V. Yes, cultural differences really exist. So what?

We finished previous chapter with the variety of cuisines. Over and above before saying “bye” to the food topic I can only add two more observations: it’s very interesting and insightful to learn what is the preferable drink in this or that part of the world and try to trace the roots of it. Immediately you may discover that the beer is so popular in the Benelux due to the fact that in the middle ages brewing the beer was one of the ways to get a clean drinkable liquid, so very often beer was drunk just instead of water. Or my latest story in China where been in Shanghai I wondered why at the restaurants I don’t see any wide tea offering (the general perception is that China is a tea drinking country). So I learnt that China is very diverse and the tea is mostly popular on the South, but not on the North and in the Centre.

You may embrace the diversity of the world trying Soju in South Korea, Scottish Whisky or American Bourbon (you can do it pretty much everywhere nowadays), Mexican Tequila, Cuban Mojito, Becherovka from Czech Republic, Austrian Schnapps, Serbian Slivovitz, Turkish Raki (although many Balkan countries will dispute the origin of Rakija), Spanish Sangria, Mongolian Kumis, Zimbabwean Chibuku, Italian Grappa, Greek Ouzo, English Gin, Tanzanian Kilimanjaro Lager, Rum from Jamaica, Russian Vodka (here Polish will argue that Vodka was invented in Poland initially), Portuguese Port, Ethiopian Tej, Pastis, Riga Black Balsam or Mastika. Behind every drink you will find a sophisticated history and reach cultural rituals and traditions.

Second and now final (I promise) observation is a smell and flavors. Every country has a unique small for me, which you usually may feel on the streets, in the small traditional shops and in the small restaurants — wherever people a cooking the food. Pakistan is a smell of curry spices for me, Ethiopia it’s a roasted burnt coffee of course, Turkey is a smell of the freshly baked bread and so on and so on.

Now we are moving forward. We started with my note that for me personally there are 5 key ways how to learn cultural differences:
• Observation
• Listening
• Eating and also Drinking as we just saw
(we are at this point right now)
• Learning
• Reading

Learning means that I treat my every trip as an expedition and try to prepare myself and learn as much as I can about the culture and the country I’m going to. Of course Wikipedia is a big help usually to get some key facts about the place and the history.

Also my hobby is languages. Hobby in a sense that while being equally bad in almost all the world languages (with the exception of Russian, which is my native tong, English and probably a bit of French) I love to understand the structure and the logic of the language, learn how to read, write, key principles of grammar, some worlds. I seriously studied Zulu for 2 years and German, but apart of this I still have at my home library the textbooks and manuals in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Hebrew, Amharic, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Swahili, Sinhala… Just to understand the logic of the tenses, how people form the words, grammar, principles of writing may give a tons of insights. Also what always helped me is to learn few words in the local language and use them thus breaking the ice and building the communication (pretty obvious, yes?). So when I want to thank somebody I’m not missing the chance to practice and say: “āmeseginalehu” while I’m in Ethiopia, “shukran” in any Arabic country, “shye-shye” in China, “efharisto” in Greece, “dziękuję” in Poland, “teşekkür” in Turkey, “ngiyabonga” in some places in South Africa, “asante” in Kenya and so on …

The next point is Reading. I like theory and science and there are few academical readings I can recommend if you want to dig deeper into the topic of cultural differences in the application to the business practice. Of course the classic of the cultural difference study represented by Geert Hofstede, (1928 –2020) who was a Dutch social psychologist and Professor of Organizational Anthropology and International Management at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He is best known for developing one of the earliest and most popular frameworks for measuring cultural dimensions in a global perspective. Here he described national cultures along six dimensions:
1. Power Distance,
2. Individualism,
3. Uncertainty avoidance,
4. Masculinity,
5. Long Term Orientation,
6. and Indulgence vs. restraint.
Here are two of his books worth reading for sure:

• Exploring Culture: Exercises, Stories and Synthetic Cultures, 2002 by Gert Jan Hofstede , Paul B. Pedersen , Geert Hofstede
• Culture′s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations, 2001by Geert Hofstede

Another fundamental book (rather a big manual of more than 600 pages) is

• Managing Cultural Differences. Global leadership for the 21st Century, by Neil R. Abramson and Robert T.Moran, 2018

This one contains many case studies, practical advises, researches and overviews. My favorite one though is “The cultural Map” by Erin Meyer

The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business. 2014. Erin Meyer

Erin Meyer is my age, was born in 1971 and she is a professor at INSEAD. Erin wrote her “The Culture Map…” just recently in 2014 and this book represents her collective research data from over thirty different countries. In the book she provides a framework for evaluating different cultures and then offers strategies for improving international success. Slightly differently from Geert Hofstede (yet with pretty similar paradigm and approach) she has identified 8 dimensions (contrary to 6 of Hofstede) that she claims capture most of the differences within and among cultures.

