Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Business.

This workshop is suitable for anyone who needs to:

• build and manage multi-cultural business teams.
• manage sub-cultural differences between companies, industries and professional orientations.
• maintain relationships with diverse customers, project partners and suppliers.
• work in international business.
• promote supplier diversity.
• manage situations involving mergers or other cultural differences.

Registration: http://culturecustomers.eventbrite.com/

This is an interactive training workshop, not a presentation.

Facilitator: Glynis Ross-Munro, President of CPS.

Date: Tuesday, 21 February, 2012.

Time: 8 a.m. – 10 a.m.  Registration, breakfast and networking from 7.30 a.m.

Venue: The Centre Club, 123 South Westshore Blvd, Tampa, FL 33609. Free parking included.

Cost: $55.00. $6 discount for Centre Club members and TBIBC members www.TBIBC.org. (i.e. $49)

Breakfast and refreshments (full, English breakfast) are included. Free parking. Includes all training materials.

Queries: Hilton@c-psolutions.com or 813 598 9180.

Workshop participants will learn:

• How culture affects all business – national, international, different industries, professions and companies.
• Your own cultural matrix and why you should understand and appreciate it.
• The benefits of cultural fluency in a world of many types of diversity.
• How cultural barriers damage careers, teams, and bottom-line business results.
• Seven cultural barriers that are usually invisible. How to recognize, understand and overcome them.
• Ways to make cultural fluency part of your everyday working systems.
• Applications of team and customer cultural solutions.
• How to build a personal cultural fluency tool-box.

Facilitator: Glynis has many years of experience in international business, and is also an expert in training cultural fluency. She is the Vice President of the Tampa Bay International Business Council and a past Director of the American Association of Training and Development. She has three psychology degrees and a special interest in interactive, accelerated learning, and is internationally qualified in training assessment and competency-based instructional development through City & Guild of London.

Six Quick Questions:

1. You work with a Colombian guy and you have heard that he has a very sick cousin. Should you inquire about this, or is it none of your business?
2. Three people come late to a meeting. One is an American from San Diego, one a Venezuelan who has lived in the USA for five years, and one is a visiting Chinese businessman. Can you guess the order in which they will arrive, simply from knowing their cultural background? Why?
3. What one extra feature would probably significantly have helped the sales of US vehicles, in Japan, in the 1970s -1990s?
4. You meet a client from the UK. She orders a beer at lunch and uses some language that makes you blink. Is she a bad woman with an alcohol problem?
5. African-American culture tends to be higher-context or  more ‘diffuse’ than Caucasian American Culture. True or False? What would this mean to your sales process with an African-American client?
6. If someone asked you for the percentage of household spending done by disabled family members, or for the approximate spend of the disability community in the USA, what would you reply? (www.EnableAmerica.com)

Five Strategic Questions:

1. New York culture is lower-context or more ‘specific’ than Florida culture. How would this affect your customer service training if you have many more customers in FL than in NY?
2. You are in retail and your IT is outsourced to an applications/data storage management IT company. Most of their team is Indian and they seem to deal unusually well with confusing, ambiguous situations. Is there some sort of cultural advantage operating here? How can your company develop a competitive advantage from examining this factor?
3. One of your new sales reps reports a sharp downturn in business from an account that was previously a steady stream of income. S/he describes the (Lebanese) customer as “from one of those South American countries.”  Your senior manager wants to see your coaching plan for the new sales rep. What does it include?
4. A major client company has recently gone through a merger. Their new head office will be in Paris instead of San Francisco. What are you going to do about retaining this account and the flow of business from it?
5. Your customer base is getting younger. A new check shows that the median age is eight years younger than your last measurement.  What should you do about this change in customer demographics?

You are invited to schedule a CPS workshop on Finding and Keeping Multicultural and Diverse Customers: glynis@c-psolutions.com or 813 598 9184.

CPS apologizes for any hitches  in our new, evolving but extra-safe website. IT security is one of the three major issues that futurists predict will affect business in the coming decade.

