In this Marketing Over Coffee:
Learn about Cultural Profiles, Types, Cross Cultural Negotiations and more!
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Michael Gates is the Vice Chairman of Richard Lewis Communications
CrossCulture and The Communications Around The World Diagram (27 released, 105 internally!)
The hazards of negotiating in Finland
Personal cultural profiles vs. National cultural profiles
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How much variation in a single country? Looking at Japan vs. U.S.
The three cultural types: Linear, Multi-Active, and Reactive
Getting 7% out of the French
Staging a blowout for a breakthrough
How to earn the trust of an American
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Is the globe becoming homogenized?
Gamification for education
The Neuroscience of cross cultural negotiation
Getting down with the Hygge and Jugaad (Please note I did not take the easy shot of “Gettin’ Hygge with it”)
Why John’s portfolio is always missing India
The problem of behaving in the wrong gear
Who’s on the way up? Who’s on the way down?
Looking at Brexit from a cross cultural standpoint
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Machine-Generated Transcript
What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode.
Michael Gates
The linear cultures really in general have a big gap to fill by improving their people in relationship skills. And that’s going to be a big source of competitive edge. I mean, if your competitor can deal very well with the company that they’ve outsourced to in India, because they’ve got people in relationship skills, and you can’t, then who’s going to be more successful?
Unknown Speaker
This is marketing over coffee with Christopher Penn and John Wall.
John Wall
Good morning. Welcome to marketing over coffee. I’m John Wall. today. Our guest is Michael gates. He’s the vice chairman of Richard Lewis communications. Michael, thanks for joining us today.
Michael Gates
Thanks. Really great to be here, john.
John Wall
So Michael, tell us about Richard Lewis communications and you have another brand in their cross culture to tell us who you are and what you do.
Michael Gates
You Richard Lewis communications is a global organization. We’ve been going for well over 20 years there. We do two things, really one is communication skills. But then cross cultural is a separate unit within the organization.
John Wall
Yes, and this is. So to give everybody the background, there’s a whole story behind this of where this interview came together. JOHN Federico from event hero had sent me the communications around the world diagram. It’s a diagram you guys do that has 27 different cultural approaches. So it shows different cultures, you know, whether it’s American, European, and all around the globe, every different culture, 27 of them have this map, and it talks about how it actually shows a diagram of how a conversation will work, you know, a negotiation or some kind of business flow. And so I received this and I was like, yeah, this is interesting. I want to dig in and find a little bit more. And then as these things go, within three days, over an event here, we had a lead come in from Singapore. And I was talking with this person, we were going back and forth, and as things were nearing the very end, I got this email that was very, very bold and saying look If we can’t get this done, we’re going to your competitor. And this is just a terrible deal. And it took me aback. You know, I’ve never received an email like that. And it was kind of strange because the competitor is not really a competitor of ours, they’re kind of out in the field. And so on a lark, I pulled up the communications around the world diagram and went down to Singapore. And sure enough, at the last stage, there’s pulling in a competitor and getting belligerent. And it just blew me away that you know, you have this map, and you know how it works. So that’s the major setup. And then, of course, the other part of this, too, is that this was actually back in the fall. And because of the nature of the work that you do, you’re all over the world all the time. And so between our two schedules, it’s taken months to get this together. But let’s just start with the diagram, I guess, tell us more about that. Like, where did that come from? And how does that work into what you do now?
Michael Gates
Well, Richard, our chairman is one of the world’s leading cross cultural experts. And the way in which he differs from some of the other experts is that he focuses very much on communication and that’s where the diagrams came from. And in fact, you know, 27 arrives. in the public domain, but internally, we have 105. I think it is that. And so that’s quite a large collection of diagrams. And I think the thing is that they tend to be very practical. And our approach is very practical. It’s very business oriented, trying to get people better results faster. And the diagrams really seem to ring true with people and you know, as in your own case with Singapore.
John Wall
Okay. And so tell us how you got involved with this then. So, Richard, the founder, obviously been doing this for many years. But where do you fit into the mix?
Michael Gates
Yeah, well, I’ve been working with it should for about 30 years now. And prior to that, I was actually working in radio in the UK. And then I decided I wanted to go and try and live somewhere completely different. And I ended up in Finland. And in fact, Finland wasn’t the place that I was intending to go to. I was more attracted to a Latin culture like Spain, and by chance and by fate, really. When I went to my interview, the interviewer said, Look, I know you want to go to Spain, but how About Finland is certainly going to be for nine months. Well, here I am nearly 31 years later
John Wall
still in Finland. And now that’s interesting, too, because I noticed that one of the books you have talks about Finland, and I think its role is cultural lone wolf. So tell us more about Finland.
