What it really means to manage a team of 14 (and growing) nationalities
Whenever I talk about Sourcefabric, there are many things that people find fascinating: our mission, our products, our organisational history and its development over the years, the marriage of non-profit and for-profit, our projects, our partners and clients. But nothing gets quite as many surprised looks and raised eyebrows as the mention that the 65+ people that form our core team currently come from 14 countries and that 20+ languages are spoken within our virtual walls (not counting the programming languages). Our top management team (the Founders and the C-level suite) alone consists of six people and we have 5 nationalities (and 3 continents) represented in this small group.
I fondly remember my first encounter with Sourcefabric during its annual meeting, Sourcecamp, back in 2011 in Prague. Within just one hour, I was introduced to the three founders from the US, Serbia and Germany, the Czech CFO and other team members from the UK, Guatemala, Belarus, Poland, Canada, and many, many other countries. And I was hooked! Having been an international student in the US back in 2002, I loved the idea and the connected challenges of now working in such a multinational environment. (I had also just watched “The Social Network” and had developed a soft spot for software development.)
And what a ride it continues to be! I am very proud to say that cultural diversity is at the very heart of Sourcefabric. We fully embrace it and while our HR strategy is not officially a game of "playing tag" on a global scale, we continue to successfully widen our international spread on an ongoing basis.
What do I mean when I say "we embrace it"? First, we all get a buzz out of adding another piece to the international puzzle. While Swedes are popular everywhere, when I announced that our newly hired Operations Manager in Berlin comes originally from Sweden, the cheers were pretty loud (only cushioned by the sad fact that we had to say goodbye to her predecessor, a wonderful colleague from Greece).
Also on the plus side is the fact that we learn from each other all the time - be it regarding national holidays, elections and other political and historical events, culinary delights, various types of "grappa" or all the ways to say "Happy Birthday", we constantly offer and soak up cultural knowledge and thereby continue to widen our horizons on a daily basis. A lot of this happens almost accidentally - nobody here is officially tasked with "intercultural integration", we all live and breathe it every day. And although some people might assume that internal communication must be extra hard with such a diverse team, it's actually not. "Always assume the best" is one of our organisational mantras, which also means: Don't be too quick to judge. When conflicts arise (and they do sometimes), it's usually not about mastery of a particular language, but about general communication skills - no matter if you're a native speaker or not.
Another anecdote: I was already “pretty international” when I arrived here, but I also had to ease myself into the day-to-day of international company talk. On my first day, there was a pretty heated discussion about political tensions in Georgia (where we had several projects) and my gut instinct was to shut it off as people were getting very agitated. I am glad I didn’t. Minutes later, it all turned out to be caused by a misunderstood joke (that I still don’t get) and the conflict dissolved itself without any invention. Who knows, I might have made things a lot worse by getting involved. I definitely judged too quickly and I learned a lesson or two (also about Georgia) that day.
We also embrace the complexity and other potentials for conflict that come with cultural diversity and we don't shy away from addressing them. Needless to say that cultural backgrounds play a role in all types of human interactions, but when "the talking gets tough", this level of diversity really gives any conflict that little bit of extra spice. In our strategy meetings, we have the most extraordinarily fun moments together and we also have run-ins sometimes. While our nationalities are of course never the sole reason for these, the way you deal with criticism, conflict, stress and fear is heavily influenced by your upbringing and your cultural background. Pretty much all "Sourcefabs" have lived in various countries, yet we all have a certain "core code" and our birth culture forms a part of that, as much as our individual personality. And just to confirm the stereotypes: the Germans within Sourcefabric are usually the ones who say "NO" the quickest and who are often charged with creating "Stanzmaschine"-type processes, as our Serbian Managing Director (who still holds a childhood grudge because Germany once beat Brazil, where he lived at the time, in an important football match) likes to say. We don't use our backgrounds as excuses, but we remind ourselves that they matter. Having a higher degree of cultural sensitivity, knowing that a German "NO" is actually not as final as it sounds, definitely helps.
Do we have a special recipe for avoiding conflict in this context of cultural diversity? Perhaps we do. As a default setting we are open, curious and friendly towards each other. We celebrate together (and I know now that Poles and Romanians are excellent company for celebrating!). By treating others with respect and by focusing on what we can learn from each other (rather than what we can teach others), I think we are doing a pretty good job at creating an atmosphere of trust and friendship. And as a manager I have learned to take a step back and listen. While it’s my job to provide structures, I don’t always make things better by getting involved.
Structures are good, but whatever you do, the next Soccer World Cup will come and overwrite all existing intentions and protocols for interaction anyway ;).
Interested in joining our team? Check out our open positions.