Each of the eight scales is described as a continuum between the two ends which are diametric opposite or at least competing positions as follows:

1. Communicating — Are they low-context (simple, verbose and clear), or high-context (rich deep meaning in interactions)?
2. Evaluating — When giving Negative feedback does one give it directly, or prefer being indirect and discreet?
3. Leading — Are people in groups egalitarian, or do they prefer hierarchy?
4. Deciding — Are decisions made in consensus, or made top-down?
5. Trusting — Do people base trust on how well they know each other, or how well they do work together?
6. Disagreeing — Are disagreements tackled directly, or do people prefer to avoid confrontations?
7. Scheduling — Do they perceive time as absolute linear points, or consider it a flexible range?
8. Persuading — Do they like to hear specific cases and examples, or prefer holistic detailed explanations?

Here I don’t have any intent to retell you “The Cultural Map…” I will just share my observations of how those 8 scales found a way to practice and my experience

Before moving forward, let me made one disclaimer triggered to some extend by my reader and commentator Andrey Grigoriev and mainly inspired by my experience. We already touched the cultural aspects in the chapter where we discussed Hiring. Obviously as Andrey once mentioned: “the true diversity is in the way you think, not in the color of your skin, your gender or your passport”. And to build on it — while hiring we usually select people of some specific way of thinking, some specific culture matching the culture of our company and the team. If you are working for multinational company you may be quite sure the teams all across the Globe whether it is in China, Brazil, Pakistan or Switzerland are by definition staying out of local culture to the lesser of bigger extend simply because they have been preselected and developed this way. So, my disclaimer is: talking influence of cultural differences to the business we must admit the Company Culture is dominating the Local Culture.

You may ask me: why shall we bother ourselves with studying and understanding cultural differences if anyway the Company Culture is the main driver? The truth is (as I saw it many times) that any minor cultural mismatch and misunderstanding can immediately lead to frustration and grow to the bigger issue (I will tell some stories of course). The bigger issue that may come out of cultural misunderstanding is a lost of trust and trust is a basics for any healthy team as we will see later down to this reading. Intentionally I will not make any generalizations here (like — “Chinese are indirect in communication” or “Germans are egalitarian when it comes to leadership”), firstly — you can always read the book mentioned above and secondly — I prefer not to put claims and tags but rather focus on how to detect different patterns, dimensions and scales and how to react on it in a most efficient way.

So, let go scale by scale following Erin’s logic and look at how different cultural mindsets may lead to misunderstanding between parties and what shall be known to overcome it

Communicating ranges between low-context culture and high-context culture. In low-context cultures, good communication is precise, simple and clear. Messages are expressed and understood at face value. Repetition is appreciated if it helps clarify the communication. Whereas, in high-context cultures good communication is sophisticated, nuanced and layered. Messages are both spoken and read between the lines. Messages are often implied and not plainly expressed.

Communication is critical in general of course, but there are probably two most sensitive areas where I see most frustrations is coming from: when you are receiving Commitment from your customers or your colleagues and when people are Writing the letters.

I spent significant amount of my career with Procter&Gamble and my first selling technique came from there. It was very simply and powerful (as they believed) Persuasive Selling Format — you explain to the customer the context of the call (thus building the trust), you may also call it conditions, then you come to the needs of the customers, limitations and reveal opportunities as you see them, After you present your idea, how it works in details, reinforce benefits customers is getting and finally you are closing the call with the clear next steps. Pretty straight forward, this format exists in many companies (the name may vary though) and it’s very clear demonstration of the low-context culture. If you do steps 1 to 5 right than 80% you close the deal successfully. If not, that you come to the second phase — “objections handling”. The main trick here is to collect all the objections and verify the real one simply asking “what if I fix this objection, would you buy?” Easy, isn’t it?

If you sincerely sure this is the right and efficient way of selling than you probably belong to the “low-context culture”, as well as significant part of Americans from US, Dutch or Australians (according to Erin Meyer).

If your first impression is skeptical and you see this approach as rather simplistic and you believe it will never work, than you probably belong to the “high-context culture”, as well as significant part of Chinese, Japanese or Malaysian.

I’m meeting potential business partner. Nice friendly atmosphere, greetings, lunch. Everything I’m telling has been perceived with the great attention, all the right questions are asked all my questions are answered.