Michael Gates
Yeah. Well, that’s right. And Richard actually started his career in this business in Finland, because the friends that are pretty silent culture, and And what he found was that even if their English was pretty good, they weren’t actually using it in ways which necessarily appeal to some of the nationalities that they were trying to sell to. And in fact, to begin with, he was working with one Finnish organization who had an American customer and they said, Well, you know, we don’t feel as though we’re getting food to them. And in fact, you know, it was because of their cultural style. long silence is sounding a little bit pessimistic. And in fact, my own very first experience before I was actually in the cross cultural field in Finland. I was negotiating with this guy called backer, and it was quite an important contract for us to get. And I sat down in the meeting room and the first thing that I noticed was that he was making almost no eye contact, he was looking at issues. I mean, I’ve since discovered that you can tell the difference between a finish extra, and a finished introvert because the introvert looks at his shoes, and the extrovert looks at your shoes. Anyway. And so I tried to negotiate with this guy, you know, and I was outlining the sort of features and benefits of what I was trying to sell him and no reaction at all. And after about 20 minutes, I was sort of pretty desperate. So I said to him, Look, this package of training is going to cost you 100,000 Finn marks and there was total silence. And you know, silence can be pretty painful if you’re not used to it. And anyway, after about 15 seconds of silence, I said, Okay, I’m prepared to drop the price to 95,000 wasn’t really the right way to negotiate with a fin. And the silence continued, and I dropped it tonight. Then 285 and I said, Look, that’s my last offer and finally said, Okay, anyway, about a year later, he invited me for a salad. And you know, having a salad with a fin in business is a good sign that there’s some sort of relationship going on. And you know, a lot of good business is done in the summer in politics as well. So we’re sitting in the silo and Pekka was getting a little bit more relaxed and had a few drinks and he was beginning to talk a little bit. And I said, you know, you’re a fantastic negotiator, you know, you really put me through it put me through my paces last year. He said, I wasn’t negotiating. I said, Well, what are you doing? He said, I was thinking, I said, Well, you know what exactly were you thinking? He said, I was thinking I want to say to my salon very interested for your proposal. And then I thought again, interested for interested of interested about and before, I remember that the preposition after interested is in you said 95,000. So I thought I wait a little longer. I mean, it just shows the importance of You know, not judging another culture by your own assumptions. So for me, silence meant the guy must be negotiating for him. He just didn’t want to make a grammatical mistake. So he was thinking, but I assumed he was negotiating.
John Wall
Right And well, and that’s very interesting. And in that language is such a huge part of this. You literally have to budget and extra time into that. And yeah, it’s so funny I can you can easily see in a sales scenario where somebody is throwing something out and like the painful silence, that it becomes an advantage by slowing down the negotiation.
Michael Gates
Well, absolutely, in some cultures do that on purpose. But you know, it’s all about what is your intent or what’s the other party’s intent in communication, it can very different the intent of the other party compared to what your intent is or your assumptions as to what their intent is.
John Wall
You also talk about you have National Cultural profiles and personal cultural profile. So what’s the difference there and how does that fit into this?
Michael Gates
Well, a National Cultural profile is a sort of generalization about a culture One always has to be careful about generalizations because people are individuals. And so when we’re actually working with a client, then we also get people to do a short assessment on the web. And it’s based around our model of culture, which I’ll tell you a little bit more about in a moment. And you get a cultural profile. And then you can compare how you are individually and you may not be typical for your culture. I mean, you could be a very shy retiring silent American, for example, and maybe in some parts of the states, people are a little bit shy, you know, but certainly, it’s unlikely that you’d get that sort of character in business in New York, you know, and then you can compare your own cultural profile point by points with what is likely in the culture that you’re going to So for example, if you’re an American going to Japan, you put in your personal profile, you compare it to Japan, you can see point by point, the areas which might be challenging for you personally. So personal cultural profile is just about you and how you fit in globally in a global culture. Sex and the National Cultural profile is what is likely in that culture. And it’s always only a probability.
John Wall
Okay, we have to take a moment just to pause and think Active Campaign for their support of marketing over coffee. Active Campaign is marketing automation that’s powerful and easy to use marketing, automation, sales, CRM, email, marketing, all this in the connections to create your perfect marketing stack. You can get started now with a free 14 day trial, just check out the link in our show notes. And of course, there’s always a link in our newsletter if you haven’t signed up for the newsletter that gets you the links regularly. So you don’t have to play with your phone while you’re driving or do other dangerous things to get these links, make sure you sign up over at marketing over coffee calm, and we thank them for their support of the show. Okay, so that’s interesting how the personal profile is a variant on the national profile, you’ve got the generality of the national, but then the personal profile, how vast are those differences is that different per country I’m just thinking, you know, in the states now we have this kind of huge divide between, we say the red and blue states, you know, it’s kind of very Either the conservative people that tend to be in the center of the country and the more liberal folks on either coast. So there’s Well, I don’t know. Now, I think that’s a huge difference. But yeah, it’s better to ask you, is that a major factor in the difference between the within the single national profile?
