Vulture versus Dog...

The culture card is what people throw at each other when they try to separate themselves from another. And it goes like this " in our culture we don't do it that way...or you don't know our culture ,we are very different from your part of the world"

Whilst I agree that one has to be aware and practice cultural sensitivity when dealing with other cultures, I do think that some cultures and people within organisations use culture as the wild card and sometimes overuse it.

Let's take a closer look at cultural sensitivity and see what it is really about. There are three aspects - Cultural Knowledge , Cultural Awareness that comes from the knowledge or information and it leads to cultural sensitivity. Will we know every aspect of some one's else culture ....No...Do we need to know every aspect ...I doubt it.

A friend got married to a French man and moved to Paris some years ago and she made up her mind to learn French. In a social event, when she was speaking to some people in french ( by this time , she was fairly fluent) someone made a sarcastic remark at her "not very good french" To this , my friend's husband replied, "she can communicate in 4 languages, how many can you speak"... Isn't it all about perspectives?

That's just language....whenever I set up an office in another country, the first thing that people tell me is... " but in our country we do things differently...or what makes you think you can come here and tell us how to do things...what do you know about our country /culture". Many years ago, when i set up an office in Indonesia , a man approached me at our opening event and asked me " do you know how many islands we have in Indonesia ?" I replied that I didn't know and asked him to tell me so that I could learn from him but in the same breath I also told him that this is why we have hired a very smart individual who was Indonesian to help us navigate through their culture.

Recently when I travelled to Indonesia with a new business partner , I described an aspect that I love about the Indonesian culture to him ,as we landed at the airport. I said " in this country, they refer to me as 'Ibu" ( mother) and they will call you "Pak" (father) and this is common practice here to refer to anyone older in this way. Everyone else is either brother or sister.... imagine having a whole city /country that does that... where everyone is "related" in some way or another...how awesome is that for a culture? " Learning about someone else's culture opens up a window for us to understand how they work , live , their values and it enriches our lives. I really like the Indonesian culture and philosophy , its made me change my outlook to the way I view the people I work with, its added to me. I can say the same for most of the other cultures I have been working with.

In my view , it cuts both ways .... when people go on and on about how different they are...it gets boring and it tells me that whilst they want others to be culturally sensitive, ...they are not because they are not making an effort to bridge that gap by understanding the other person's culture. Recently, I had someone tell me that I cant do business in Japan because I am a woman and I don't know Japanese culture. I just smiled on the inside ...if this person had made an attempt to understand my background they would know that I know more about Japanese culture than the average 'joe'. This same person also said that my business partner cant do business in Japan because he is American . So basically we are "damned if we do and damned if we don't" I cant do it because I am a woman and he cant do it because he is not Japanese!!!!

But that aside, it made me think , if any of this, still holds water anymore in today's world. I sort of wondered whether this person was caught in a "time warp" or something?? Avivah Wittenberg in her book talks about how today, more women make up the total work force globally than men. She also talks about how women make up half or more of the population graduating from universities. If global companies say that that they are employing the best and the brightest, then this shift needs to be reflected in their leadership teams.

In today's world, it is no longer about gender, race, colour, age, education.... its a flatter world and its getting flatter, thank God for that!! But I guess it's not such good news for people who use culture as their excuse to hold back an organisation or hold themselves back from progress and change. There is a new culture evolving - a planetary culture. Technological advancements especially in the way we can connect to people across the globe has cut through culture in many ways and active users of the net have evolved a net culture which is more open and accepting of others. The kids of today are more well travelled and certainly more knowledgeable about other cultures. Their focus is on cooperation, transparency and social responsibility towards the planet. This to me is more real in some ways because it focuses on us as human beings and less on individual differences especially individual differences that are put up as barriers in order to resist change. The change is happening whether we like it or not.

Its goodbye to culture vultures .... they are like vultures feeding off dead ideology and are opportunistic in nature... just hanging around waiting for the next victim to feed off or scare away!!! Sad way to live, if you ask me. Hiding behind culture and saying that we are a gracious society of people and yet being bloody rude and disrespectful behind someone's back is unacceptable for any culture or human being. Its base, unrefined and dishonest...because these people are lying to themselves and others . And in the process they are depriving themselves and others the opportunity to cooperate and learn. Business is the engine of society and many are dying today because of the self centred nature of the individuals in it who refuse to look at what the company needs but only at what suits them. Its not the country, its not the culture, its the individuals who are just trying to protect their own interest. It stems from fear and protectionism and a mind set of not wanting to learn. Forbes published the latest annual ranking of the top business friendly countries and the top 5 are Denmark, U.S., Canada, Singapore and New Zealand. These countries are obviously doing something right to minimise barriers and increase cooperation. Its about a mindset shift, the sooner we can see the truth, the sooner we can breathe life back into society and business and chase away the vultures... they may have been useful at one time, but are they still relevant in today's environment?