- Would you be interested in the partnership?
- Yes, of course, with great pleasure
- Shall we agree on this and that as the next steps?
- Yes, sure, we agree with pleasure
- When can we expect this documents to be sent to us?
- We will do it tomorrow first thing in the morning

Of course when I was leaving that specific dinner with my Chinese counterpart I already learnt how to detect the answer. I have simple recipe — if my Chinese counterpart is saying “real yes” he/she will never miss the deadline. So, when talking and getting commitment from the very low context counterparts my approach is to set some insignificant deadline as soon as possible just to detect if the person will respect it or not. If deadline is met (or at least person came to you with the explanations why not) than it was “real yes”, but if deadline is not met, than it was a way to say “no” to you.

Again, the trick is that high-context way of communication may be seen by low-context people as very impolite and rude. And vis-a-versa, low-context way of communication may be seen by high-context people as a total catastrophe.

People in the North of Russia are perceived as low-context people. When I was coming with the selling presentation to some wholesaler somewhere in Kostroma the routine was always the following: respectful greetings, tea offering, very short almost invisible few words small talk, then straight to the essence of the call, than decision. If it’s “yes” it means “yes”, if “no” than it’s clearly pronounced “no” (with all the respect) and the best you can do is to schedule another visit in 1 month time to present something else. Period.

South of Russia is very different, the routine of my visits to the wholesaler in Rostov-on-Don was also always the same, but steps were very different. Everything usually started with the shouting and swearing — “what the f..ck you came again?!! What the hell do you want from me again?!!! And so on and so on… Than suddenly the whole emotional speech (rather the monologue) was turning to the personal story about his (it was him) wife, kids, tax inspection, issues with the business. Then suddenly “ok, what did you come with ?”. Then my presentation. Then usually tea offering was coming to the party, then discussion, then the agreement. In most of the cases it was “yes”.

I have another type of customer for you, also wholesaler, Cash&Carry type of business. One hour meeting. I’m negotiating promo with the pallets displays in the selling area, I’m offering 10% discount and 10k USD for 10 displays in 2 C&Cs for 2 weeks. Numbers are going back and force, it’s me from one side and from the other side is financial manager, purchasing manager and the general manager of the wholesaler. After 1hour of tense negotiations I’m asking:

- Guys, do you agree with my proposal?
- It’s possible
- Do you mean we agreed on the terms?
- Probably
- Are you ready to provide us 10 displays?
- We can do it

… here I need to make a brake. It’s very human mistake to hear not what has been really said but what we want to hear. In many cases (and I saw it’s happening many times) the sales manager would simply say — “ok, great, we got the deal, they will do everything” and then leave happily. So, I learnt to move further till the bottom

- Can you sign this deal now?
- Yes, it’s possible
- Here is the paper, sign.
- No, no, I will not sign.
- Aha! Vola. Why?
- I need more money.
… Back to square one.

This approach represents the mixed culture — combination of low and high-context. I saw it many times in South Africa, in the middle East, North Africa. With this culture you negotiate endlessly, but once it’s signed it’s a matter of honor to do it.

What may be the outcome from all these stories? Stay opened, remember all the emotions coming from the other side may be misleading, get full clarity of what person in front of you really committed to do, verify with the signing and deadlines setting

Another part I mentioned is a written communication. Especially internal written communication. This absolutely real story happened not so long time ago. The counterpart from Belgium was writing her Russian colleague asking for some help and I was on copy. The letter was asking for the help in a very typical corporate polite way:

-Dear O., how are you doing today? hope you had a great weekend and you and your beloved ones are feeling good these days. You know, I’m quite new in this specific role and….
… and so on …
-Would you please mind if I ask if you can help me to solve this issue?
Many thanks in advance
With kind regards, H.

You would probably not believe me when I tell you what I read few minutes later as a response from my colleague O. She simply wrote back:

-No, I can’t, sorry

That’s it.

I immediately picked up the phone and call O., asking

- What is it? What are you doing?!!!

She was rather confused:

- What did I do wrong?
- You answered “no”
- Yes, all correct, H. asked me if I can help and I answered her “no”. You see, I have another system been installed on my computer different from her and simply technically I can’t help. So I openly wrote her “no”
- But could you be more polite?
- I didn’t mean to be rude at all, I was busy, I was so sorry I can’t help
- But why didn’t you even wrote “how are you doing today?”?
- You know what, all the politeness is a fake, nobody cares how other people are doing, so “how are you doing today?” it’s just a formality, I do not have time for this. It’s a business, not a kindergarten, H. asked me a question and I replied. That’s it. Don’t make an Elephant out of fly.