Michael Gates
Yeah, I mean, I think it varies according to country. You know, if you take one extreme Japan, Japan tends to be a pretty homogenous culture. However, there are some differences, for example, from behavior in in Tokyo compared to behavior in Osaka. And that’s face storica reasons because you know, stacker was a second is a, you know, trading post in a way and has more overseas context. But you’ve got to remember that Japan was isolated, politically and culturally from for many years. So it’s quite a homogenous culture. If you take someone like the US, well, of course, you’ve got big differences. I mean, I would personally divide it into sort of East Coast and then New York, maybe slightly separate. And then, you know, the Midwest, deep south and California, but Of course, one could have more subdivisions within that. And then of course, you’ve got different professions. You know, in any culture engineers are going to be different for people in sales and marketing, for instance. So you’ve got to take those things into account. However, the model, and I’d better explain it a little better. So, you know, when you’re looking at any complex subject, it always helps other model. And some of the cultural models are quite complex as a very simple one with just three main categories. And what we say is that, you know, some cultures tend to be what we call rather linear, they’re quite task oriented, fairly time conscious. They tend to rely on written information and data for their sources of information. And for them communication is very much about giving and receiving information. If you turn to multi active cultures, well, oh, by the way, linear cultures I mean, you probably guess but the US is generally pretty linear, Northern Europe, Germany, the Germanic speaking cultures and you know, Australia and New Zealand. anywhere that’s been influenced by Anglo Saxon culture tends to be rather linear. Multi active cultures tend to be more say, South America, Mexico, in Europe, Southern Europe, Africa, India to a large degree, rather multi active, and they’re very people focused. So when they’re communicating, it’s very much about, about giving opinions and saying what you feel about things and about building relationships. So that people oriented, less time conscious, and maybe a little bit more flexible with the truth. Truth isn’t always scientific, be situational. And then we move on to reactive cultures. And that’s very much the cultures of the Far East. And so Japan, China, Thailand, Vietnam, etc. And of course, each of those cultures also has other cultural layers. I mean, if you look at Vietnam, you know, it’s had influences from the French well, originally from the Chinese and then from the French and then from the Soviet culture and then more recent times younger Vietnamese is less than ideology and more iPhones so it’s more influenced by American culture. So you have these different layers when the culture reactives they’re very good listeners, they tend to be very accommodating. They’re very polite and courteous, and they tend to react rather than initiating things at a meeting they wait to hear what you have to say first then think about it and then come back with their reply and they’re very conscious about not losing face communication for them is very much about creating a sense of harmony. So you have these three cultural styles most people are mixed most cultures are a bit of a mix. different regions may be more affected by you know, some of the other categories categories so for example, in Italy in Milan, although it’s multi active, there’s a little bit more linear you know, they say in Milan, traffic lights, our instructions in Rome mix getting a little bit more multi active, you know, traffic lights in Rome, maybe more suggestions and then once you get to Naples will traffic light, sir Christmas decorations. I mean, I’m joking. But you can see it moves a little bit within a culture within a country.
John Wall
Okay, so tell us a bit more about the services you provide them when you engage a client. What’s the normal process of business as far as stepping in and looking at how they do business? And what kind of changes do prescribe? What’s the, basically what’s the product?
Michael Gates
First of all, we’d normally begin with some sort of assessment. So where are you now you know, mapping where the organization is, culturally. And then we can map within individual teams, how people are within a particular team. It could be a multicultural team, a diverse team, but sometimes it could even be a monocultural team, with some diversity of cultural approaches within that team. If we’re working with a team, then quite often, as well as people doing a self assessment, they do a mini assessments on all their team members. And then you can see the gap between how you perceive yourself and how other people in the team perceive you. And then we help them to try and bridge those gaps and work together in a way which is more efficient. Whether is greater trust and improved performance, then our interventions, some of its training, some of its coaching, but increasingly, it’s consultancy. I mean, I’m just back from New Zealand, where I was for three weeks working with a client, I’ve worked with quite a lot. And one of the things that we’re doing with them is seeing where they’ve got business challenges. I mean, you mentioned the challenge that you had in Singapore. And in this particular company, they’ve had challenges in various cultures. I mean, if I just take one example, that I was working with them recently dealing with the French with a French supplier, and they’ve been trying for a couple of years to get a 7% discount from the French, and without success. So we looked at the situation, we’ve got all the background in who they were dealing with, and you know what the argument was a bad and they said, Well, look at the French, how do you actually convince the French How do you persuade them? Well, with the French, you know, and the Not a negative comment and don’t take it the wrong way, but a pragmatic Anglo Saxon common sense approach where you know, second and see just try and see what happens, isn’t gonna work and trying to reach, compromise and use consensus and color work, or does work with the Frenchies logic. And if you think about French education, at French schools, all French school kids are taught to approach argumentation in a particular way based on Cartesian logic, but also based on a tripartite approach, logical approach where you, you come up with a thesis, you say, Well, this is the case and this is what we believe should be done, then you yourself, come up with an antithesis with all the objections to it and say it could be objected to in this way, this way, this way. However, if we synthesize all that information together, this is the best way to go ahead. So one has to take a sort of holistic logical approach in order to frame arguments in a way in which the French are likely to respond to and I was very pleased to hear that when I went in This tank. So I’ve been doing some of this consultancy by phone and video conference that they said, We got the discount, we got the 7% discount. And so you know the point about this, it’s stuff that actually does work, you modify your approach. And you frame arguments in ways, which means something to the party, in language that they understand in forms of argument, they understand, and you’re going to get a better result. I mean, if you take the US, I would advise people dealing with Americans to, you know, keep things simple to begin almost with your conclusions and action points. Keep it very practical, and as I say, quite simple and relate arguments to time and money. Now, that’s not something Germans would do. For example, Germans want a lot of background in history and context. Using that approach with Americans is probably not going to work as well as plunging straight into it with, you know, your executive summary and actual points.
