Cultural Training or Stereotyping?

It is possible that one or more of the following describe you:

•  Work in a multinational environment
•  Market/sell your products or services in more than one country
•  Expatriate
•  Communicate with an international audience, maybe even just online 
•  Lead a multinational team

 

If yes, then you’ve probably had a chance to experience some sort of cultural training as a way of coping with the demands of a ‘multi culti’ job/life?  Someone, sometime must have offered you services to help you ‘integrate’ locally? The promise would have been: 'help you connect and interact better with people from different cultures'….or something similar.

It is hard for me to buy the idea/ promise, that a few hours or days of sitting in a classroom like situation, making notes, doing role plays whilst sipping coffee, can provide you with some insight to crack this diverse world. Worse still, many trainers, in an attempt to pack the training with facts and information, unknowingly  stereotype people from individual cultures and pass on their prejudices and judgments to unsuspecting people ( like me). To me, a classroom based cross cultural training session is like learning swimming from a PowerPoint presentation. With due respect to all the wily marketers (look who’s talking) who package and sell cross cultural training workshops as a solution to deal with an increasingly international world, I beg to defer.

The ‘expat’ status that tagged me the last decade in different parts of the world in different geographies, has taught me more valuable lessons in cross cultural communication (both written and spoken) than graduate school. This is not to belittle formal education or cross cultural trainers, but simply to re-look at what exactly is being sold to us in these workshops/training sessions.

The internet has blurred borders and brought people together in ways unimaginable a few decades ago, but the same connectedness has also created a high awareness about differences in cultures/ sub cultures.  Speaking purely from my personal experience, after one has read and understood some basic cultural differences, language nuances and local customs (from free yet reliable resources on the Internet), it is the humane qualities such as, tolerance, empathy, and interpersonal skills that really matter. These skills are the essential requirements to thrive or coexist in a new country, culture or multicultural environment. While language, food, habits and customs differ from place to place, human beings in general have the same range of emotions. So, why base one’s interactions at a cultural level, when in fact there is a deep common bond between fellow humans? Why look at the differences and then find a way to bond, when you can in fact integrate at a more basic level – the human level?

Perhaps the need of the hour is training in inter personal skills, body language and mind reading?

While on the subject of cultural integration, I’ve included below, more information about my 4^th adopted home, Cologne. In fact, its people from the city council/office who would like me to share this with my compatriots - to attract more people like us  :):)

(P.S: We must have created a good impression then?)

Cologne Business Guide

11 Argumente Engl Lores -Komprimiert

Meaning is the new $$$

The paradox of abundance is that it drives people to find exclusive ways of doing and consuming even the most mundane things. As living standards (in middle class communities in developing and developed worlds) rise, the lines between the ‘haves’ and have nots’ blur, thereby sending people in a scurry to find new ways to stay one cut above the rest and one step ahead of the crowd.

This inherent human desire has given rise to several industries and has also created the need for a breed of people called ‘Marketers’ J or how else would you explain an ever expanding industry built around a cuppa of coffee or a bottle of wine? The daily routine of waking up to a cup of caffeine has been reinvented and packaged as a ‘snazzy way to socialize’ and the coffee itself as a ‘hot drink with an attitude’. The variety of coffee and caffeinated concoctions served under an array of mind boggling names and in equally overwhelming range of plush cafes, is a case in point. 

By the time the gourmet caffeine overload and its bitter aftertaste wear off, we would be scouring the Planet for the next new thing! For decades marketers have put an ‘ooomph’ factor into the most banal things with much success. But now, the affordability that once liberated the consumer is not enough for the consumer!! All the abundance and prosperity seems have in fact made the average consumer’s mind gravitate towards something higher – higher in the gamut of human needs. Would that mean something more exclusive than gourmet coffee and vintage wine?

No. The highest rung in the ladder of human needs is the pursuit of meaning and purpose.  The consumer’s quest for a larger meaning in life is the latest sweet spot for marketers. Irrespective of the product or the media, evoking and engaging this need in the minds of prosperous communities anywhere in the world seems to be THE way to go - the way to a long term relationship with people in the age of abundance.

M.A, M.Sc (=Master of Assumption, Mis(S)communication)

If a picture is worth a thousand words, and videos even more, what about  personal/face to face meetings - the coffee dates, the handshakes, and ‘let’s talk about this in person' suggestions? In today’s digital lifestyle, they must be, priceless?

What’s rare is more price worthy, ain’t it? We live in a world where most of our personal (and official) communication is increasingly text based, making us rely upon our written communication and speed of typing, to build personal and business relationships.