This level of low-context was probably a but too much even for Flemish person to bear…

With some people when you are writing them asking to perform some action you may get the following response:

Pavel, I received your request. Please be informed that right now I’m busy with 10 more requests, I’m working today only part of the day and taking ½ day off for my yoga classes and on top of it I’m off on Friday to bring my son to football game at his school. So, I will deal with your request by next Tuesday and by latest Wednesday 12:00 you will get it done.

It’s perfect communication for anybody belonging to low-context culture, everybody who ever worked with low-context culture will prove me right. By the way, you may be quite sure it will be done “by latest Wednesday 12:00”. It’s not a surprise though that for any Turkish person (per say) the above message will sound like a personal insult. The message with exactly the same meaning will be probably drafted by higher-context person in the following way:

My Dear, It’s my pleasure to be a help for you, despite of the fact I’m very busy with many projects, be sure I will dedicate enough time for your request and will come back to you as soon as I can

It’s perfect communication for high-context culture, it shows the respect, give the executional person enough time to react, indicates to the requesting person that he/she may not expect to get an answer immediately, gives a room to call again and follow up, gives a room to put some pressure even if requesting person feels it’s a matter of high urgency for him/her.

Before coming to the conclusion, one more thing. One day my colleague was writing some mail to his Ethiopian colleague and put on copy me and few other people in our Belgium office. It was rather positive email containing very positive feedback and some smaller areas for improvement. Our Ethiopian colleague was totally shocked and frustrated (to say politely). He said “he wanted to insult me putting the whole world on copy, now everybody knows my “areas for improvement””. But equally the person who wrote the letter was shocked by this reaction “I did great thing to him, I communicated to the top management his achievements and exposed him to the exec team, and small “areas for improvements” it’s a balance as nobody is perfect and we all know it, I have to be fair and balanced”

By now you probably understand already that significant part of my workload is “building the bridges” between different cultures and solving cultural misunderstandings. In case of written internal communication the only advise is to put in writing expectations from different people in the team regarding the style and way how we communicate, publish whose expectations as the rules and follow it. And probably remember that if you get just “no” as an answer it’s not a declaration of war, simply person belongs to the different culture.

Evaluating ranges between giving direct negative feedback and giving indirect negative feedback. In cultures that accept direct negative feedback (Russian are at the extreme here), negative feedback is provided frankly, bluntly and honestly. The negative feedback stands alone not softened by positive ones and criticism may be given to an individual in front of a group. However, cultures characterized as giving indirect negative feedback, negative feedback is provided softly, subtly and diplomatically. Positive messages are used to wrap negative ones and criticism is given only in private.

Being Russian I can witness, that yes, the cultural norm in Russia for the manager to come to his/her subordinate and say in front of the team something like “you are doing it all wrong, stop it immediately and start doing it another way”. I guess this cultural norm is one of the main reasons why Russian are perceived by the outside world as tough, rude and blunt. Saying this I must admit, probably yes, for Russian managers (especially in traditional Russian companies) this may be seen as a norm, but it doesn’t make employee any happier and of course any employee would love to avoid such kind of feedbacks. We all are human and nobody like the extreme particularly when it comes to extreme negative feedback.

Many times I saw expats coming to Russia and going through amazing transformation. I used to know them working somewhere in Geneva as the most kind, warm and gentle people. But been moved to Moscow some of them changed by 180° and started to give frank, blunt and sometime very rude feedbacks which I know they would never do been at the HQ. Once I even asked one of such an expats “what’s wrong with you?”. He replied to me that “nothing is wrong, I got a cultural training from Berlitz, and they trained me how Russians like to be threaten and how to give feedback to Russians. The tougher the better…”. This is simply wrong attitude. Many people all around the world are joining international multinational companies to be a part of the culture which is different from their local one. Especially when it comes to the negative feedback.

Teaching the techniques of given and receiving the feedback is not the point for this book, so let me juts share my personal story when cultural misunderstanding turned to become quite disruptive for the relationships and for the business.

