the different festivities or prayers that might take place throughout the day, based on the uniqueness of the morning’s ceremony, but my grandma redefines the word “meeting” for a business environment all its own.

Although I could not understand much of what was taking place during this “all staff meeting”, I was able to understand a few simple things. I am sure that the meeting consisted of much more conversation than discussion, introductions took place at the end instead of before, there was a prayer every 30 minutes or so, a very flexible break was given for chai and “mid-day meals” part way through, and overall a lot got done. Unique is an understatement, but as a business student who hopes to find herself traveling the world for work, unique is just one of many business environments I will have to adjust to If I have any hope of communicating with those around me, understanding and strongly believing that communication is the foundation of business. Although it may not be the way you or I might conduct business in the United States or Slovakia or South Africa, it is the time spent in those environments dissimilar from our own that allow us to observe, understand, and apply our own cultural learnings in order to better the foundation of international interaction as a whole.