We frantically reply to emails on the go, we keep in touch with friends on Facebook (even with those who live in the neighborhood) and leave terse responses to their pictures and status updates, we even gift and drink beer on online! We tweet because anything more than 140 characters is laborious. We send text messages to our family using a combination of alpha numeric keys to create emoticons, in hope that they would convey our mood, emotions and affection. 

A graphic designer friend of mine said to me recently, ‘there’s an emoticon for every emotion you want to communicate online, if not, I can craft one’. A very talented graphic designer there, so I had to be doubly sure of what I asked for. I could think of a range of human emotions that don’t have suitable emoticons, but this would not be the place to share them :) and  so I asked for an emoticon that implied ‘to be discussed in person’ or something that simply meant ‘let’s trash the text; I want to read your face and listen to your tone of voice’. Maybe you were faltering when you typed that email? Or grinning from ear to ear…or maybe even trembling with fear - that’s important information that text can’t reveal - that is important information that text based communication renders obsolete - it is important information that instant communication has no time for because it is inherently fast.  Yet, we rely so much on online applications and devices to connect with people on a personal and business level, purely through text! We take refuge in asynchronous exchange of chunks of text, not realizing that repeated use of the same medium with no cues to tone of voice and facial reactions eventually leads to disintegration of that relationship. 

The written word is bound to lose its effectiveness when there’s no personal reinforcement. 

Quickly reviewing my own situation, I have to admit that I have been a ‘text victim’ too! It’s true that my relationship with people who I have communicated only with typed words has either stagnated or nose dived. And relationships that have blossomed or strengthened in recent times are those that included face to face interactions. 

And there’s nothing like meeting to talk about something – no long email, SMS or even essays for that matter compare to personal interaction. So, if you have only been firing electronic missives, then soon the title of this blog would be more appropriate for you!

I am still waiting for the graphic designer to create the emoticon I am looking for but, in the meanwhile, I’m off to request that next coffee date!

Karma Kalender 2011

This might look a bit too early given that we haven't even set foot into the last quarter of the year. But if you want to help a worthy cause, now (until end Oct 2010) is the time.

Karma Kalender, a calendar project, is a private initiative to support Doctors for Developing Countries/Ärtze die Dritte Welt - an international medical humanitarian organization that sends doctors to projects in the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Kenya and Nicaragua.

If you, your partner/friends/colleagues are evaluating calendars for 2011, then Karma Kalender might be a great way to show your support for a good cause.

The calendar for 2011 features street children from Calcutta - one of the beneficiaries of this project. The pictures were taken by a philanthropic photographer on his recent visit to the Doctors for Developing Countries' base in Calcutta. You can browse more information about the Karma Kalender project under http://karma-kalender.de/

What makes this Calender project different?

• Instead of merely asking for donations for a good cause, the Karma Kalender gives you something that each one of us would need for the new year, a calender.

• If you place orders of 10 or more calenders, you can have your name printed in the list of donors/helpers that appears in the last page of the calender.

• For large corporate orders (> 40 calenders) there is an option to have the company logo printed too.

• Also, in case you pre-order in bulk (>10 calendars) and you are unable to sell some of them, you can return the unsold calenders before the end of the year and get a refund.

• All proceeds raised through these calenders will be strictly allocated for work in the developing countries 

The time for ordering the 2011 Karma Kalender is - Now! until Oct 2010.

You can order at  https://karma-kalender.de/bestellen_de.asp
(the order form is available both in English and German)

You will receive the ordered calendar(s) by the first week of Dec 2010.

Sharing this link with your contacts on Facebook would help increase the amount we can raise for this organization.

Best Wishes

International, eh?

Nowadays the front-runners in the list of self descriptive adjectives seem to be ‘international’ and ‘global’. Or at least that’s what I hear frequently around where I live. In a world of global inter dependencies and diverse work environments, it is hardly a wonder that these same adjectives which were once used only by relief agencies, diplomats and governments have now become commonplace (with everyone wanting a piece of an assorted world).

I am pretty confounded when the word ‘international ‘is used as a personality descriptor.

Often I meet people in neighborhoods, schools, parties and conferences who tell me with a sense of pride that they are ‘quite international’ or refer to somebody as a ‘global person’.

What makes a person international anyways?

Would traveling to countries far and wide win you a right to internationalism? …. with low cost airlines, this status must be quite easy to acquire overnight :)what’s the big deal anyways?

Does sending the kids to an international school make you international? I doubt that would, because often it is English as a medium of instruction that attracts many families to international education. Also going by the annual fees of international schools, this word would then become the sole possession of the rich and affluent.

