RW3 CultureWizard on Cover of American Executive
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
“Management speak can be hard enough to understand at the best of times: paradigm shifts? Blue sky thinking? Incentivise? Ehm what? But imagine if boardroom strategy was outlined in Swahili rather than business English. Presentations as dry as a martini can leave cosmopolitan boardrooms at a loss; country-specific humour rarely makes it past the unhappy customs officials. Today, in the ever-expanding global marketplace, cultural sensitivity is at a premium. Step in Solomon and Schell, experts in cross-cultural training, who are promising to change all this. Crucially, their self-help manual features case studies on how Colgate-Palmolive integrates cultural understanding into global marketing, how GE adapts management style to local cultures and how Intel’s global corporate culture is critical to its ongoing vision. It’s not just a catalogue of different customs, gestures and language faux pas. Problematically, however, the book rigidly focuses on western corporates, raising an interesting question. If translated for non-English speaking businesses, would it not get lost in translation too?”
“…If you could only read one, I’d nominate Managing Across Cultures, which is more comprehensive, particularly in taking readers through the seven key differences they will encounter in other countries, and having you fill out a questionnaire so you know your personal instincts, should they be different from other Canadians.” 
