Babies crying in the background and Offshoring
A few weeks ago, I got on a conference call with some of my peers across time-zones. After the meeting was called to order, one could hear the distinct wailing of a baby in the background. The manager chairing the call couldn’t stop himself from grumbling “Can the person with the baby crying in the background please get on mute?”
In an era where many of us work extended hours from home and stay awake at odd hours to take calls from peers and colleagues across the globe, the occasional ‘background notice’ be it the brawling baby or honking of irate drivers in a traffic jam are perhaps inevitable. Going on mute, unless one has to contribute to the discussion is an option but not always practical, especially in cases of animated discussions where one forgets to un-mute before making an important point or argument. The person at the other end of the line may be taken aback by the silence from this end unless we quickly figure out that we are on mute!
Well, juggling distractions of commute and/or domestic life while also productively participating in conference calls is more of an art than a precise science… experience is sometimes a good teacher.
On a similar topic, calls with international teams leads to phonetic spectacle that is not always amusing. The reasons are not hard to see: the accents and pronunciations we grew up with are hard to mask. The Southern Drawl, Scottish accent or the Distinctive South-Indian accents are hard to suppress and becomes a big challenge when trying to spell crucial details (say, an email-address) over a teleconference; for example try spelling my last name Krishnamoorthy, which is a mouthful even for many (North) Indians.
Now, try to get the average Joe (or Raj) to do a phonetic description and he will either begin with K for Kansas or K for Kite depending on whether he is from the mid-west or she is from India….and by the time you get to ‘N’ there will be a couple of iterations over whether it is eMm or Nnn.. Well, why not stick with N for November? So, theoretically, one could start with K as in Kilo, R as in Romeo, I as in India, A as in Alpha (not A as in Apple as most kids are taught in school)…For those curious, check out the Wikipedia entry on “NATO phonetic alphabet” The Phonetics are a tried-and-tested list used by militaries, and those in the business of international communication. This is a tool that requires a a bit of practice, and is not rocket science.
Comments
Very well said. I literally have con calls everyday across 3-4 timezones, and this kind of big noise if inevitable. In fact, one should respect that the call is happening outside office hours and the participant is at his home.
Posted by: Trakin | May 1, 2007 05:47 PM
Well said. Few things
- Many a times calls happen at odd hours for offshore folks.
- Most of the onsite folks expect offshore folks to participate in the calls at times convenient to them.
- If the spouse is also working in IT field and has con calls of her own you cannot avoid having baby noise in the background.
You are doing a good job in spreading the finer points on offshoring. Keep it up.
Posted by: Naveen | May 2, 2007 03:03 AM
Its true, a few days back when i called up a client in Singapore, that call was at a wrong time. Some communication gap happened because of our perceptions. Still i am trying to reduce the gap.
Posted by: Srinivas Chakravarthy | May 3, 2007 12:37 PM