An Investor’s Business Daily article this past weekend poses the following question: Why is it hard for American companies to expand overseas? Simply put, “mastering cultural differences and understanding European, Asian or Latin American customers affect bottom-line results.” So, if nothing is invested in cultural learning, business will not build the momentum it needs to achieve the success it took to expand in the first place.

“Americans think if they are well-intentioned and go overseas or anywhere, they’ll be successful. Being well-intentioned isn’t enough,” said Charlene Solomon, EVP of RW3 Culturewizard who co-authored Managing Across Cultures with CEO Michael Schell. Solomon says that “businesspeople need to understand cultural differences and pinpoint what global customers want from their product.”

One of the most important tips Schell and Solomon offered is to “honor the local culture as exemplified by McDonald’s buying local produce and ingredients rather than having them shipped in.” Knowing the customer in an intimate way, as one would more naturally do in their native country, is absolutely essential. Developing a global mindset is a core competency for all members of an organization, management especially, in the 21st century.

Click here to jump to the article.

Josh

RW3 CultureWizard

The cover story of this month’s American Executive, titled “Global Mindset,” features Charlene Solomon, Michael Schell and their book Managing Across Cultures. The growing need for executives and their organizations to effectively do business in a very global market is highlighted by the crucial role culture plays worldwide. “The most serious errors made by Americans when dealing with other cultures include ignoring other cultures’ need for relationship building and assuming other cultures share our love for risk-taking, say Schell and Solomon…One reason Americans tend to underestimate the need for relationships, said Solomon, is that time is so important to us. ‘We don’t realize that building relationships and taking time to talk to people are really important. We tend to think these things are gratuitous.’”

A strong sense of relationship and rapport prevails in many cultures outside North America and Western Europe. In East and South Asia and the Middle East, business is built on trusting, personal relationships that extend beyond the workplace.

According to Solomon, this relationship building takes “a few minutes to chat about something on a conference call, taking a little bit of a personal interest in the person on the other end of the phone, and being polite in an opening note in an e-mail.” Cognizance of the cultural need for this kind of behavior is not difficult, and practice makes perfect. “We practice it internally,” she said. “Opening an e-mail with a hello, if appropriate saying you hope they had a good weekend, closing it with your name, just being polite. Also, we take some time before meetings start and see that time of relationship building as part of the business process.”

Owning this knowledge of other cultures empowers you as a global professional, and builds on your global mindset, a must-have for the 21st century.

Click here to jump to the full article online.

Sean

RW3 CultureWizard

Read about Charlene Solomon and Michael Schell’s book, Managing Across Cultures: The Seven Keys to Doing Business with a Global Mindset, in Re:locate Magazine, a website for HR and Relocation professionals.

Paul

RW3 CultureWizard

In China last week, President Obama used a combination of diplomatic finesse and technological know-how to invite a question from an online viewer via Twitter regarding China’s “great firewall,” or its strict internet censorship policies (click here to read about it in the New York Times). His indirect communication style helped him to convey the message in a subtle way, which appeased his young audience without offending China’s leaders. “Face” is one of the most important cultural concepts in Asia, and President Obama successfully avoided damaging his Chinese counterpart’s “face” while addressing an important, sensitive topic.

Read an opinion piece in the South China Morning Post that highlights Obama’s non-confrontational and culturally sensitive approach to Asia.

Click here to watch CCTV’s (China Central Television) coverage of President Obama’s arrival to the Chinese capital and initial meeting with President Hu Jintao. We found it interesting that the broadcaster in this clip emphasized how he shortened his stay in Japan and South Korea, but did not change his schedule in China. What kind of culturally-rooted communication style is this broadcaster using, and what is he implying? What other thoughts do you have about the tour in Asia?

Since cultural understanding is crucial to international relations, we are offering our next Pocket Guide in the series, which is on China. If you’d like to receive this, please click here.

Charlene

RW-3.com

At a media conference in New Delhi this week, Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, said “We feel that solutions which have been devised by us around the world, cannot be imposed here. The company needs to find unique solutions for India.” She also noted that the country was in the top three markets for the company, and that they intend to foster a cultural awareness of India to produce the most relevant products. For global corporations, culture becomes an ally when marketing and selling to diverse populations. We’ve seen how PepsiCo approached China (click here to read a related post).

What do you think it takes to achieve success in the Indian consumer market?

Click here to jump to the article on the Hindustan Times website.

Josh

RW-3.com

Check out this Economist article that explains how prized hummus is as a part of Middle Eastern cultural patrimony. According to the article, it is crucial for various “nationalists,” Israeli and Lebanese alike, to recognize this food’s origins. It is so important that to some it seems tantamount to political sovereignty. “Foods such as hummus originated in Lebanon, [the Lebanese] say, and this should be recognised, as much as Greece’s exclusive claim to feta cheese or Parma’s to parmesan. Alarmed by Israeli firms’ success in marketing Middle Eastern foods in the West, where they are sometimes labelled as traditional Israeli fare, [Lebanese] see the food fight as an extension of Arab ‘resistance’ against the usurping of their patrimony.”

