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T
HE PROBLEM MANY AMERICANS face when we work
cross-culturally is that we assume that we won't have
to think about culture. The work will naturally fall into
line, we think. Then, we reconsider when things don't go as
expected. For example, we discover that our American and
Indian teams have completely different definitions of training
and, as a result, we're six months behind schedule. Or, we
develop our revenue estimates based on the assumption
of a quick product adoption in Japan, only to discover that
building relationships takes much longer than anticipated.
The first, and best, way to succeed cross-culturally is to turn
off the cultural cruise control that tries to fool us into thinking
that all cultures are the same. Instead, we need to build
cultural competency.
What's Culture?
Cultural competency begins with understanding what culture actually means. At the most superficial
level, culture consists of artifacts: pictures on an organization's wall, the way a team creates an agenda,
and how meetings begin and end. These are the overt manifestations of culture. They encompass
behaviors, structures, systems, procedures, and rules.
Underneath artifacts lies the next level of culture: norms. Norms are unwritten rules that guide
behavior. When we attend a stereotypical French meeting, for example, the meeting begins with a
formal introduction. Then people enjoy small talk about politics and local scandals, after which the
meeting begins. For an American who is used to a quick, five-minute opener before beginning a
meeting, the 20 minutes expected by a French national can be frustrating.
Deeper within a culture is its core values: the shared ideas about what is important. To return to our
previous example, we'll look at the overlap between French and American values. Both share a love
for justice, science, liberty, equality, and the arts. Yet, French culture has values that can stymie an
American, such as formal manners, obsession with logic, cautiousness, and savoir faire. Americans were
bred on cowboy legends which encourage instinct, informality and impulsiveness. So what happens
when French and American companies attempt to collaborate?
Building Cross-Cultural Intelligence
M A N AG E M E N T A N D L E A D E R S H I P