Finding, winning and keeping multi-cultural customers.

In a multi-national and multi-cultural world, businesses are all challenged to build and maintain relationships with widely different customers, project partners and suppliers. Glynis Ross-Munro, President of CPS and Vice-President of the Tampa Bay International Business Council, will involve participants in ways to achieve this result.

Date: Thursday, 1st December 2011.

Time: 8 a.m. – 10 a.m.  Registration and networking from 7.30 a.m.

Venue: The Centre Club, 123 South Westshore Blvd, Tampa, FL 33609.

Cost:  $55.00 for  Centre Club members, or  TBIBC Members  (or 30-second sign up for TBIBC newsletter at www.TBIBC.org. This helps ensure consolidation.). Anyone else – $79.00.

Breakfast is included. Free parking included.

Registration: http://culturecustomers.eventbrite.com/

Queries: Hilton@c-psolutions.com.  813 598 9180.

Glynis has years of experience in international business, and is an expert in training many topics, including sales, diversity, customer service and cultural elements of international trade. She has three psychology degrees and a special interest in interactive learning.

Workshop participants will learn:

Why companies need a multi-cultural business and sales strategy.

• The case for cultural fluency: culturally-diverse customers, employees, suppliers, and business partners.
• How to make more cultural barriers visible.
• How to assess some limitations that culture is placing on your business success.

How to find customers.

• Ways to find new opportunities through cultural fluency.
• How to save time by avoiding non-negotiable mis-matches by values checks.

How to win customers.

• Your own cultural strengths and experience range.
• Identifying key cultural issues in winning customers.
• Solutions to three major challenges.
• Building solutions into systems.

How to keep customers.

• Identifying your cultural strengths and experience range.
• Key cultural issues in retaining customers.
• People forget, systems remember.

Wrap-up: Personal Plan and Take-aways.

Glynis has many years of experience in international business, and is an expert in training many topics, including sales, diversity, customer service and the cultural elements of international trade, which she trains for USF SBDC. She has three psychology degrees and a special interest in interactive learning.

The organizing Committee has kindly invited TBIBC to host the opening Reception on 23 August. The theme will be Emerging Industries and Markets: A Blueprint for Success, and our supporting Chambers and Trade Associations (below) will be present to offer insights into international business. Several companies from each region will be present too, to assist with building strong connections between Florida and the global business community.

Reservations: http://ibsummit.ticketleap.com/tbibc-medweek-reception/

• British American Business Council
• Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce
• Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Tampa Bay
• French American Business Council of West Florida
• Indo-US Chamber of Commerce
• International Business Board
• Philippine American Chamber of Commerce
• Russian-American Association
• Scandinavian Trade Association
• Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce of Tampa Bay
• Tampa Bay Hispanic Chamber of Commerce

Heavy hors d’oeuvres will be served, and a moderately-priced cash bar will be available. Entrance is $15.  RSVP Glynis@c-psolutions.com.

A list of last year’s participants appears below.

Companies who would like a table at the event can contact me at glynis@c-psolutions.com or 813 598 9184 asap, as we would like you to be present and involved. Tables: $250. This includes 2 entrance tickets. Preference will be given to companies with binational or international interests and connections.

Brazilian companies will cluster with Argosy University, with leadership from Dr. Carlos Tasso E. De Aquino, Dean of Business.