One of the biggest batches of hummus ever made, in Jerusalem (400kg, 881 pounds)

There is more to this story than expressing a sense of pride and maintaining national character. In the sometimes onerous search for authenticity, official recognition can do a lot for the tourism and food industries, where in this case, an “original hummus” would be the target. Think of the gastronomic aspects of culture that you associate with places like Hong Kong, Bordeaux and New York City. Where do you think hummus came from? Do you think it’s important to know where foods originate?

Sean

RW-3.com

In this month’s MOBILITY magazine, Donna Marsh offers her perspective on UK and US health care systems. As a dual British and American citizen, she writes on where the two cultures diverge. Here are some interesting thoughts:

“Americans are taught from an early age to take care of themselves…Many Americans view health insurance — supplied by many but not all employers to their employees and their families — as something they individually earn.”

“In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service is free at the point of need to all British residents, including foreign nationals…It undoubtedly is considered a human right by the British public, expected to be provided for all by the government.”

US culture is, on the average, very individualistic. In terms of health care, Britons look to the nation for support. This group-orientation has been, of course, impacted by history and is reinforced through personal experience.

“It is not unusual for many Americans to look at many resources as being available in abundance, including health care. The British, with the days of post-WWII rationing still in living memory among its older population, are more pragmatic, recognizing that resources are limited and must be managed to maximize provision to all who need them.”

Again, history has a direct impact on a country’s culture. How much do you agree with Marsh? How have you experienced differences between US and UK culture? Click here to jump to the article.

Click here to read an earlier post I made on culture and health care.

Charlene

RW-3.com

Although there are many professional Japanese baseball players, Hideki Matsui has certainly made baseball more than just an American sport. One sentence in a recent New York Times article caught our “cultural” eyes:

“In a oft-repeated story, a young Matsui switched to left-handed pitching and hitting so that youths playing against him would have more of a chance.”

Chris McGrath/Getty Images

In any adversarial game, people from individualistic cultures (e.g. Australia or US) would find this confusing. In collectivist or group-oriented cultures, as in Japan, the well-being of the group is highly important. Another related example is in the concept of giving and saving “face,” or the idea that one’s reputation is built upon the actions of the larger group. For Matsui, he was exhibiting his cultural preference to help his peers succeed rather than stand out as an extremely unique and talented player.

Click here to jump to the article.

Valerie

RW-3.com

In World Affairs for Fall 2009, John McWhorter writes about the slow but certain death of many languages spoken around the world. As English gradually becomes a universal tongue, he asks if this is problematic, or rather advantageous in a highly interconnected and interdependent planet.

“Linguistic death is proceeding more rapidly even than species attrition. According to one estimate, a hundred years from now the 6,000 languages in use today will likely dwindle to 600. The question, though, is whether this is a problem.”

As a linguist, this is certainly nothing to celebrate. Conversely, keeping languages alive that have little utility is extremely challenging. Learning a language, especially if it’s on a branch of the language family tree that is far from your own tongue, is similarly difficult. To counter the argument that the death of language leads to “cultural oblivion,” McWhorter claims that culture will persist, despite a lack of its respective native speakers.

“…The oft-heard claim that the death of a language means the death of a culture puts the cart before the horse. When the culture dies, naturally the language dies along with it. The reverse, however, is not necessarily true. Groups do not find themselves in the bizarre circumstance of having all of their traditional cultural accoutrements in hand only to find themselves incapable of indigenous expression because they no longer speak the corresponding language. Native American groups would bristle at the idea that they are no longer meaningfully ‘Indian’ simply because they no longer speak their ancestral tongue. Note also the obvious and vibrant black American culture in the United States, among people who speak not Yoruba but English.”

McWhorter goes on to address another question that naturally comes to mind when considering up-and-coming world powers. Will Chinese overtake English?

“…Notice how daunting the prospect of Chinese as a world language is, with a writing system that demands mastery of 2,000 characters in order to be able to read even a tabloid newspaper. For all of its association with Pepsi and the CIA, English is very user-friendly as the world’s 6,000 languages go.”

He sincerely doubts that Mandarin Chinese, which has to be transliterated into Roman letters anyway to use on a keyboard, will become a lingua franca outside of China.

“At the end of the day, language death is, ironically, a symptom of people coming together. Globalization means hitherto isolated peoples migrating and sharing space. For them to do so and still maintain distinct languages across generations happens only amidst unusually tenacious self-isolation — such as that of the Amish — or brutal segregation.”

In its simplest form, the death of many languages is a result of finding the best way to communicate between people who don’t share a common language, and the discontinued use of formerly non-shared languages. Culture will remain one of the largest obstacles to successful communication, which must be understood in its visible and invisible forms, as the language of culture is oftentimes not audible. It is, however, much easier to learn than, for example, Hindi or Cantonese.

Click here to read McWhorter’s article.

Sean

RW-3.com

The New York Times “At War” blog summarizes news events in the Middle East by taking “a look at discussions inside the Arab world, as played out in Arabic newspapers.” Israeli paper Haaretz and Ramallah-based Al Ayyam are examples. The perspective readers can gain from foreign newspapers is an important way of understanding global issues. Check this blog out frequently; it wraps up the headlines in the Arab press every so often.