In one of my jobs it happened I got a superior manager S. Indeed it’s not “I got him”, it’s rather “he got me”, due to the fact he hired me to do this role in Moscow. He was (and sure still is) extremely nice, clever guy, I was totally charmed by him and his style. The first few months I was learning on the job and life was good. We were talking to S few times a week, sharing ideas, developing plan for the next year, etc. Then from time to time I started to hear from some other people that S. is not quite happy with what I’m doing. I approached him directly and without mentioning all the gossips asked for the feedback. The feedback was very positive. Total happiness. Then I started to notice that one, another my initiative was not supported without clear rational. It took me a while to understand that my manager simply culturally is not able to give me any feedback different from positive one. Seems like he also understood it and he decided to hire a coach for me. It was my first experience with the corporate coach (I had few in my career). I can tell you, the good coach is a real rear treasury. This one was very good professional coach. It’s from her I understood finally that the issue is inability of my manager to give me direct, but not offensive feedback. And for quite some time she was playing this role of a mediator trying to communicate me the feedback coming from my manager.

The whole situation was rather funny, but it wasn’t a fun at all. She was telling me, for example, “”S” is saying you need to be more active on the meetings, but not too aggressive, you need to know your numbers deeper”… So what? Without direct communication from “S” I couldn’t get to the bottom of the message? What exactly and how shall I change? Meanwhile all one-to-one communications with “S” were very positive, he was always referring me to the coach, highlighting the importance of my coaching sessions.

The “evaluating” part is not big, my learning is that you learn the people and give your feedback to keep them “above the line” and at the same to ensure you communicate clear enough your expectations. But equally it’s in our hands to seek for a feedback from the others and make sure we receive this gift, understand, digest and react.

The next two dimensions Leading and Deciding is staying very close to each other. Of course there is a difference between them, but in my practice one of the key functionalities of leadership (not everything for sure, but big) is to set up the decision making process. Let’s look closer at both.

Leading is sitting between two extremes that are egalitarian or that are hierarchical styles. In an egalitarian culture, the ideal distance between a boss and subordinate is low. Workers can disagree with their superiors without fear of reprisals. Organization structures are generally flat and communication often skips hierarchical levels. The perfect reflection of this culture is open space office. If your office space is open and people of any grade or level are sitting together in the same cubicles, if you go for a lunch together to one canteen, than most probably you are working in egalitarian organization.

In a hierarchical culture, the ideal distance between a boss and subordinate is high. Workers consider it impertinent to contradict the boss and wait for approval before acting and communicating through the appropriate channels. Organization structures are multi-layered and fixed and communication follows set hierarchical levels. So, contrary to egalitarian open space policy if you find yourself in the space full of closed smaller and bigger offices (depending on the level of the person sitting in the office) than most probably your organization is hierarchical.

Traditional Russian businesses are quite hierarchical, once you will visiting the head quarter of big Russian retailer you may notice that the HQ is a net of corridors with the doors. Behind each door it may be one person sitting, or small department with the boss in another office. You may notice the canteen for the ordinary people and special canteen for top management. You may even notice that there are toilets for ordinary employees and toilets with the specials locks only top managers has an access to. Not mentioning the parking and the car policies.

And if you come to the office somewhere in Netherlands, Germany, Belgium or US the picture will be totally different with big open space, much less closed cubical, people chatting around coffee machine regardless of their positions.

Probably the best indicator of the style is a canteen on the plant. Here you can’t mess it up and usually the canteen setup, the way how workers on the plant treat their lunch is tightly connected with the culture. And canteen is a “must to see” place for me when I’m visiting the factories, just because it gives me so much of cultural insights.

Plant in Turkey I visited many time has too canteens: one for management and one for workers. The food in Turkey is great and rich in general and I never really understood the difference in the food qualities between two canteens. Most probably there is no difference. But people eat separately. Once I asked my HR colleague — let’s go and sit together with the workers, let’s show them we are the same people and we are one team.
- We can — she responded, — and you know what will happened?
- What?
- They will stop eating and they will wait for us to finish our lunch. I tried it once…
Canteen at the plant in Germany is full of people. They are coming to the counter, getting their trays with the meals and going to take a table somewhere. Nobody cares of the visitors or managers at all. In Belgium it gets even simpler, at the plant I didn’t notice a canteen, just a big room with the tables. “This is the canteen” — I have been told, “people are coming here with their sandwiches”.

The habit which bothers me a lot in Ethiopia — whenever we have a big meeting, gathering or any other event and the buffet following the official part, people are always waiting for me to approach the buffet first and take the first plate. Of course not because of me personally, it happened I’m just the most senior in the hierarchy. Pakistan if different, in my last visit during celebration of the new brand launch after official part the buffet was served and nobody cared about the levels and stripes.

Yes, the style is important and may be more comfortable for one and less for another, but I see the critical difference in decision making processes in both cultural extremes

Deciding ranges between consensual decision making and top-down decision making process. In consensual decision making process, decisions are made in groups through unanimous agreement. In a top-down decision making process, decisions are made by individuals (usually the boss).

