Cultural differences in business

Right after business school, I moved to Angola, where I worked with people from all?over the world - just to name a few nationalities, Angolans, Spaniards, Brazilians, Americans, Israeli, Chinese, Australians.

Let me tell you, especially in unstructured, high-stakes environments, cross-cultural challenges are a thing -- and I wasn't exactly prepared.

However necessity is the mother of invention. I had to go beyond words, question one-sided (my side!) assumptions, dive into the crux of purpose, work out of there with solutions, and build solid relationships. I believe I did well.

Beware that is too easy to have a blind spot for these issues -- until you run into them, and then the learning curve is steeper.

If you work in a monocultural setting -- say within a small country, or in a multinational corporation with a very strong identity -- whatever is out there will be completely alien to you.

If you work in a multicultural?environment -- say a renowned business school hosting international students -- you will be misled to assume that there is this common?ground which extends to all horizons -- that there is a shared foundational bedrock of business understanding, and the differences will be?mostly in style and ornamentation.

The fact is that this is not true at all.?

Think about how you understand another human being. You really have to grasp a lot of context, even if it is implied by a lot of intuition and empathy. It's never?easy, even with someone from your culture.

Now, you know that connecting with a very foreign person is a bigger challenge. You might be able to trade something, but not really talk about hopes and dreams, or get into joint projects - at least not right away.

Companies are not people, but they do have visions, missions, cultures. Likewise, in #crosscultural business dealings, the communication possibilities for meaningful understanding are very narrow. There is very little bandwidth, and so much gets lost in translation. Lost, nay, cast into a dark chasm.

Interactions can become very un-nuanced, and conducted at a shallow level - making money (for-profit business), managing power and influence (politics), producing impact (everything else).

These transactional relationships seldomly lead to any purposeful growth -- they are here today, gone tomorrow. There is a lot of #potential left on the table.

We cannot solve problems at the same level of consciousness?that created it.?I believe there is a solid opportunity?for business and education to narrow this gap.

#SuccessIsEarned