Question: With outsourcing becoming a trend, what do you see are the challenges in assuring quality of products/services in the supply chain?

Townsend:

When my wife and I were conducting that workshop on leadership and quality and creativity with the senior leaders of Tata motors, this topic of outsourcing came up because Tata motors had just opened an operation in Korea. And they were really struggling with some problems and a lot of it was simply linguistic. What language were they going to speak and do I understand you when you speak their language. That’s important, but it is also not unique to, between two separate countries. In America, the same thing happens when someone in, say in New England talks to someone in say Texas or Tennessee; you have the same chances for misunderstanding. I mean statements that folks in New England think are examples of being up front and honest are taken as rude in Texas. Statements that in Texas that are considered to be friendly and welcoming and mildly humorous are taken as foolish or signs of weakness in New England. You have this absolute same problem.

What it comes down to is with so much it is communications, but you kind of have to keep an eye on it both the technical communications and the personal communications. You’ve got to make that sure what you’re saying is what they’re hearing because communications, of course, is always is both transmission, what you think you said, and reception, what they actually heard. And what counts is reception. So you as a transmitter have got to be sure that they are hearing the right thing out there. The other thing, nowadays, the same idea, even more emotion gets into it now in America when you have these. The big complaint now is the outsourcing of phone calls. I call with a service problem and now I suddenly talk to somebody in a foreign country. Well, in point of fact, if I am sitting in New Jersey, when I pick up the phone to make a call, there is no practical difference between talking with someone in Tennessee and talking to somebody in India. There is no practical difference to me as long as that person knows what they’re talking about. But it becomes the responsibility of the company to make sure that I understand the system of accountability. that I understand there is backup, that I can get more help. So yes, that’s a problem, but it’s a problem almost in perception in that end. So this whole outsourcing and like, a lot of it is perception and a lot of it is rational and emotional reception and transmission, all of which can be handled.