So does fluency in English make you international? Well no, because a non-English-speaking-monolingual person is entitled to the rest of the word as much as his English speaking counterparts.

By definition international means ‘involving two or more countries…’ but at a certain elementary level I guess, people imply ‘open-mindedness combined with some curiosity’ and use it interchangeably with ‘international’. At the first level, it means they want to know more about the world besides where they come from. At a higher level, it means they would change and adapt to live harmoniously and productively with people from diverse backgrounds, without being prejudiced.

Since this is such a vital human aspect which is only becoming increasingly important in an interconnected world, shouldn’t it be qualified??

Just like how countries have a set of qualifiers to offer citizenship, shouldn’t world organizations come up with a code of conduct? a set of prerequisites to grant an adult the title ‘International’?

Like the titles Dr or Mr. or Prof. why not Intl?

You don’t have to prefix it to your name. But maybe it could be stamped in your passport or green card as a way of showing that you belong to an emerging class of global citizens.

Any thoughts on what these qualifiers could be?
- Ability to converse in one or more foreign languages?
- Been a part of some international relief effort?
- No records/complaints of racial discrimination
- Maybe studied, worked and lived in a foreign country?

Would love to know what you think…

After microblogging...?

With due respect to those who still find the motivation to put their thoughts on paper and keep those thoughts tucked away in a chest of drawers and other hideaways, it seems keeping a journal or penning thoughts in a diary have joined the list of archaic human habits.

The pervasive growth of the internet and I guess the inevitable conflation of web and logging seem to have rendered this habit nonexistent among the Echo Boomers and archaic among the Baby Boomers.

It is a curious thing to me that the web gurus who coined the word blogging didn’t conjoin ‘web’ with ‘write’ to form ‘brite’ (or maybe even WWWrite or Webnotes…Botes???) but instead chose a rather blasé word, log. Is it a subtle indication that fingers’ furiously striking the keyboard is nonchalant compared to the art of putting ink on paper? Or did they foresee that whatever was conjoined with the Web would become infectious?

Whatever was the thought behind that choice it sure has made handwriting an antiquated art. And now there microblogging is doing the same to blogging. 'Say what you have to to, in 140 characters' is the new mantra! It is the ‘pressed-for-time-but-have-a-lot-to-say- and-share’ amongst us who have further evolved blogging into mircoblogging. I am debating what would come next?

Nanoblogging, maybe?

I think that would be the next phase of blogging. Human minds would soon find 140 characters limit too much to fill in and so may blog in Morse codes ? Not because of the stealth factor of a coded language but because we can then communicate at lightning speed and we don’t need to practice our ABCs.

Any thoughts there?

Save ourselves

'....a bid to save the Earth' has got to be the most overused phrase in business propaganda. The high occurrence of words and phrases claiming to care for the planet, the ecology and Mother Nature are simply hard to ignore.

I do not doubt the intentions or importance of this pressing issue. What baffles me, are business enterprises using Planet Earth as a clever marketing tool. High on my 'baffles me list' are fashion shows, designer clothes and models sashaying down the ramp, all in the name of saving the planet for a better tomorrow. Sure, the colors and fabrics used connote Earth and Nature. They do bring fashion down to earth after all  but how exactly do they help us retard the destruction mounted on our planet?

I would believe that such Eco friendly tag lines help to build a collective consciousness amongst the cognoscenti and nothing more. The buck stops there for most businesses. They are happy to take refuge behind the ‘caring and giving’ picture their logos and tag lines paint. Then they sit back, shift focus to their P & L statements, perhaps hoping that their tag line would serve as a call for action amongst the general public.

I recently visited a boutique store that claimed that spring-Summer theme was all about making the World a better place to live. ‘Show you care – We deserve a better world’ was the catch phrase, all across the store. All visitors to the store were served a welcome drink (in attractively painted plastic cups), as a way of locking in the visitors’ attention, while the sales person ranted off in a carefully rehearsed speech about how their collection for the season was designed keeping the environment in mind.

Needless to say the non recyclable garbage pile created by the plastic cups was a real stink! It’s about time such businesses were accredited from an environment point of view, damage audited and the positive impact they make on the environment measured and rewarded (or penalized in case they make it worse).

The last four posts...

I just moved my blog to blogger.com and so the last four posts have the same date stamp! Thanks!

Uma

Internet Attention

With more than 200 million websites on the Internet, the biggest challenge for online businesses is simply to attract attention and even more so, retain it. The term for internet attention is stickiness - it is a combined measure of the time a visitor spends on a site + number of visits per person in a give time + number of pages viewed per person. While stickiness is a measure of attention on the Internet, just being sticky doesn't necessarily guarantee success.