John Wall
That’s so interesting, because really, when you look at it this way, then anytime you go out of your own culture, you’re just have this huge array of different options and possibilities, your odds of getting it right the first time are almost zero, it seems like,
Michael Gates
well, if you prepared, then you can get it right. But generally, clients come to you because they’ve got a problem. It would be better if they came to you earlier to say, look, we want to prevent any problems. I’ll give you one more example. Because of course, the French example is peculiar to friends. I was working with another client who had a problem with Koreans. And you know, when I’m working culture specific stuff, I usually beam in an expert by video who is able to then talk to the client and I’d mediate between the two. And they’d been having a problem with a Korean supplier for a couple of years again, and again, a price issue. And what the expert said to them was that, it seems to me that the approach you’ve been taking has been very calm. Be quite logical. It’s been an approach which was delivered in a meeting and informal meeting in the meeting room said, change your approach, take them out for dinner. Once they’re relaxed and at dinner, start talking about the problem emotionally. And then if you don’t seem to be getting anywhere, just explode, explode, shout at them, scream at them storm out. Come back and apologize a little bit later. Anyway, our client took this fairly high risk strategy. And apparently that meeting the next day was a meeting in which they made a breakthrough that they hadn’t managed to achieve in two years of more logical negotiation. So this stuff works.
John Wall
Yeah. And so is that because because of the outbreak they wanted to kind of say faced and rebound in the next meeting, or is it that well, they looked at him differently after he had done that
Michael Gates
will they look to him differently and they really understood that the client meant that A customer meant it at that point, they really understood that they meant it. And now, that approach, absolutely total No, no in Japan. And in some ways Japanese and Korean culture are quite related. Neither of them would like to hear that because particularly the Koreans, in some ways, they’ve got a lot in common book, in this use of explosive emotion. It’s a very peculiar Korean concept. It’s actually a concept called harm. And harm means a sort of buildup of pressure for, you know, historical political business reasons, a buildup of negative energy inside, and this negative energy eventually will explode like a pressure cooker. And the point is then to be able to use that negative energy and channel it into a positive outcome. So by letting off this steam, again, the client was communicating to the Koreans in a way in which they would themselves communicate if something was really important and really bugging them. Then they would have this explosion, almost violence explosion. And so by, you know, reframing things in a way that spoke to the way in which they would do things, you’re more likely to communicate. And it got me thinking actually, and this is moving on something a little bit political that you know, obviously, and I’m not being, you know, parties, and here at all, you know, Trump’s sort of angry tweets about the Koreans in the middle of the night and all this actually not a bad way to approach the Koreans by you know, a sudden explosion, the insults, etc. Again, you know, you’ve got to take these things carefully. It’s not gonna work in every case. Certainly exploding can be a high risk strategy, but with some cultures that can work.
John Wall
Yeah, that’s interesting. There have been a few other things I’ve seen on the same front of that. You kind of have to have that explosion up front and then you are able to make contrition come back to the table and you kind of start over from scratch and that Yeah, like you said, high risk, of course, though.