Sean

RW-3.com

Almost daily we work with global businessmen and businesswomen who are challenged by their cross-cultural work with teams based in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and New Delhi. They are frequently frustrated by the difficulty of maintaining schedules and meeting deadlines, and they can’t understand why their management style, which promotes autonomy and individual initiative, isn’t working. Only when we elaborate on the many cultural differences in daily expectations do their troubles make more sense to them.

However, when we use the phrase “micromanage” to describe an alternative approach, we often experience resistance by very successful managers who find the notion, and the term, inefficient and excessive. Call it what you will, managing teams in India requires intensive management and frequent follow-up to confirm understanding and project timeliness. What’s more, micromanagement conforms with the expectations of your Indian colleagues. They expect close supervision and oversight. Without it, projects will be off-track; with it, you can bridge inevitable distance-related miscommunication. Based on our years of experience teaching new skills to multicultural business teams, we’re offering a series of tips for business success called Pocket Guides. The first one is on India. If you’d like to receive the India Pocket Guide, please email us at info@rw-3.com.

Charlene

RW-3.com

A radio show on Public Radio International (PRI) used Starbucks as an example of American abundance and excess. The show attributed its success to its positioning as a communal hub.

According to Temple University professor Bryant Simon, “what Starbucks identified was a very important shift and a very important need in American society. Throughout the post-WWII era, Americans moved to the suburbs, they became locked in their cars, for fear they would increasingly live behind gated communities.

“At the same time they were securing themselves, they began to feel as though they were missing something: a kind of community that we often associate with older city neighborhoods. Starbucks understood that desire. From the very beginning, they suggested that their stores, like the old coffee houses, were something called ‘third places’: a place between work and home where people would gather. Starbucks aggressively marketed itself as the place where community would be constructed, maintained, and renewed.”

The individualistic nature American culture developed in the latter half of the 20th century was certainly a step away from a more group-oriented past. Simon argues that their move to foster a community experience was only the means to a very profitable end.

“If Starbucks tells us again and again from its marketing…that this is what community is, it makes it harder to find truer versions of it some place else,” says Simon.

How would you define community, and where would you go to find it in the US?

Click here to read the article and listen to the radio show.

Joshua

rw-3.com

The growing pains of many businesses are highly documented by the media as they go from domestic to foreign markets. Because of the company’s enormous monetary value, which is frequently compared to Gross Domestic Products of entire nations, Wal-Mart’s missteps in many countries have been critically commented on by writers and journalists around the world. Cultural challenges have oftentimes been the hallmark of Wal-Mart’s experience around the world, as a recent Business Week article points out. Here are a few examples.

In Japan, there was cultural resistance to Wal-Mart’s discount model because Japanese consumers tend to see low prices as a sign of low-quality goods. Selling its products in bulk is also not cohesive with the Japanese lifestyle, where most people live in densely populated urban centers.

India’s retail industry is comprised of small businesses with only a small fraction owned by chain stores. Convincing Indian consumers to shop at wholesale hypermarkets like Wal-Mart will take some time while they find the framework to approach and accommodate the Indian lifestyle.

A picture from 2006 of a Wal-Mart in South Korea. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

“While [Wal-Mart's] strategy worked in North America, the results were so bad in Germany and Korea that Walmart withdrew from those countries in 2006,” according to Business Week. Past experience bore costly results, and a New York Times article from 2006 details these failures.

Have you worked for a company that has a successful model for entering foreign and emerging markets? What do you think it takes?

Read the Business Week article here.

Charlene

rw-3.com

With titles like Yes, I Can With Obama: 40 Magical English Phrases From Presidential E-mails and Learn English Grammar From Obama, Japanese publishers have found a niche to sell instructional books for learning the English language. According to the New York Times, President Obama’s easy to understand voice, accent and vocabulary in his speeches and addresses have made him a natural target for English-learners in Japan, where he is already very famous.

Alluding to Japan’s highly indirect norms of communication, a Canadian speech writer living near Tokyo tells the New York Times that “Japan has not been serious about communication…In a Japanese company or political party or anyplace where Japanese come together as a group, the process is consensus-forming, and the outcome has to be consensus, and the consensus is internal. In that, the audience often gets forgotten.”

This is an extremely insightful view into Japanese culture. Loyalty to the community-at-large is a hallmark of Japanese society, where decision-making is up to the group, rather than the individual.

Click here to jump to the article.

Sean

rw-3.com

In an effort to recapture the revenue growth the Indian offshore industry experienced before the world economic crisis, many are expanding their service offerings, according to the Wall Street Journal. Companies like InfoSys Technologies and Wipro are competing with big competitors like HP to expand their contracts with “end-to-end outsourcing packages.” Indian executives have expressed that there is a lot of learning involved in the expansion of their organizations, and a lot of it is done on the fly.

How will the persistent issue of client and vendor cultures, and their abundant variations, affect the quality of even larger contracts with companies around the world? Will Indian vendors be able to cope with their increased demands?

Click here to read the full article online.

Paul

rw-3.com