Culture as a Competitive Business Advantage

By Michael S. Schell and Charlene Solomon
CEO and EVP of RW³

rw-3.com

It’s hard to imagine a successful businessperson who is not familiar with terms such as outsourcing, global markets, and managing a diverse workforce. Yet, how much do we really understand the skills these fundamental business functions require?

For example, is successful outsourcing simply getting the best price and product? Is capturing global markets really possible without understanding the marketplace itself? Can you manage a diverse workforce by extending excellent American management techniques?

Clearly, the business managers and organizations that succeed have both an intuitive and acquired cultural dexterity and have learned to meld cultural dexterity with good business practice.

Understanding Cultural Differences
While understanding cultural differences may seem simple when you see people around the world wearing similar clothes and aspiring to the same outward signs of affluence and success, truly comprehending deeply held values, expectations and behaviors, is anything but simple. While not simple, fortunately, culture can be learned.

What, then, is culture? Is it the way people act? Is it what they think? Is it what they believe?

On the surface, culture is everything you see around you—the words people use, the food they eat, their clothes, and their pace of life.

Just like an iceberg, the part of culture that floats below the surface is what you need to be more concerned about. This is where the values and beliefs reside. This is called invisible culture, and the best way to understand people from different cultures is to be aware of what’s going on beneath the surface—and to use that knowledge to shape your own behavior and expectations. If you don’t understand that what’s below the surface is far more powerful and potentially dangerous than what you can see, you run the risk of hitting the invisible part of the iceberg.

Culture is multi-layered. Created by myriad factors, including history, religion, mythology, climate and geography of a country, it is defined by shared values and beliefs, and forms the fundamental assumptions on which the whole society is built.

The inner core or the invisible culture, hearkens back to the essence of our innermost beliefs about universal, nonnegotiable truths and values. The invisible culture is so deeply embedded that it is difficult to recognize and is critical to forming our social fabric. The visible layers might change but these changes are superficial and shouldn’t delude observers to think that deep alterations in culture have been made.

How To Learn Culture
Business people learn culture best when they are able to recognize regular behaviors and interpret them with their cultural context. For example, is being late rude? It is in a high Time cultures like the U.S. and Germany but not in Latin America or Spain.

What does that tell us as businesspeople? It means that when we want a product delivered or a task completed on schedule, we have to manage the process differently in low Time cultures.

What about business titles, clothing and formality? What do they tell us about the people we’re working with? In today’s world, external signs of formality have decreased. For example, people rarely use titles to address each other and “business casual” clothing is more prevalent. But, don’t be misled. The Japanese, the Italians and the Mexicans are as hierarchical as they’ve traditionally been and expect to be treated appropriate to their rank, age, and status.

Below the surface in these cultures, people expect a different relationship with managers, colleagues, and customers. If you expect the same level of collegiality, individual initiative and empowerment as in the U.S., Canada or Australia, you will be surprised, disappointed, and worse yet, you will confuse those you are managing.

What You Need for Success
To be successful, business managers need to be attuned to cultural differences, examine what clues you’re getting on the surface and what that might mean at a deeper level.

Managers need to ask questions, check for understanding, and avoid making assumptions. You need to clearly state what you mean and explain how that translates into behavior.

It is critical to manage your own expectations and temper your behavior to locally appropriate cultural mores. What’s more, it’s important to learn about the cultures you’re dealing with—from their histories and government to the nuances of etiquette. In other words, you need to know how to behave correctly “on the surface” and be respectful of the origins of that local culture.