Michael Gates
Yeah. In a way It’s also in a slightly more muted form an American thing. I mean, you know, I asked a very senior American business guy recently I said, you know, how do you get Americans to really trust you? without skipping a beat? He said, pick a fight with us. I said, Really? He said, Yeah, pick a fight with us and what we we haven’t got a fight. He said, we’ll just make one up. Why? Because you know, if you really show that you mean what you say that you shoot from the hip, and to, you know, on term, mealy mouthed, then we’re going to trust you, and we’ll soon forget about it, you know, we go out for a beer afterwards, everything’s fine again. But that sort of outburst can show that and really disagreeing with us can really make us trust you. And now with the British, that generally doesn’t work. And Americans would tend maybe sometimes to lose trust with the Brits, because you don’t know what we really mean. Because we’re so oblique. We sort of talk around the houses so much and if We disagree instead of saying, you know, come on, come off it, you know, we disagree with you or You must be kidding. You gotta be joking. Instead of all that sort of thing we say, it’s a very interesting idea. And for a Brit, you know, a very interesting idea actually means you’re talking bullshit. But we don’t say and so no wonder that Americans sometimes don’t trust us. And you know, if you notice the villain in American films quite often speaks with a British accent and no wonder because it’s that sort of deviousness that is sometimes sensed by the Americans and the Brits. You know, I think as Bernard Shaw said, the Americans and the Brits have divided by common language,
John Wall
we have to pause just a moment we want to thank Prezi for their support of marketing over coffee communication, a perfect topic for us to cover here today as we get into Prezi Prezi lets you arrange your topics on an open canvas and pan to those that interest your audience. So if you’ve been using PowerPoint, this is a whole new way to put together slide decks and presentations. You can zoom in on details or pullback to show context which makes you more engaging and memorable. Plus Prezi is cloud based and has analytics and collaboration tools specifically for your teams. Just check out the link in our show notes. And you can learn more about Prezi. I’m a big fan of their tool, it’s just so much easier and so much more effective. You can make great looking presentations and it’s just not as painful as other methods. So be sure to check them out. Okay, so yeah, it’s funny, you’re talking about how, you know cultures, ones that are so different, that they tend to be enemies, or not enemies, but that they’re they’re not effective communicating, they have to do more work to communicate effectively. What do you see as far as the whole world now with mobile, you know, over the past decade, decade and a half now, our culture’s getting more homogenized? Or are people even getting further apart kind of what’s going on in the big scene?
Michael Gates
Well, I’m a big fan of the German philosopher Schopenhauer. And he said, a true sign of intelligence is to realize that two things two opposing ideas can both be true at the same time and I would say the same for the effects of Globalization of, you know, the development of international business, mass media, the internet, other forms of technologies, social media, all these things in some ways of bringing us together. But at the same time, I think none of us can escape the fact that we’re also drawing further apart, certainly in Europe, one can see that with the, you know, increasing in nationalism in people having a very strengthen sense of national identity. I think some of this is a response to being told that Well, actually, now we’re going to sort of work together, we’re going to be a European Union. And then at a point when it actually hits people’s pockets and dictates things which are maybe against their negative values, then you’re likely to get a rebellion against that. And so, I think both things are true, that you know, cultures are coming close together, but at the same time On the drawing further.
John Wall
Yeah, and that’s something that I’ve just always found so interesting is that there was a quote, I had heard a while ago about how 250 years ago, the village five miles away, could get wiped out, and you wouldn’t hear about it. And now something happens literally on the other side of the globe. And it’s front page news for you. So we’re just, we have so much more in front of us now that we’ve never been able to, you know, to even see, and that does kind of change how everything moves. Okay, how about on the horizon for you? I mean, you’ve been watching this space forever. What’s going on? You know, are there any technological changes or changes in the way to do business? Anything that’s got you excited for, you know, potential in the coming year?
Michael Gates
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think from the technological point of view, as far as our training goes, and how we get the message across. So I think one of the big things is gamification is quite interesting that if you look at MOOCs, these I can never fully answer standards for what These online learning programs, something like only eight to 10% of people actually complete online courses, which is a shocking figure really. Why? Because they get bored by them. And they don’t find them stimulating enough, they find them a little bit naive maybe. And yet on the other hand, you’ve got the enormous sort of addiction to gaming and people being obsessed with saying online to play games, see if you could somehow get people to learn by osmosis. By playing it, you know, a game in our field that would be connected with culture and business and getting points by the way in which you solve cultural dilemmas, so that the focus is on the actual game, rather than on the learning then people are likely to learn along the way, so gamification in any form of learning, and I think particularly with something like culture could be really revolutionary. And so I’m certainly looking to that field. And then on the other technological front, of course, you have artificial intelligence, which Courses discussed all over the world at the moment, and maybe the, the ambitions for what can be done with it are slightly ahead of what can actually be achieved technologically. But I think there’s no doubt that artificial intelligence will enter every form of, or many forms of life, including learning. And, you know, my sort of one of my visions would be to have the, almost a cultural guide in your pocket, you know, maybe even through an earpiece, you know, you’re sitting in that negotiation in China, and you’re getting advice through your earpiece on what to do next, you know, this has happened at the meeting. So what should we do next, by the device trawling lots of information throughout the web, almost like Google on steroids in a way, giving simple answers to simple questions. So instead of getting squeezed of information, you say, this has happened at the meeting? What should I do next? And then they say, Well, have you tried this Have you tried that? And then you can have almost a conversation with it. That’s a long way before that will be a reality. But I think it’s an exciting thing. As far as research goes in our field, then I would say that neuroscience is very interesting. You know, can one for example, measure people’s brain patterns during a negotiation or listen listening to a presentation across different cultural types? And see what the responses you know, for example, if we talk the linear multi unreactive? Do linear people respond better naturally to a linear presentation? multi access to a multi active presentation and reactive to a reactive style presentation? Or is the one style that appeals equally or very well to any of the cultural categories? Could it be that you know people globally like multi active presentations? Who knows? So me fat we’re having some research in that field.
