When you think of a start-up in a foreign country, or you are defining a strategic relationship with a foreign company, did you ever consider how cultural differences can affect the result of your choice?
Or are you convinced that, in the end, we are all the same?
Anyone who had professional experience abroad knows how cultural nuances are essential to better interact with local people and colleagues.
Whether you are in managerial roles or consultants, knowing and understanding how people react differently to a compliment, a comment, or perhaps a reprimand in China rather than in Eastern Europe is fascinating. But above all useful.
Setting a new start-up abroad, relaunching a production facility in trouble, or helping a company to enter a specific new market is not just a matter of mere expansion, nor of techniques that can be equally valid everywhere.
There are aspects to consider, ranging from legislation to traditions, from the social fabric to religious beliefs, up to the perception that different peoples have of those who occupy positions of command.
Consider, for example, the different interpretations that can be given to an expression such as “business growth”.
In one country, for the CEO, it could mean “an increase in profits”; for the marketing director “to be a market leader”; for the personnel director “optimize the company organization”; for a worker… “job security”.
But would it be the same in another country? Each word is contextualized based on one’s own mental maps, of one’s own culture, and how we approach the reality that surrounds us. Shortly, of what we are.
It is unthinkable to imposing one’s style, vision, products, and services without considering these aspects.
It is time to find new interpretations to circumvent globalization’s limits that have emerged in recent decades, embracing the awareness that today’s world is all connected but always made up of many very different realities and cultures.
And if once we could think, design, and produce a product in a single country, now we are all part of a much more varied mosaic.
Understanding and awareness of cultural differences must be considered a primary aspect, depending on our business type.
If you want to learn more about it, do not hesitate to contact us.