It’s true that in the flat organization employees can disagree with the superiors without the fear, but it’s equally true that in the flat organization superiors can express their opinion and share their ideas with subordinated without a fear.

Let me tell you the story. In international matrix flat organizations at whatever level you are you may feel yourself free to express your opinion or put on the table any idea without a fear that somebody will execute it without thinking and it will go wrong. In flat organization you always have somebody around you challenging you and asking questions. When one of my friends left Procter&Gamble and joint the Russian business as a CEO he told me, the very first time he was going to the fields with his operational director and finance director he happened to ask them — “guy, do you think we shall buy this shop to add it to our chain?”. The response was — “it’s your decision, you decide what to do and we will execute”. It’s probably a bit of exaggeration but not really. I witnessed it by myself in Turkey, Russia, Ethiopia to bigger or lesser extent. In all these cultures the trend (not 100% of course) is that people will wait for the clear decision of the upper manager to start execution and they are very conscious about their area of responsibilities. They will ask few times before acting to be 100% sure it was decided on top and it was not their own initiative.

For any egalitarian mind this approach may be seen as a heavy, slow and not efficient. Personally I struggled a lot with the hierarchical styles of my subordinates, finally I managed to build a team of top managers (I will tell you more about it in one of the following chapters) based on the principles of trust, openness and readiness to challenge each other and discuss things before taking a decision.

From the other side looking at top-down decision making process I totally understand and adopt the rational “why” and see the benefits it contains. For the employees it brings the sense of security and confidence coming from the lack of responsibilities for the decision, they just accountable for execution. Decision makers (if they are professional in the certain area) thus may take decision solely and as fast as they need even if it’s controversial decision.

This story happened few years ago. We have sent our Ethiopian finance manager “D” to Belgium for 12 days business trip. “D” wasn’t a new in the company by that moment of time, he knew people, people knew him. Agenda was full and I was pretty much sure things will go smoothly despite the fact it was his first trip to Europe. It was already 8PM on Saturday when “D” did call me. By the way it was the first and the last time he ever called me.
- Pavel, how are you?
- “D”! Happy to hear. How are you doing?
- All ok, thanks!
- Tell me
- All is fine
- Where are you? How can I help you?
- Pavel, sorry, but I’m feeling lonely and I have nobody to call to and talk to
- Of course, happy to talk, where are you?
- I’m in the hotel
- And your colleagues from the office?
- It’s Saturday and everybody is busy with their personal stuff, nobody found time for me.
- Did you have dinner with them on Friday?
- Oh, no, you see on Friday all of them had personal families’ things to do
- Probably you may just walk around?
- I did it few times already, it’s empty around, not too many people and cold. Do not worry about me, nothing had happened, I just felt myself totally lonely
- Ok, than let’s talk. Then tell me what did you learn over the past few day…
This is how relationship-based culture met task-based culture

We are now talking trusting dimension here which ranges from task-based cultures to relationship-based cultures. In task-based cultures, trust is built through business-related activities. Work relationships form and grow around functionality and mutual usefulness, and often end when the business concludes. However, in relationship-based cultures, trust is built slowly as people get to know each other. Work relationships build up slowly and over time.

Many people coming from Europe to the business trips to Russia, Turkey, Middle East, Africa are impressed and even amazed by the level of hospitality, the way how they have been met in the airport, guided, how all the meals and dinners have been arranged. Of course it’s a bit of hierarchy which plays its role, but even if it’s a not a top manager, just employee is coming to the relationship-based cultures he/she may expect her/his peers to take her/him for the dinner and dedicate personal time to communicate. It’s politeness, but not just it. It’s a way to build the relationships and it’s a way how trust has been built in this part of the world. Once you met the person, once you had your meal together only them you starts to trust.

A year ago very passionate Chinese owner of the business from Chongqing told me “in China you need to drink a tea with the stranger at least 4 times before you start any business discussion”

Task-based cultures have much more simplistic approach. Your function and your performance is what mostly (not always of course) drives working relationships. The amazing part in this story with “D” is a mismatch of the expectations. “D” somehow expected to get similar treatment he was given to the visitors he accepted in Addis and local team expected “D” to behave like representative of task-based culture.

Now we are coming to the dimension called Disagreeing. It ranges between disagreeing using confrontation and avoiding confrontation. In cultures that use confrontational technique, disagreement and debates are considered to yield positive results. Open confrontation is appropriate and will not negatively affect the relationship. Whereas, in cultures that avoids confrontation, disagreement and debates are considered to yield negative results. Open confrontation is inappropriate and will break relationships.
I will not stay too long on this. My observation is that nobody un-relating to the culture likes when somebody is arguing with him or her in public. It’s a very human. The whole difference is in details, for somebody even simple lack of passion seems like terrible confrontation and for somebody the hot dispute with shouting for one hour is still ok.