John Wall
Okay, so we’re going over top As you mentioned, untranslatable words can be problematic and what goes on there?
Michael Gates
Well, they can be both problematic and they could be a huge opportunity. I think we all know that certain words and phrases in different countries which are very hard to translate. I mean, there’s the classic German one shodhan fighter, which means pleasure in someone else’s discomfort or pain, which is a interesting concept. You know, in the UK, we may say, you know, a very British concept when we think we invented even if we don’t always follow it is fair play. You know, the French have savoir faire, knowing how to do the right thing. And there’s been a lot of books published certainly in the UK in the last couple of years about certain Nordic concepts. The first one was a Danish concept called who get which is really hard to translate, but it means a sort of nice cozy feeling, which happens spontaneously and, you know, leads to sort of good results in Britain. business, if you have a good feeling, then you’re likely to get a good result because everyone’s sort of feeling quite cozy, not easy to translate. In Sweden, they have something called Largo, which means not too much, not too little. And I mean, if I wanted to describe what Largo is, and you could almost say a Volvo car, because, you know, it’s nice to look at it, it can go in a nice speed, but it’s also safe, it’s very well balanced, it’s very well balanced vehicle, not too much, not too little. And so these concepts can be really useful, not only for dealing with that particular culture, but for adding two sort of approaches to the world in any case, you know, across any culture. And there’s one that there was a book published about about five or six years ago in India, and it’s a word originating from Punjabi but it’s been taken into Hindi and called jugaad jugaad j, you G double ad, and it’s a sort of firm in resourcefulness, when you have actually very few resources, it’s a sort of frugal resourcefulness. So you can solve problems with, you know, whatever you’re given whatever’s hanging around, you can somehow solve a problem. The authors of this book, it’s called jugaad innovation said that, you know, we could really learn from this in the West, because our organizations have become a little bit too rigid, and not fast moving enough. And if we had a little bit of this jugaad, then that could take us a long way sort of resource, frugal resourcefulness. She can learn a lot from those, those concepts, which are difficult to translate initially.
John Wall
Yeah, and actually, as we’ve been talking to that kind of brought to mind that mentioning India, I have never had a company that’s had a lot of success working with India, you know, trying to sell in order to purchase products from it. Can you give us any general advice on that and, you know, why does it tend to fall through?
Michael Gates
Well, I work a lot in India, and I work a lot With organizations who are trying to deal with Indian, mostly organizations, I’m working with the Western organizations who have offshored or outsourced to India. And when you ask them, what’s the biggest challenge, they say time, and it’s not a surprise, because the Indian view of time is very different from ours. In fact, the old name for Hinduism in Sanskrit was Sanatana, which means beyond time the turtle, which is what spiritually they aspire to, once you’ve gone through all your different incarnations, and reincarnations, then the ultimate is to get beyond time. And in Hindi, they even have a word cow, I don’t pronounce it very well cow, which means both tomorrow and yesterday. So you get an idea that their sense of time is very different. It’s almost spiral Indian philosophy describing to me a spiral rather than linear. And so you get these Western companies saying we can’t get them to keep deadlines and whatever I say, Look, you’re approaching it from the wrong angle. You’re never going to change the end in the sense of Time. In fact, they feel they use time more efficiently because they’re available 24 seven, you know, they tried to get all of the US or Europe at a weekend in business and you know, not getting met get much luck. We’re available all the time. So they have a very different view of time. So rather than approaching the challenge through time, a much better ways to think of things which are really important for Indians, and one of them is relationships. Indians have a much stronger sense of the importance of relationships, personal relationships in business. And this means that, you know, the families get to know each other, and you get to know a lot about your counterpart, personally. And we tend to think that’s a bit of a waste of time. And the other thing is the importance of hierarchy. You know, what you’ve got to do instead of banging on sending memos and emails saying you’re not sticking to the deadlines is you’ve got to build a good relationship with someone on the other side, who you can call and you know, that when you say, you know, Rajiv, I’ve got a problem. Can you help solve it? For me that they’re going to do it. But then people say, Well, we only meet these people virtually, how can I build a relationship? So we’ll think about hierarchy. Indians generally would be extremely happy if someone praise them to their boss. So if Reggie has done some good work in the past at some point, send an email to him copy his boss in, cc his boss and say, Rajeev, you did a fantastic job the other day. It’s great working with you. From then on, Rajiv is going to do anything that you ask him to do. So don’t just banged on about the deadlines, just phone Rajiv and say, Look, can you help me? So focus on something else on relationships and an arm, you know, the importance of hierarchy. And this is the sort of way in which one can approach cultural challenges indirectly, by thinking about what’s important for their culture, not what’s important for your own culture. You can solve your own problems, but by a different route.
