Interview with Cornelius Fichtner - Part 1

The PMI Sao Paolo Chapter has recently published an interview they did with me. It's in Portuguese. This is part 1/3 of the English version:

How did come up the idea of creating the “PM Podcast”?

My wife gave me an iPod for my birthday about 4 years ago. Almost immediately I began listening to podcasts from all around the world and found the medium not only fascinating but also a great way to expand my knowledge in various areas. Except for project management, because there was no Podcast on project management available. So I created my own at www.thepmpodcast.com.

In comparison, what are European and American project managers’ main characteristics? Are there many differences between their managerial styles?

One difference that immediately comes to mind is the reliance on personal relationships for European project managers and the reliance on legal agreements in the USA. At one point in my career I worked for a European company in Switzerland and while we had contracts with our clients, these were not very elaborate. They covered the basics of the business relationship. It was much more important for me as the PM to get to know the customer, build a good relationship with them and then we would work together as a team in order get things done.

After two years I moved to the US office in California. It immediately struck me how much more complex and thick the legal documents were. It seemed like there was a clause in these documents for any situation. Personally, I felt a bit more “boxed in” because I had fewer opportunities to “make things right” in a creative way for the customer outside the legal agreements, if anything should ever go wrong.

Do you consider that countries cultural differences are still significant barriers to Project Management or globalization process is reducing those barriers?

I strongly believe that there are no cultural differences between COUNTRIES. All cultural differences are between PEOPLE. Starting from this premise it is now easy to see that our job as project managers is to encourage our project teams to find ways of working together with the understanding that we all come from different backgrounds. All our projects require a plan, risk management or a budget. There is no doubt about that. The question is just what we each think the correct approach should be.

The biggest cultural difference, however, will show itself in communications. Most international projects will use English as their official language. But which flavor? Swiss English or Brazilian English? By this I am not only referring to our different accents but to the “context” of the language. Swiss German (my mother tongue) is very straightforward and we don’t say things like “would you please be kind enough and do this?” We simply say “do this” and it is in no way rude. It’s just the way we speak. I had to learn that I needed to add “would you” in front of my sentences here in America.

So if we are able to understand where our project team members are coming from (culturally speaking) then there are no barriers in our way. Just challenges.