Over the years I have often encountered Danes who are so confident that their (Our!) way of working is the only one that makes sense. Tirelessly I have argued against this perspective and suggested that from an ethical as well as a pragmatic perspective this perspective is plain wrong! And counterproductive! First, its (borderline) racist. Secondly, if we deny even the option that theycould be right and maintain the “western management is better” discourse we miss out on an enormous potential. After all the certain way to stupidity is refusing that we can learn anything from others!

In interviews, casual conversations, cultural training sessions and other encounters with Danes working with Indian counterparts in offshoring setups I have asked variations of the headline of this blog post at least 200 times over the last couple of years. Usually I either draw or ask people to imagine a horizontal line. At one end of the line is what they themselves are really good at and their Indian counterparts are really bad at. At the other end of the line is the opposite. That is, something that the Indian counterparts are excellent at and they themselves are poor at.