John Wall
So obviously you guys will be bringing in new clients. And when you get there, you kind of have this great vantage and that you can see what they’re doing and what’s gone wrong. What are the most common mistakes these companies and organizations are making? When they first reach out? What do you see over and over again?
Michael Gates
Well, I think people get too hung up about the little etiquette issues, you know, the do’s and don’ts, like how you hand over your business card in Japan, etc. And of course, these make a good impression if you get them right. But I think the most important mistake people make is what I would call behaving in the wrong cultural gear. What I mean by that, well, you could almost say that our three cultural types linear multi and reactive are like cultural gears in a car. So linear gear, you know, it keeps you in the right direction, it’s very structured, etc. Multi active gear is this sort of burst of energy. It’s like a Ferrari, you know, reactive is like overdrive or going into sixth or seventh gear, keeping you on with momentum over a long period of time. And how does this work in practice? Well, imagine you’re an American going to Japan, you might not know all the little rules, but if you remember how to behave or modify your behavior a little bit towards the reactive, being very polite, listening more, don’t be too Don’t be too assertive or rush them in general sort of calmed down, don’t drown them in words, and get comfortable with a slower pace, then you’re shifting into the right cultural gear. Of course, the next week, you may be doing business in Mexico you may be doing in business in Brazil, and you need to shift cultural gear again, it’s like crashing the gears if you go into a culture, you know, all guns blazing, when it’s a culture which is more laid back, quieter, take longer time over things, speaking more slowly, etc. So the biggest mistakes I see a web people entering into new culture in the wrong gear. Yeah, so go go with the local flow. Be curious. Go with the flow rather than resist it. You’re not going to change So embrace it, and your hosts are gonna like you more for them.
John Wall
Do you find that the cultures that are very reserved and very quiet? Is it more difficult for them to go in the other direction? Or is it easier for the kind of high extrovert cultures to dial things back?
Michael Gates
Well, it’s, it’s not that easy for both. And this does require an effort and practice. And, of course, if I take the Japanese in example, the ones who are more able to switch gear are the ones who have perhaps been educated abroad, you know, lived in the States, for example, it can be harder. This is why it’s really important in those cultures, to take them out of the formal into the informal and context is very important in Asian cultures. You may have someone who’s very shy and retiring during the day in the meeting room, and in fact, they can’t make decisions because of the hierarchy and you know, they can’t sort of shoot from the head. But if you take them out in the evening, take them for a meal. I have a few drinks with Then go to Kevin, okay, then you gonna find it a lot easier to deal with them, they’re gonna find it a lot easier dealing with you, they’re gonna come out of their shell a lot more.
John Wall
The one thing that I think we as Americans completely miss out to is we see business the way it’s been here for the past seven years. But the rest of the world is just so dynamic. There’s so much happening in the rest of the world where, you know, there’s cultures where 50 years ago, they had no industrialization and now they’re their superpowers. What do you see as far as cultures that are coming up or moving down to what’s one of the big things happening there?
Michael Gates
Well, if I divide the world into linear multi and reactive, I would say that the multi active and particularly the reactive cultures on the way up, I mean, if you look at you know, China, on the way up very reactive in general, India, a mixture between multi active and reactive on the way up. And what you got to remember is those cultures are very good with people in relationships. So multi actors are very good people, people reactives a very good relationship people. The strength of Linnaeus has been test orientation rather than people in relationships and sort of for the past 50 years or so, you know, of course with computerization, etc, the internet and technology, being linear has been a very good way to succeed, being task oriented, being good at production, being good at logistics, being good at research and development. Those are very task oriented things. But I’d say the competitive edge you can get from that is decreasing, I mean, a lot of what is linear can actually be outsourced to a computer. And you know, even the cultures who are multi unreactive, you know, got to similar level to to us in the Western world, as far as what needs to be done in a linear way goes. However, their big strength is that they’re very good with people in relationships. And as the world becomes more interdependent, and we’ve got, you know, global teams, meeting virtually across time zones with many different cultures in them Then just being good at STEM subjects being an engineer being good with finance, being good at research and development isn’t going to be enough to make that as successful as it could be if you don’t have the people skills if you don’t have the relationship skills. And so I think the linear cultures really in general have a big gap to fill by improving them people in relationship skills. And that’s going to be a big source of competitive edge. I mean, if your competitor can deal very well with the company that they’ve outsourced to in India, because they’ve got people in relationship skills, and you can’t, then who’s going to be more successful?
