Culture and Curiosity
Wendy Pease ??
Cultural Wordsmith | Owner, Speaker, Author | Helping Business Leaders become culturally relevant with the wonders of high quality translation, localization and interpretation.
Jasmine Martirossian is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Chief People Officer (CPO) of Mercury, a company simplifying time- and temperature-sensitive shipping for healthcare and life sciences companies. She speaks seven languages and has lived in as many countries, helping a host of well-known companies expand globally along the way.?
Jasmine shares her wisdom with us on this episode of The Global Marketing Show.
“Bottom line: stay curious,” she says. Jasmine credits her natural ability to “stay curious” as the reason behind her success in global marketing. She describes two situations defused by “not staying beholden to the tyranny of war,” and instead by looking for alternative solutions to help teams work together.
Listen to the full episode here:
领英推荐
On one China-based project, Jasmine felt pushback from the team on a proposed new website, so they could not move the project forward. Instead of forcing the issue and demanding compliance, Jasmine stayed curious and learned that the team thought it was just another “flavor of the month” project and didn’t want to engage. Plus, the company had connectivity issues.
She understood the culture enough to build consensus, using her connections to find the team a place to work with reliable Wi-Fi. Ultimately, after only two days in the country, Jasmine grasped the implication of how important “connections” are in China, in more ways than one. By taking the time to stay curious and communicate appropriately, she crossed the cultural chasm and got the project done.
In another instance, Jasmine met with a French team on a marketing project and felt their resistance to her inclusion of a US colleague, someone they considered “obstructive.” Again, instead of forcing the issue and demanding compliance, she suggested her colleague join them for dinner – in France, meals are meaningful – and after “breaking bread,” the problem was solved.
For more real-world, global business stories – the successes, challenges, and failures – subscribe to The Translation Connection newsletter today!