Upon arriving at Best Engineering, Sunil, the lead engineer for the team, greets Jeff at the door. Looming at over 6’ 4”, he towers above most Indians. While talking to 6’1” Jeff, he bends over and holds his hands together, belittling himself to 5’ 4” and, Jeff thinks, in an obsequious, rather than gracious, manner. Memo to self, Jeff thinks: see if he strikes this pose while talking with shorter Indians and see if perhaps he is hard of hearing. After an appropriate amount of groveling, Sunil ushers Jeff into a meeting room that could be located anywhere in the world: light gray walls (Corporate gray # 26 paint), a gray laminated table, flimsy looking wire chairs with gray cloth seats. Good thing all these Indians are feather weights; half the butts in the US wouldn’t even fit in the chairs. A white board at the front of the room had been wiped clean. Jeff knows this is a good practice, having left embarrassing information on the backside of those boards one too many times.
Quickly connecting his computer to a projector that displays next to the white board, Jeff brings up his presentation and hands out a 10- page document.
Sunil introduces Jeff to the group and then turns to Jeff and says, “we are all delighted that you are here and we do have one special request. We are all working on our American expressions, so please correct us if we get any wrong.”
“Thanks so much for hosting me here today. I’d love to help you with your American idioms; we certainly need to make sure we understand each other. I’ll start by giving you an overview of our engineering company and our first project. Here is a specification book on the project for all of you to review,” he says while waving his copy of the booklet. Looking out at the group, Jeff notes that they all appear totally, leaning-in engaged. Not one sleepy eye in the group. He wonders how long that glow will last and if anyone will dare clown with him or even give him any feedback. He’ll certainly miss the paper airplanes floated by his Southern California staff signaling that the saturation point has been breached. Some of those airplanes were certainly works of art, if not genius.
“Nautical Specialty Engineering is a 20-year-old boutique engineering company that designs and then oversees the manufacturing of custom fittings and supplies for the marine industry. We call it Cleats to Fleets.” Jeff says while showing the first picture (aka “slide”) in the presentation (aka “deck). The slide depicts the front of the building, with the company’s large logo which is a few simple lines depicting a sailboat with a tools indicator that could also be a big wheel in the middle of it.
The next slide shows the pre-requisite list of their prime / most famous or “brag” customers. “We’ve worked on everything from The Americas Cup boats to manufacturing inexpensive cleats for World Marine. As the largest supplier of boats and fishing gear in the USA, cost is a huge factor for them. For the Americas Cup contenders, no factor at all. Our motto is that if they can dream it, we can engineer it. In this project, we are way over on the low cost end of the scale.”
The third slide starts the discussion on the specific project. It’s entitled “Project Slip Patio” and shows a mockup of a group of slips with two of them covered by fabric flooring upon which tables and chairs sit. A third slip shows the rolled-up patio fabric on one side. One of the slips shows a cover approximately 12 ft long, the other over twice that length. “On this project, we will be working for World Marine on developing a platform that goes across a slip. It should provide space for people to lounge if they have a slip and no boat, or perhaps the slip is much larger than the boat, so the platform goes on the unoccupied, land side of the slip.”
The fourth slide is titled “Project Requirements”. Jeff continues, “due to many environmental restrictions on waterways in the US, this has to be temporary. By that, I mean a 12 year old needs to be able to set it up within 10 minutes without any tools. Not the first time it is installed – that can take much longer and can even require the use of power tools and professionals. At the end of the day, it needs to come down quickly, without tools, too. Now, part of the challenge is that one side of the slip may not have a dock, however it will have some posts. I won’t try to engineer it for you, that is your job and the material specs are in the book, but I am envisioning something like the trampoline on the front of a catamaran. It will need to come in different sizes and in the USA, we need to be careful about tripping hazards, even when talking about docks and water. Any questions so far?”
All of the engineers look at Sunil, as if asking for permission to speak. Sunil pays no attention to them but stands up to his full 6’4” at the back of the room and says to Jeff, “No questions. Sounds like a piece of pie.”
“That’s cake, Sunil. Piece of cake,” Jeff tells him, thinking how hard it must be to understand American idioms.
“OK, easy as cake,” Sunil responds.
“No, that would be pie. As easy as pie; it’s a piece of cake. But that is OK, the truth is that what we are attempting is neither. But after initial set-up, putting it and taking it down does need to be a piece of cake.”
“Got it: easy as pie, a piece of cake.” Says Sunil while smiling.
All the engineers echo this. And Jeff wonders if he missed some kind of a repeat after me signal. He would watch more carefully. Already, he’d figured out that Sunil wasn’t hard of hearing. Leaning down and in was certainly an obsequious posture and Jeff knows this can spell problems for communications. A slight bit of disrespect would be much more productive.
“We don’t expect this to be trivial; and pay special attention to the safety of the pinch points around the connections. We don’t want a child’s foot to get caught between the trampoline and the dock.” Then, with an attempt at humor, Jeff adds, “you know, they get stuck and a shark jumps out of the water and drags them under.” Not one laugh, not even one grin. Jeff vows that will be his last attempt at a joke. He really misses his old team who would have contributed their own horror visions or added more gruesome details such as, “kiddie toes make great chum for sharks; keep the fishing gear handy.”