John Wall
Try not to get too political on the show. But we’ve got a local expert, I’ve got to take advantage of this. What’s going on with Brexit? What do you see there? And what are the opportunities I guess?
Michael Gates
Yeah, well, I mean, the process has been a mess. I think everyone on every side would agree with that. What what I focus on as a cross cultural This is why it happened. And, you know, we talk a lot about politics, we talk about the economy, and all those issues. But if you go back and take a step back and think about culture, and why it was the Brits, who particularly well, I’m going to say the first two, we’ve
put my reputation on the line there the first two weeks. I think it’s a cultural gulf between continental thinking, what we call continental and what I call Anglo Saxon pragmatism. And of course, almost half of the UK voted to remain but the majority, and, more importantly, unexpectedly for many people, I mean, I personally predicted it voted to leave and why. I mean, I think the EU is based on a very French concept, very continental concept which is a idealistic, theoretical, and almost a belief system also theocracy. And ultimately stemming from a sort of platonic view of the world. And the UK, traditionally has not been like that. The UK is sort of, let’s try it. If it works, that’s fine. Imagine a bit of Americans saying to Pierre, in a business meeting, come on period works in practice? Well, Pierre is probably saying, well, it may work in practice, but does it work? In theory? It’s a very different worldview. You know, the original premise of a sort of united Europe is a fairly utopian premise. And although a Britain coined the term utopia, Thomas war, I don’t think bricks are naturally utopian, and I’m talking about the majority here, you know, you can only generalize about majorities. So I don’t think we’re naturally utopian. I don’t think we’re theoretical. I think we tend to believe in system Which should evolve pragmatically over time. And, you know, we’ve got to sort of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it mentality. And that’s why for me, you know, while we were very happy to be in a union that was based on on trade and focused on dissolving trade barriers, once it becomes a sort of idealistic federalist ik process or NGO, then I think we’re not going to respond very well to it. And I think that the union is making quite a mistake at the moment in its comments to the Brits, basically saying, Come on, you made a mistake and, you know, have done with it and decide to remain and getting quite heavy handed in its pronouncements to the Brits, because we don’t like to be told what to do. And the idea that you’ve got people on the continent sort of telling us what to do, doesn’t sit very well with a lot of Brits and of course, As I say, I’m talking about majorities and the challenge. And one of the reasons why I think the powers that be didn’t expected is that if you look at British politics in the media, and you look at the absolute top echelons, a vast percentage of those individuals have been through exactly the same sort of education. And it’s one particular course, it’s at Oxford University politics, philosophy and economics. If you look upon Wicky, senior politicians, senior people in the media in the UK, and an enormously high percentage have been on that one particular course. And while I’m not criticizing it at all, and I would say that it gives them a sort of fairly Metropolitan internationalist center left worldview. And this is why the shock was so big, because of that cultural divide between that very well educated elite and Sort of people on the streets, particularly outside the metropolis outside London. And what’s interesting is it didn’t fall into the usual Left, Right divide. But it was still a divide in the strongest that I’ve ever seen. And it was a cultural, a cultural divide. What can we do about it? Well get the best best Brexit if we can try and get away from the idea, certainly from the elite that a lot of the or the majority of Brexit ears were little England is racist, I don’t think Brits in general loan racist at all. You know, it’s it’s fairly unusual, a very small minority. I don’t think it’s that i think it’s it’s something quite else and I think we’ve got to start going out to the world and taking the opportunity to strike trade deals with countries that maybe we haven’t dealt with directly for many years. Starting with easy ones like you know, the Commonwealth, hopefully the US and then traditional trading partners such as India. Join them. So it could be a massive opportunity. But, you know, if there’s a negative feeling about it, then you know negative feelings tend to be self fulfilling prophecies. So I think we’ve got to make the best of it.
John Wall
That’s great Miko, we’ve got the whole world is our oyster. We could talk all day, I’m sure but we have to
Unknown Speaker
be. And I’d better stop there.
John Wall
If people would like to learn more about you or your cross culture, Richard Lewis communications, what’s the best way to get in touch?
Michael Gates
Well, via our website, and it’s very easy address to remember. It’s www cross culture as one word, so www dot cross culture.com. Great address for what we do.
John Wall
Michael, thanks for spending some time with us. We really appreciate it.
Michael Gates
Real pleasure, john, thanks so much for inviting me.
John Wall
That’ll do it for this week. So until next week, enjoy the coffee.
Unknown Speaker
You’ve been listening to marketing over coffee. Christopher Penn blogs at Christopher penn.com. Read more from john J. Wolf at jw 51. fifty.com the marketing over coffee theme song is called mellow g by funk masters. And you can find it at music alley for mevo or follow the link in our show notes.