Understanding the values, attitudes and behaviors of people in various countries is key to knowing how to do business with them. So often, we take for granted that everyone's culture is similar to ours. To help companies gain a competitive advantage in the global marketplace by understanding and learning about other cultures, training organizations, such as Windham International, offer cross-cultural training.While the idea of cross-cultural training may still be new to some, many organizations that have been operating in the international arena for the last decade have come to embrace the values of such training. These organizations have learned the merits of cross-cultural training. With this type of training, work can go more quickly and smoothly and companies avoid costly mistakes.
Is your company willing to invest in cross-cultural training? What follows are seven observations your company needs to review before investing any time or resources into cross-cultural training.
- Not unless your organization believes that a human resource is a terrible thing to waste. All major Human Resource studies point to the fact that the most successful organizations of today and into the future will be those organizations that maximize their most valuable resource: their people. Ignoring the frustration, poorly executed or failed assignments abroad, outright leaving of the company, and general human unhappiness that can result when people take on overseas assignments without proper training, are all measures of the degree to which the organization is failing in its commitment to meeting the challenge of the global world.
- Human potential loss translates quickly into bottom line catastrophe: a failed 3-year overseas assignment can cost your company upwards of $1 million (US) dollars. (And this doesn't account for the losses sustained from the deal that didn't happen, and the project that went sour). In these terms, cross-cultural training is a low-cost insurance policy: for less than the cost of the plane tickets to actually move the family members over there, you can insure that they'll stay.
- Even if you've ventured forth just a few times, you've quickly learned that business and life can be very different in another culture from the way it is at home. People living and working in these environments simply have to get the facts, or else they will be groping in the dark, either assuming things are really the same when they are not, or making mistakes and blaming the problems on "them."
- Don't leave important skills training to informal chat sessions between co-workers. The same is true with developing global skills: you need formal training, administered by professionals with culture-specific expertise, trained to counsel individuals through difficult processes of adjustment. Having your people listen to the war stories of company veterans simply does not provide enough objective data--and, in fact, can be damaging to future success.
- Globalization has increased cultural contacts, thereby increasing the role of culture. Contrary to some popular belief, we are not all becoming the same: in fact, we are experiencing our differences more acutely than ever before.
- It is important to apply the same standards of performance excellence that you demand at home to the international assignment. And as organizations see more of their business abroad, this becomes especially critical. In the past, the measure of overseas success was noise level: if expatriates are not screaming and the company brings them back alive, the assignment was considered a success. Cross-cultural training can ensure that people are working at a level of excellence, and not mere survival.
- And finally, pedestrian as it may sound, your organization needs cross-cultural training because your competition is providing it to their people. Choosing between working with people who know how things are done "over there," and novices with incorrect assumptions, which company will get the deal?
Contact us for complete information on our cross-cultural training programs for all cultures and for all levels within your organization.
© 2000 Dean Foster Associates