Different strokes for different folks

Communicating cross-culturally is a must in an increasingly globalised business world

 

European integration, globalisation, organisational change, corporate alliances and M&A, the focus on shareholder value, as well as increased competition and the challenge of market differentiation – these are all topics that are debated in conference calls and boardrooms again and again, and yet it is often overlooked that all of these issues are affected by people’s differences and the need to respond to them as individuals. Managing diversity is not just cosmetic – it increases market share and customer intimacy. It improves stock performance and public image. Diversity also helps a company become more competitive in the labour market. All of this means that any internal scepticism to a cross-cultural strategy must be met head on. The drive for managing diversity must come from top management, but also involve all levels of the company in an inclusive and interactive manner. The point must be made that it is a strategic necessity.

As ever, communicators have a key role to play in conveying the importance of cross-cultural issues. The best training must be first-hand experience of working with others from around the world. Where this is not always feasible, however, a quick Google search reveals numerous specialist consultancies that offer business-focused cross-cultural classes. Certainly, the mixture of acquiring new skills while immersing oneself in specific cultures can be an asset and a stepping stone to global success.

Minding your international Ps and Qs

A certain well-known multinational financial institution has run several campaigns convincing us that they are the world’s local bank. Their highly effective advertisements picked on the minutiae of cross-cultural interactions that have been the mainstay of comedy routines and TV depictions of ‘funny foreigners’ for decades: the ‘hilarious’ misunderstandings that can arise when two cultures interpret a simple gesture in very different ways. These are the stumbling blocks that international communicators wake up in a sweat over, but are they really such a major feature of cross-cultural communication? We all want to be on our best behaviour, especially when we are guests abroad or are hosts to guest from abroad, but are we in danger of paralysing our communications efforts from fear of causing unintended offence? Lu Ellen Schafer is executive director of Global Savvy, and has provided multinationals with international training and consulting programmes. Her experiences have given her an overview of the way we work around the world. In her opinion, when it comes to interacting in a “culturally appropriate manner”, communicators should not get bogged down with worrying about how their actions will be perceived: “People worry too much about whether they are showing the sole of their foot when they sit down or not handing someone a business card in the culturally appropriate way,” she says. “I have found these protocol gestures are less important that listening deeply to others, encouraging others to speak and being gracious. It’s just like mom told us!”

Working with other cultures while sticking to your strategy

Beyond the issue of personal interaction, the plethora of different cultures, opinions and voices can seem to be a bar to communicating a particular strategy: how can one strategy accommodate this fractured, multifaceted world? It can be hard enough to get anyone to see things your way, to adapt the same work mentality and attitudes that shape your company’s work ethos, never mind trying to accommodate someone from a wholly other cultural background, who may have different ways of thinking and who may subscribe to different intellectual paradigms. How can companies make space for these differences while still managing to push forward a coherent strategy?

Jana Weatherbee, vice president of internal communications at IBM, sees no inherent problem with sticking to a common strategy while also taking on board local differences: “Communications professionals in markets around the world have authority and responsibility for local execution of our global internal communications strategy,” she says. “The result is a rich array of locally relevant tactics, all driving a common strategy.”

Benoit Ams is managing partner at New Step International, a consulting firm that specialises in marketing western companies in China. He says that western firms looking to bridge out into developing countries, and specifically China, must be able to adapt to their new colleagues’ conditions. “Management practices and structures often need to be adapted to the local context,” he says. “To succeed in China, you need to be capable of working and interacting with colleagues who do not deal with reality in the way that westerners do, who do not see the world in the same way. In China, more than anywhere else, you will need to create a team spirit in your own house style. Therefore, you must not try to become Chinese, but rather you should put in place a language and common system of reference which will enable you to work in cross-cultural teams.”

Lu Ellen Schafer believes there are a number of significant similarities in the way people work and want to be treated at work that help make communicating cross-culturally less intimidating than it may first appear. As she puts it, “Leadership, consistency and the perception of fairness matter a great deal. We have discovered that worldwide, each person wants to feel heard and respected, and be treated fairly. When leaders model this behaviour, the differences in intellectual paradigms matter less than one would think.”

Lost in translation

When communicating cross-culturally, misunderstandings will arise. When this happens, the best approach is to step back and try and see the situation from the perspective of the other side. When we have to adapt our communication strategies and techniques to work with others, it can be easy to feel that it is we who are doing most – if not all – of the work in attempting to bridge the culture gap – e.g. by becoming more flexible with time zone differences. However, the reality is that working globally demands input from everyone, all the time. Communicators should not rush to put the blame for a communications breakdown on others. Schafer describes it like this: “The Law of Negative Attribution means we attribute a negative motive to someone. While this is certainly not cultural, the impact of the Law of Negative Attribution is heightened when we work across cultures and distance. We need to step back and assess the situation from different angles to get to the root of the issue.”