Once I have been with my CEO at one business review in a group of probably 5–10 people. All was going super well till the moment he told us “guys, your business is doing great, you are the market leader, it’s exactly the right time to up price by 10–20%”. Uffff. My people are looking at me and we all understand it would be a decision which will kill our business. Suicidal decision. So, very politely and with all the fact in hands I explained why it’s not a right decision to be made. He just told me: “I’m not convinced, you will up price as of next month”. Uffff. My people are looking at me. It was probably the toughest moment in my career (one of the toughest for sure). And I simply said very quietly
- no, we will not do it
- yes! You will do it
- no
- yes
- no
- yes
- no
- shut up! I’m the CEO in this company!
The discussion was over. The very interesting part happened after. First — nobody fired me. Second — HR came to me with the “polite advise” never again to play this “yes-no” game with the CEO. And the third — we didn’t do price increase and CEO didn’t insist anymore. Of course it was a company with the very strong “disagreeing using confrontation” culture otherwise my revolt would kill me, part of my team and probably the business. But even for this culture it was borderline. I never did it again indeed.

No brainer, the best possible way to manage disagreements is to solve it one by one with the key stakeholder prior to the critical meetings. Or if something pops up during the meeting you may always (usually it’s possible) ask for more time, ask if you may come back with the revised proposal and so on. Safe and quite efficient way.

My first experience with the serious deadlines happened a long time ago back in 1996 when I was working in Miami at Olympic games as an operator of computer graphics. I was responsible for installing some equipment and had more experienced team mate Lisa. I remember we spent good 1 hour discussing what needs to be done but still I left the meeting without any clarity what and when exactly these things will be finished. So, finally I took a pen and we drew simple schedule by points with all the deadlines (tight deadlines). And all was done (mainly by Lisa) strictly in time. Miami, US, strict linear-time culture.

With this we are coming to scheduling which is between the linear-time culture and flexible-time culture. In the cultures where time is considered linear, the focus is on adhering to schedules, respecting deadlines, and completing one task at a time. In the cultures where time is considered flexible, the focus is on flexibility, schedules are adaptable and many activities occur simultaneously.

You schedule a meeting for 9:30 in Germany and it starts at 9:30. It you come at 9:35 you are late. That’s it. Easy

Once I was scheduling the meeting with the officials in Ethiopia. I have been told to come “in the morning”.
- When exactly shall I come?
- In the morning
- Yes, I understand, in the morning, but by what hour?
- Hmm, didn’t I tell you “in the morning”? Isn’t it enough?

I came by 10AM, I got an appointment by 11AM. Mission was completed

There is no “right” or “wrong” when it comes to the attitude towards time. We use to think that linear-time cultures are much more efficient. But what is equally true flexible-time cultures are much more resilient and this is what becoming critically important in the time of uncertainty and volatility (in Africa and Middle East it means — always).

What was always important for me it’s predictability. Once I’ve got an Indian IT manager. Soon I noticed that whatever time in the morning I’m scheduling the meeting at he will never come before 10AM. Oookkey! Let it be (he had some personal reasons). If person is always late, or sensitive to the time, or something else it’s absolutely ok for me, I will adapt as soon as it’s stable pattern and behavior is not changing randomly

Another time related specific I learnt in Africa is a need for follow up. Once in my early days in South Africa I asked some colleague to do something and she promised me to complete it in 5 days and when on day 6 I asked her very politely if things are done she was honestly surprised. She told me “you didn’t follow up on this next day and day after and I though it’s not important for you and you forgot about it and I just didn’t do anything”. She didn’t meant to offense me, she was very logical.

I may give only very obvious advise here — get all the team together, discuss expectations and set corporate rules on how you want to treat scheduling. And then follow the rules

What my team is always struggling with (and I know it) — I very rarely give any templates for business reviews. I believe that the way person is looking at her/his business reflects the culture and personality and I just do not want to spoil it with the templates. I want to experience it raw. In theory persuading is in between two extremes: principles-first and applications-first. In cultures that prefer principles-first reasoning, individuals first develop theory and then present supportive facts and conclusions. While, in cultures that prefer applications-first reasoning, individuals first begin with real-world patterns or facts, and then derive conclusions.