Regards

Glynis: Vice President, Tampa Bay International Business Council

AAA Auto Club South
AIW, Inc.
City of St. Petersburg
City of Tampa
City of Tampa Mayor’s African American Advisory Council
Drug Free America Foundation
Florida Department of Transportation-Turnpike
HARTline
Hillsborough County Economic Devel. Dept.
Hillsborough County Public Schools
Hillsborough County School District
Hillsbrough Community College
Hispanic Business Inititive Fund
Kimmins Contracting Corp.
Levin Financial Group
Moffitt Cancer Center
Pinellas County Economic Development
Pinellas County School Board
Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA)
Polk County Public Schools
Progress Energy
Small Business Devel. Center
Southwest Florida Water Management District
SUNDAX Florida
T.C. Insurance Group
Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority
Tampa Heights Medical Center
Tampa International Airport
TECO Energy
University of Central Florida
University of Florida
University of Phoenix
University of South Florida
US Special Operations Command
VMS Inc
Wachovia, a Wells Fargo Company
Black Jewel’s Ladies Golf Association -
Simply Pampered -
Cathy’s Perfect Fit -
Tampa Tshirts
Anew Lifestyle & Wellness Solutions
Ledgers Plus!
New York Life Insurance Co
L’Artisan Cake Atelier, LLC
Naje Designs
Breeze Green Designs
The Simplicity Plan
Urban Culinary Cuisine
Sable One Investigation & Security
MGI Graphics, Corporation
Mimmo Wine Distribution, LLC
WSI
Supplier Funding Corporation
nutraMetrix
A Touch of Wellness

Please check the Forbes study of Diversity and Innovation here: http://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/innovation_diversity/index.html

Diversity in business generally means tolerance and acceptance of differentness, often with evidence that business employs diverse people in jobs of all ranks. Diversity usually means people who come from disparate racial and ethnic groups and are of different gender, age, religion, national origin, gender orientation, ability/disability, veteran status etc. These characteristics are usually related to regulations of some sort.

Diversity is valued because it contributes to harmony, teamwork, innovation and entrepreneurship (email me for studies like this one), but feared because prejudice, (real or perceived) can lead to HR problems or lawsuits. It’s a very useful word because it often implies metrics, and (as you know) what gets measured, gets managed.

In the late 1990s, studies started to show that ye olde style mandatory diversity training reduced diversity within companies, instead of improving it. Large studies have confirmed this.

Inclusion and inclusion training take a new, wider and more complex look at diversity, and start “eating the elephant” of  climate and culture. Here we ask more than “how many Latino/gay/over 60s/disabled/veteran/Hindu employees do we have? We asks: do they feel included in the team and are they, in fact, included? If not, where are the blockages, and how can we remove them?

Think of a non-mainstream group in your organization (e.g. senior black women managers). Do they feel welcome? Are they as included in communication loops as other people in similar positions? Do they receive just as much training, mentoring, development and performance coaching as everyone else? Do they speak up at meetings as much as their peers? Do they bring their diverse and different worldviews and knowledge sets, fully, to bear on problems and opportunities? Do they bring their whole selves to work and feel as if they are settled, accepted parts of the team?

You can have a “token” Jew/paraplegic/woman director and still have a diversity program. You don’t have “token” anyones with a successfully inclusive culture – you just have people with skills and passion and knowledge repositories who are bringing their whole heads to the table.

Training for inclusion

1. Look for ROI. You’ve probably heard me say that no one should train unless it impacts the bottom line. All good training actually impacts the bottom line, and good diversity-inclusion training will give you huge ROI.  Know your objectives, and expect your trainer to help you refine these, and see results. Read on…

2. Go slow, customized and interactive. The rules of training always apply. The training must be interactive and customized. Also, as with any cultural change,  this is a process not an event. Expect your trainer to provide a route to implement change slowly, collaboratively and effectively over time.  It’s not an expensive process, but stay the course. It is a process.

3. Keep the compliance element. Companies need to train for compliance. It keeps the record straight, defines standards, specifies acceptable conduct, avoids litigation, and is essential if you run any kind of union shop.

Compliance precedes values. Immature people of any age do what is right because they cannot do what is unlawful. They behave properly because they can’t behave inappropriately without being sanctioned in some way.  Young employees need guidelines at the start of their careers. There are also some people who (for one reason or another) never seem to “get” values-driven behavior.

In maturity,  values overtake rule-based behavior. People ask, “how should I act” instead of “what can I do” (or “what can I get away with” or “what is the minimum standard I must produce to comply with this set of rules”). They commit personally to the values and vision of the organization.