Benoit Ams has a more direct warning about the potential perils of linguistic misunderstandings: “Have you ever heard about the ‘three yeses of communication in China’? Well, for Westerners, the yes is an agreement, unequivocal adherence to what has been said, while in China, there are three forms of the word: “yes, I understand”, “yes, it is possible”, and “yes, I will do”…” Choosing words carefully and precisely can be the key to achieving understanding between parties.

Outsourcing, out of mind

An inescapable feature of modern business is that of outsourcing to other parts of the world, a practice that shows no signs of abating thanks to a growing choice of countries able to tailor to your business’s needs. But more choice means more complexity: whereas earlier outsourcing was to vendors of similar cultural backgrounds, now your vendor could be located in India, southeast Asia, China, or eastern Europe. Problems and mishaps arising from cultural differences are a common feature of outsourcing, and can go undetected until well into a particular project. The resulting frustrations and loss of productivity are a hallmark of outsourcing failures. The popularity of outsourcing also raises specific questions about communicating internally with very different workforces, with particularly far-reaching ramifications in regard to issues of accountability and transparency, both key business concepts for most companies in the west for a while now. But do companies that outsource to other parts of the world face problems in promoting these concepts? Can conflicting views of what constitutes best practice be a hindrance to communications?

Benoit Ams is experienced in this area. “According to the specialists, 80 per cent of the failures of western companies in the Chinese market are directly or indirectly due to intercultural issues,” he says. “This lack of intercultural understanding becomes more damaging as the contracts become more complex, moving from sales representation models to more challenging partnership models (for example in the case of the technology transfer). It is naive to assume that “the professional world is governed by Anglo-Saxon management, and the Chinese will end up adapting”, as one of my European customers suggested to me during our first meeting. The development of his operations in China would later prove him wrong. It is thus important to put in place a true system of intercultural management in order to optimise the chances of success in this ancient country.”

Training

Lu Ellen Schafer believes that not only communicating the importance of transparency and accountability to workers who may be new to this sort of thing, but also actively rewarding them for it, is the key to a harmonious working relationship: “People do what they are rewarded for doing,” she says. “If they are rewarded for transparency, they will move toward that goal. The key is to get the managers in alignment with transparency and accountability and have them rewarded for it. This will help change the work culture in the company’s global sites.”

Again, larger companies that outsource extensively, particularly to emerging countries, can benefit from immersive training programmes that give a rounded, nuanced view of the cultural, social and economic context that the outsourcing finds itself in. IBM works alongside groups that are heavily involved with the developing world, as Jana Weatherbee explains. “As a global corporation, we believe it’s critical that our employees have an understanding of, and respect for, other cultures,” she says. “We provide formal classroom training as well as hands-on learning opportunities through international assignments. We recently complemented these efforts with a programme we call the Corporate Service Corps. This year (the programme’s second), 500 IBMers from different parts of the world are coming together in small teams in emerging markets of the developing world. They are working on short term assignments with non-profits, governments and NGOs, and in the process are learning about the culture of the local community, as well as the cultures of their fellow IBMers.”

Connecting with cultures online

One highly visible means of communicating quickly with people from all around the world is, of course, through social media. Does its prevalence and popularity help or hinder the delicate task of cross-cultural communication? Schafer, for one, is encouraged by the potential to hop, skip and jump across barriers of time and space, and its implications for bringing people together: “More frequent, informal communication can help build relationships and quickly answer business queries,” she says. “Therefore, the more, the better in our dispersed, culturally-diverse workplaces.” This is one area where that often-overlooked internal communications tool, the intranet, can come into its own. If a company is sufficiently international in scope, then ambitious internal communications projects can be established, as is the case with IBM’s ‘jam sessions’. Jana Weatherbee explains: “A jam is a multi-day, facilitated conversation (with local language capability) on our global intranet among thousands of employees, focused on specific topics. Post-jam analysis of the conversations produces a set of outcomes that are then executed in the company. Our most recent jam, which also included clients, had nearly 90,000 participants across 80 countries.” Not every company can boast 90,000 participants spread over 80 countries, but as long as your company views diversity of thinking and ideas across the company as a competitive advantage, then bringing people from different cultures together to share diverse points of view should be a no-brainer.