You know, I would be absolutely happy with the both approaches if it’s done professionally. And you could see the clear trend at business reviews or when somebody is presenting business case and asking for the investments. If person is coming with the SWOT first and then going into details of the business it’s clearly principles-first reasoning. If person is coming with the all the details of the market and only then SWOT — applications-first reasoning. In many companies to smoother multicultural differences the expectation is that you put your conclusion and executive summary in the beginning of your presentation and then you repeat it in the end. And then it’s very clear who is in the audience — some exec members tend to skip the summary, jump into the details and then focus on conclusions but some are opposite — they may keep staying on the first slide with the summary forever and you may finish your speech there on the first slide with the conclusion.

Few other observations about the way people of different cultures are building up their rational. Very often specifically in the Middle East and Asia people are coming with the new projects and ideas because “it’s strategically right thing to do”. What is behind? Usually things which are very difficult to quantify such as intuition, experience on the market, past learnings. Things are changing all the time in this part of the world, I may be sure we need to produce locally in Egypt because in case duties will go up we will be protected, because custom regulation is getting tougher, because the rumor is that competition may leave the market, etc. But usually for the decision making those rational is not enough and we need numbers which we do not have. And here it’s critically important to have very strong financial business partner who may stay in between principles-first and applications-first reasoning cultures as a bridge and who will help to put the model together

Another one I saw many times during business review — people are going via massive data. Market data, sales, financials, supply chain… And… that’s it. This is the end. I’m missing the conclusions, generalization and I’m missing the action plan for the future. It’s also cultural, people are way too focused in today’s numbers and details, so applications-first driven, than simply not making a next step forward.

Probably that’s it and I’m finishing with the cultural differences for now. Nice story for you to complete

Limpopo. Bird people. For few hours already I’m driving through Limpopo province. I’m not actually behind the wheel, it’s Mr. Clive Kau driving us. Clive is unique person, grew up in Soweto, started his business way before the end of apartheid and speaking freely English, Afrikaans, Sesotho, Zulu, Tswana and I suspect he understands 5–6 more languages. The most part of his childhood he spent on the border with Lesotho and then moved to one of few black universities here in Limpopo. So he knows the way. It may sound strange but the more we travel together the more similarities I found between 37 years old Russian from Moscow and 50+ inhabitant of Soweto form Lesotho. Clive is my Distributor and at the same time my key source of knowledge about apartheid and black South Africa in general. Here in Limpopo we are driving through small villages, towns, visiting stores, talking to the shop owners and the people, trying to understand if it makes business sense to start up distribution operations here. And yes, we see already it’s all possible and we need just to decide now how exactly. How many people, where to place warehouse, how many vans, and so on and so on.

On the way Clive can’t resist to show me his Alma Mater and we are passing by the University. University is lacking any remarkable architecture, but the surroundings are amazing. It’s a huge ocean of people here. People are trading everything, doing haircut right on the street, cooking something smelly in a numerous small gazebos all around. Many small shops and even one big “students supermarket”. Cars, minibuses, donkeys and many people. Women are carrying boxes, cases and bales on their heads and on their backs are kids tired in a colorful blankets. Mix of everything.

From University the road is going to the east and south and just in 10 km there is Moria, here there is a holly mountain Zion and the headquarter of The Zion Christian Church which is one of the largest African-initiated churches operating across Southern Africa. The number of Zion Christian Church members is most likely around 15 mln and during the big ceremonies and celebrations here in Moria on the mountain at least 3–4 mln people are gathering together. Than the area is booming with the cars, busses, shelters, people sleeping everywhere, cooking, chatting, dancing. But now it’s empty, silent, clean and red. All the soil is red (very common in Africa).

Right after we are passing by Moria the mystery starts. We are coming from one reality to another one back and force. The road is looping between the hills and we are gradually descending from 1,500 meters plateau to the gigantic floodplain of Limpopo river. One turn and the landscape reminds me Siberia with the same pine trees and the grass, another turn and we see palms and bananas plantation, than lake, than mango plantation. Pawpaw is everywhere. We are at the floodplain and now all around there are 300–500 meters high natural hills in the forms of ideal cones. All the cones are covered with the bush and the grass.

Clive is telling me the story. Somewhere here on one of these hills woman-bird lives. Long time ago there were many woman-birds and every tribe in Limpopo use to have “its own” woman-bird protecting the tribe. Nowadays all of them disappeared and only one left. People from surrounding villages are coming to her to predict the weather, forecast the harvest or simply to call for the rain. Somebody is looking to be healed, somebody wants to know the future. Nelson Mandela once came to her and spend few hours talking, nobody knows what they were talking about…