1. I’m not sure there is an unwillingness to adapt, I think there it may be a little more of a lack of recognition of the need to adapt. However, worldly people seem to be, we are often very provincial. This provincialism, I think leads to a conscious or even unconscious arrogance — both on the sending and recieving sides. “We’ve been very successful in our own country, we know how to do it, we know what customers need, etc.” This is countered by: “We are (substitute the nationality you want), we know how things work here, you can’t tell us anything that could possibly be valuable.”

This tends to be where communication starts and where the initial breakdowns occur. Hardly a great start for high performance. We (on both sides) tend to muscle things through, not understanding, acknowleding, or reconciling differing points of view. Then we don’t produce the results we could, the relationship is never achieves it’s full potential and so on.

2. The issue of “business basics” is interesting. I think there is a tendency to simplify the words we use–just as somehow, at least for Americans visiting internationally, we think shouting improves people’s comprehension. While we express ourselves in “business basics,” there is no escaping the complexity that is what we really mean but probably are not communicating. We come into situations with certain experiences, assumptions, etc. Culturally, we tend to attack issues and problems very differently. In our own countries and cultures, we tend to be a little more unconsciously aligned (though think of all the tremendous miscommunication that happens even within a culture/country). We tend to speak in a sort of shorthand and understand each other. In the cross cultural exchanges, we don’t have that common shorthand, we tend to simplify the words we say, but we are still thinking and biased by our business shorthand.

For example, I talk to a lot of CEO’s and EVP’s of Sales around the world. The way I approach a conversations with most American executives — particularly technology executives is almost diametrically opposed to the way I might speak to their European counterpart and very different than I would approach any of their Asian counterparts. While we might get to the same end point, in roughly the same time, the path to get there has to be very different.

Don’t know if I answered your questions, but I really appreciate the dialogue!
.-= Dave Brock´s last blog ..Do As I Say, Not As I Do =-.

Thank you for sharing your comments

When people “impose” their practices on people from different cultures, I sometimes wonder how much is an unwillingness to adapt and how much is based on barriers on a personal level. I’ve seen both. …This reminds me, I have to write about the different cultural of the words “diversity” & “ethnic” & “cross-cultural” and the differences in how they come across as “pro – whatever” or the more open-minded attitude which accepts differences.

And on another subject, I would love to know whether you find yourself sticking to “business basics” or not. One of the first things I noticed was how people adjust their vocabularies, and simplify communication. But I also notice how when there are different levels of market sophistication (and totally different ways of doing things) it seems easier when you get back to the basics and engage conversation there.

This is perhaps the most important lesson any organization seeking to work globally needs to learn. Too often, I encounter people “imposing” their way of doing business on their global partners. Whether it is a “US,” “French,” “Chinese,” “Japanese” way; we tend to impose our standard business practices, approaches, processses, programs, management techniques on our global subsidiaries or partners. In my experience, this not only disrespects the capabilities of the people, it does not drive the highest levels of performance.

Working effectively in the global market means understanding and executing, “There is no right or wrong way, There are just different ways.” Thanks for a great reminder.
.-= Dave Brock´s last blog ..Do As I Say, Not As I Do =-.

One of the biggest challenges in cross-cultural communication is that different cultures simply do things differently, and when you do not adapt appropriately this effects your international business….