Sun on the Danube? More like 孫 on the Danube!

Yesterday I went out for my morning run in Budapest. The weather was mild and there was a glorious blue sky. The sun reflected magnificently off the Danube, the river that flows through 10 different countries and 4 Central and Eastern European capitals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danube). It felt really good to get outside and do some exercise after two days where I had got up at 5.20AM and then travelled in plane (to Amsterdam and London).

That said the highlight of the day was lunch with a client. It was only during this meeting did I realise what globalisation is really about. Imagine the scene – a large Hungarian telco firm with about 5-600 people located in the outskirts of the country’s capital. A Hungarian firm serving Hungarian clients run and managed by Hungarian people and that has been going for about 15 years or so. My client counterpart invited me to look around the canteen as we ate – I could only see a handful of white European faces and the whole place was filled by groups of Chinese and Indian people. The Chinese guys were from ZTE and the Indians from Wipro. He also told me that in actual fact many of the white faces were Norwegians....The telco is running two large programs – the business application project is being done by Wipro, and a networks project is being done by ZTE. The company has also been absorbed into a wider telco group and as a result it’s the Scandinavians who call the shots.

I was amazed and it was very interesting listening to my (Hungarian) client as he talked about some of the cultural difficulties everyone is having adjusting to each other, not least the objections of the Hungarians who now refuse to come to work because of the Chinese who had been happily spitting on the floor (of what is a beautiful brand new office) and sleeping on the desks after lunch. Apparently ZTE are also going to be bringing in their own chief and catering services because the men from Beijing are not fond of the goulash. So it seems that this is what the future looks like, and I have to confess that I couldn’t help but wonder how Maxime, Gaston and Capucine are going to cope in that type of working environment......