Do you have the necessary skills to lead in a global economy? Don’t fall into the traps of undermining cultural differences, when in fact, you can insightfully optimize your business development effectivesness by mapping your stakeholders’ cultural differences.
This Harvard Business Review’s IdeaCast on Cross-Culture Work in a Global Economy can help you sharpen up your cross-cultural business relations understanding by shedding light on how complementarily functional cultural differences can be when it comes to developing professional capabilities such as methods of communication, ways of problem-solving, sharing knowledge, and managing meetings in this emergingly interconnected global business environment of ours.
According to Erin Meyer, the author of the HBR article Navigating the Cultural Mindfield and the book The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business, the world is becoming evermore about complex multi-cultural interaction.
A good example of the importance of having different approaches to business is the following extract from the interview as it describes, from an informal culture’s perspective, a highly disciplined business culture. “They are so rigid, so inflexible, they are so focused on the structure and puntuality of things that they are unable to adapt as things change around them.” This extract is particularily interesting when immersed in a social environment where self-deprecating the local culture has become the norm, such as in places like Latin America, and particularly in Brazil, where adaptability is a solid cultural trait.
Cultural differences are part of a diverse world that has been described as a source of conflict in Huntington’s The Clash of Civilization. But with the global advent of East meeting West simultaneously with North meeting South for multilateral negotiations, cultural differences are not only important to be considered when mediating political purposes, but to be applied as competitive advantages in diplomatic business encounters as much.
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