It’s not just the number of eyeballs but, who they belong to and how to persuade the owner of those eyeballs to 'buy' into your company/product/service. Page impressions are certainly passé. An array of mind-boggling data that is produced under a seemingly scholastic title of 'web analytics' has rendered them so. Web analytics is forcing businesses to measure success beyond the stickiness factor. The new emphasis is to engage eyeballs and persuade them to bring about a behavioral change.

While the bean counters are mulling at the quarterly profit and loss , its worthwhile for every business using their online presence as a revenue generator, to invest time and resources in Web Analytics.

Best,
Uma

The DNA of an Entrepreneuer

There's plenty of information circulating the web about the genetic charactersistics of an Entrepreneur. Are they Born so? or are they Made? No matter how a person arrives at Entreprenuership, we have several real life examples to emulate and identify the common threads. Of all these common characterictics , the one that is least higlighted is an Entrepreneur's ability to build a network of Business Evangelists inside and outside the Company/Business.

Business Evangelists (nothing to do with the religion), but people who would market the Company, its Product and Services in a way that can have a greater impact on an individual than tradional advertising and marketing. The collective Goodwill of these Evangelists is simply abysmal. They serve as Agents working 24*7 days taking a fledging company to its next level of growth or a growing company to a stage of exponential growth. Often a chunk of these Evangelists are the company's Product/Service users who would help to 'sell' more.

However, the lesser known Evangelists are those who bet on the Entrepreneur based on their individual interactions. and no, these Evangelists dont carry a Business card or wear Badges but they are simply people from different walks of life who have seen the Entrepreneur when the Spotlight was not on him.

cheers
Uma

Summer 2009

Faced with the dilema of having to choose either the mountains or the beach as the backdrop for a summer vacation, we decided to have it all. Yes, we decided to move the mountains, swim the seas and be in the country side all in one holiday. In short we went on a Roadtrip. We drove from Cologne to Paris to Cote d' Azur. It was a lot of driving ofcourse, (about 3000 Km overall) but we loved this trip for the flexibility and variety of sights we saw. We followed our own schedules, stopped anytime to devour a sight and the best of all, made detours!

In fact. it was the sum of all these detours that made a great trip! If we had stuck to the route (highway) as deemed by our navigation system, we would have simply arrived on time. We would have reached our destination minus the fun and the excitement that comes with the unexpected.... the fun which comes with spontaneity.

We rented a car to avoid the wear and tear of our own vehicle and also for better mileage. It seemed a wise thing to do in these ecenomic times.

To test our memory and retention factor on the sightseeing we did, we are now playing "where in France did we spot this?" game, with the pictures we took !

Would I recommend such holidaying for a family? Well, only if you want to challenge yourself with a different way of holidaying. If Roadtrips are your way of 'taking-a-break', then hats off to you!!!

cheers!

The relaunch....the Re-entry

The re-launch… the re-entry…
Re-launching myself as a professional after years of being Kids-bound wasn’t as simple as I believed it to be. For one, the global economic outlook has made it worse for aspirants like me to re-enter the workforce. While those who were in various rungs of the corporate ladder have been dislodged from it by the global crisis, how could those who took a sabbatical, expect to set foot in it again – that too at this point in time?

The decision to run my own race not only stemmed from Market conditions but also from the fact that I believe, that I have no other contenders in my race. Yes, I am, like you are, the One and Only. There is no other person who’s life is exactly matched to mine, just like there is no one exactly like You! So why put ourselves in a ‘race’ that makes us an ‘also ran’, just by being in it?

I wanted to go solo…barefoot…sleeves rolled up, bursting energy, eager to learn and more importantly not afraid to fall. Striving to make a difference for the better, I wish to run… not a race but a journey, where success would be a metric measured by me.

For my maiden Blog (as a repackaged professional), I juggled between different ideas that would give the reader an insight of the writer. I thought of ‘Random facts about myself’ which is so in vogue in the Social Media. But decided against it for fear of sounding too ‘wannabe’. Then I thought ‘Trends 2009’ would be a good subject to blog as a pro and that it would instantly put me in the league of professionals with original thoughts, ideas and thereby greater audience. Just as I spotted some trends, I realized, writing about trends when more than half of the calendar year was ‘Past’ wasn’t so trendy after all.

It takes a while to find one’s space. I found mine in-between trend spotting and pondering facts about myself – Attitude. Sometimes that's all it takes to sail through stormy seas.

Cheers
Uma