Why spend on travel?

Mila, as you know, is one of our high performing software engineers based in California. She is smart, sensitive, works well in a team. Mr. Schultz is her German counterpart in the new project. He is a fairly nice guy, respected by his peers for his contribution, excited to work with the American team. Both get along very well over emails and phone conversations and are collaboratively working on this fast track project. 

One day, there is a disagreement between the two. Mr. Schultz is very critical of Mila’s software and presents his ideas on how she could improve it. He doesn’t hold back any criticism telling her how the basis of her idea is just plain wrong. You see, he comes from a culture with no pretense; they speak what they feel. Mila, on the other hand, is a strong individual but sensitive to her audience when she speaks. Mila decides Mr. Schultz is just a stubborn person who is not accommodative of others. She thinks his intention is to ridicule her ideas. “Why would he always oppose what I say otherwise?”

The next week, something comes up and their project manager Karl decides that Mila should visit their German facility. Karl says, “I know we are cutting on costs this quarter but this might help the team work better and faster. There seem to be a lot of ideas going back and forth. ” Mila immediately grabs the opportunity and is excited to meet the team in Germany. She spends a month there. They work hard that month; they work late nights, share a beer or two, but make it “one productive month!”

In that one month, Mila learnt a few things about Mr. Schultz. He is open and straight-forward, not stubborn. He gives you an honest feedback, no pretense there. Mila realizes that Mr. Schultz’s extremely critical feedback actually led them to create a very stable software by the end of the month.

How did Mila’s opinion change? Because she saw the man in action! She saw the emotions and reason behind his critical emails. She began to understand the goal behind the criticism. And so on…

So, is travel really expensive?