Slide 5 displays with the title of “Timeline”. “As I said, it won’t be easy and part of it is the challenging timeline. World Marine would like it on their shelves in 8 months and we’ll need 8 weeks for manufacturing and shipping. Also they would like to see a prototype ready in 4 months. For that, 3 or 4 of your team members will come to our headquarters for a demonstration. Once we have a successful review, we move to the manufacturing which will be bid by two companies with whom we have experience in China.”
Jeff studies the faces of the team who are all smiling and nodding their heads. He has no idea if they understand the challenges they face. He knows they should have many, many questions but also understands that these might not be aired until they’ve had time to digest the project booklet. For starters, nobody in this culture wants to ask questions, say nothing about questions that have been answered in a booklet. Many past experiences have informed Jeff that at the beginning of a project, one does not even know what questions to ask – inclusive of very, very important questions.
The last slide is labeled “Resources” and it lists web sites and people with whom they may want to consult on issues ranging from government regulations by state to materials. “And, of course, if you have questions, you can funnel them through Sunil,” said Jeff hoping Sunil would be a good funnel and not a gigantic filter.
“Alrighty then. Enough about me, let me hear about all of you.” Jeff said and pointed to the engineer sitting closest to the front on his right.
This engineer, a head shorter than Sunil, starts giving his resume: “I am Samar. I received my undergraduate degree and masters at The Indian Institute of Technology of Bombay and was awarded my doctorate 3 years later at The Indian Institute of Technology of Delhi. I have 3 patents and 6 patents pending……..”
As he kept going, Jeff thinks how impressive this resume would be anywhere in the world. When Samar finishes, Jeff points to the next engineer and gets a very similar story. When they have all finished, Jeff is flabbergasted at what is sitting in front of him. Hell, they should be curing cancer, not building a toy for rich people. If he could round up this level of skills in the US, what would it cost? He stands over them, shakes his head a little and says, “Great, that helps me tremendously. The six of you have 8 PhD, totaling about 50 years of advanced education as well as experience. It sounds like you all only have about 3 patents each, but you’re young. I think we’ll do fine. Thanks so much for the introduction. Next, study your handouts and gather your questions. I’ll be back next week to review.” Then, turning to Sunil, he asks for a tour of the facility.
While touring the facility, Jeff notices that every desk is surrounded by 4 computer screens with little heads wearing head phones popping up from time to time. The screens display 3D drawings of a wide variety of projects. Walking around the side of some desks, Jeff sees that many are video conferencing with Americans and everyone is speaking English. Sunil goes into great detail describing the servers they use and how they monitor their teams. Jeff knows the advent of inexpensive communication lines between India and the USA make all of this possible. And, these inexpensive communication lines were made possible by the bankruptcy of the original companies who installed them. Those companies were certainly the pioneers with arrows in their backs! Now, big companies are installing their own cables, greatly increasing the Internet bandwidth between countries. The world is certainly flat, Jeff thinks. And, more people are sophisticated users of the Internet in India than there are humans in the USA.
After the tour Jeff and Sunil sit at the company’s little café that could be mistaken for a good sized Starbucks. Jeff was going to quiz Sunil about the tools for his staff, but it was evident that these engineers were provided with the best computing that reasonable money could buy – and more than a few steps above what Jeff could ever get for his people, even after many hours of shameless bartering. Jeff decides to quiz Sunil in regards to the team, wondering if all of the people he saw at desks had similarly impressive resumes.
“This is our first project with your company, so I got to pick the cream of the corp.”
“That is the cream of the crop, Sunil, but I understand the confusion. Maybe you should stay away from idioms.”
“Oh, I would very much like to work on them, though, Mr. Jeff. You can keep correcting me if you don’t mind. “
Jeff thinks this may be a silver lining, an area where Sunil will really open up and help promote open discussions on everything else. “Fine, Sunil. However, if I say something you don’t understand, you really, really need to let me know. Do you think you can do that? “
“Why yes. For sure. Absolutely. Can do. …” says Sunil with a broad smile and nods of the head.
“I got it, Sunil…. You have very good equipment here. Looks like everyone has two computers and four screens. You track the work they are doing. I worry most about our communications; we need constant conversations and video conferencing to make sure we stay on track. How reliable is your Internet connectivity to the states?”
“We have multiple gigabit connections from different providers. It is our life food.”
“I think you mean your life blood.”
“OK, our life blood. Got it.
“You can get on any of our computers anytime to see what we are doing and we will talk every day. My team has a material engineer, a mechanical engineer, a design engineer, a tester for all incoming components and a manufacturing expert. We will “pull our part” for you.”
“Thanks, Sunil, but let’s hope you’ll “pull together” for us, or you’ll “pull your weight” or even do your part for us.”
“We will do all of those.”