We’ll include this item in the list of cultural differences that could lead to misunderstandings.  According to a piece in the Wall Street Journal (sorry, subscription required), the immediacy of a cell phone call, text message, IM, or face to face meeting make all of these preferable to e-mail for doing business in China.  Ms. Li Yuan, shares her prospective on the differences and takes a stab at explaining them:

“One reason: technological problems. Almost every Chinese I asked cited such difficulties, saying their corporate emailing systems aren’t as reliable as those of Yahoo or sina.com. They either get buried in spam, or find that many of their messages can’t get over the firewall.

But I think that’s only part of the reason. Another aspect is cultural. Many Chinese prefer traditional, face-to-face meetings, or at least one-to-one phone calls and text messages sent via cellphone. And in China’s go-go climate, instant responses are greatly valued. For many people I know, email is an afterthought — they’d rather chat via instant message.

Maybe that’s also the reason voice mail has never taken off in China. Who has the patience to wait to be called back instead of calling somebody’s cellphone immediately?”

This is the first time that I’ve seen a credible explanation for the nearly complete absence of voice mail in China.  Many of the most senior executives that we work with don’t have VM.  You have to just keep calling until they finally pick up, or else you send them a text message.  As Ms. Yuan suggests, e-mail is pretty much hit-or-miss.

In contrast, many of us (of a certain age) in U.S. business value the asynchronous nature of e-mail.  We can send it off without interrupting the recipient, and we can have some (perhaps diminishing) hope that they’ll respond when they can.  We like having an e-mail record of our interactions, and we appreciate being able to include multiple recipients in the “CC” list (of course, this leads to all sorts of anti-social behavior).  We also value the fact that we can hit “Send” and check one more thing off on our To-Do list (now it’s the other person’s problem).  Sadly, the sheer volume of e-mail is making it much less effective.  We often find that people are ignoring their inbox because it’s just overwhelming.

As we’re thinking about how to work with our colleagues in China, Ms. Yuan’s comments are well worth considering.  We need to agree on realistic communication protocols that reflect an acceptable compromise between the preferred styles.  On the U.S. side, we may be required to handle lots of phone calls in the evening, and we may learn to accept that e-mail isn’t appropriate for anything really important.  While, in China, our co-workers may need to pay more attention to proactively managing their e-mails.

In the end, it’s the sender’s responsibility to select the medium that will accomplish their objective most effectively and it’s important to recognize that our own preferences are not universal.

Technorati Tags:  China, email, cell phone, Text Message, IM, Voice Mail, China Outsourcing