4. Celebrate,  share and grow the narrative. You can still measure. As you grow your values-based, inclusive climate and culture,  collect the stories. Never forget the power of narrative. Look for wins between co-workers, suppliers and customers. Are you providing better service to your diverse customers? Do they react to differently? What happened, where, when and how? (Ask your trainer how to measure the growth of communication and cooperation if you need new ideas, and create ways to capture the new organizational narrative.)

5. Add up the wins on the bottom line. (Add these to  your narrative too.) Studies have shown that some companies spend up to 60% of the costs of cross-cultural international trade in multiple extra safeguards because of misunderstandings,  mistrust and mis-communication. You could save going through the pricing process on everything every year if you develop trust and transparency with international suppliers. You might be able to  cut out middle-men because of your great multi-lingual staff. (And the Chinese American Chamber of Commerce got you both those USF grads for free? Both with fluent Mandarin and the one is a blond kid from the Mid-West!)

6. Demand innovation and creativity! The 21st century is a world  where most wealth creation is through mobilizing knowledge and relationships between people. A company’s culture and climate must promote mutual trust, communication and collaboration. An inclusive culture supports this.   America ranks 40th out of 40 countries on innovation! You can change this by  gathering your diverse team around a table and letting them give you the ultimate competitive edge.

7. Go to it. An inclusive climate obviously delivers other benefits to an organization, including employee job satisfaction, retention, being an employer of choice and attracting the best talent. This is inclusion, but it is also part of being a happier, more cohesive team. Great companies can spiral ever-upwards to synergy: lower absenteeism, fewer accidents as people have an increased tendency to look out for all of their co-workers. Inclusive companies mean happier, healthier people making a life, as well as a living, together.

Glynis Ross-Munro and the CPS team can be contacted at glynis@c-psolutions.com or 813 598 9184.

https://picasaweb.google.com/solange.benoit1/TBIBCInternationalBusinessSummit10Mar2011?feat=directlink

The TBIBC Summit was a wonderful showcase of inclusive and international business. I deeply appreciate the contribution of our

Dr. Michael Fountain

sponsors, speakers, panelist and the hundreds of participants who attended. The entire Rusty Pelican (Grand Ballroom, and all five function rooms) were a great setting for this event, and I congratulate the other Board members who also worked very hard to make it a success.

The audience burst into spontaneous applause during the NASA plenary breakfast presentation by Kelvin Manning, and the “meet 60 people in 60 minutes” speed networking was a huge success.

Dr. Mike Nastanski of St Leo let the most intellectually challenging breakout session, Strategic Partnerships. Many participants chose to Meet the Presidents of the Eleven Chambers, and Mark Yegge’s negotiations class was very popular. Morgan McGrath’s lunch time keynote presentation had many people taking notes as he gave the latest numbers and economic picture.

The Entrepreneurship Panel was a real inspiration as Dr. Michael Fountain led six diverse entrepreneurs through a series of questions about how they achieved success, and what the audience could learn from their example.

The next TBIBC event is on March, 28th. There are numerous Chamber events amongst the various Chambers, and new TBIBC events are being planned. To be included on our mailing list, or to be a sponsor, please contact me at glynis@c-psolutions.com.

Glynis Ross-Munro
Vice President, Tampa Bay International Business Council (813 598 9184)

People also struggle to “do” English humor, because it is part of acculturation.  Just as Western cultures are used to the octave as a basis for music, so it takes time to hear and reproduce English humor. For instance:

• There are three types of people in this world… Those who can count, and those who can’t.
• “Give me an alligator sandwich and make it quick.” (from Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett.)

You should say these kinds of things with a completely straight face in a conversation, and then move on, without explaining yourself. It is also important not to wait for a laugh or acknowledgment. The listener should, however, pick up on the humour and respond, but not by laughing. The correct response is a groan, or rolling one’s eyes, or saying “oh my God” (in a disgusted voice), or some other apparently negative (but actually playful) comeback.

It’s even better if you can repeat this in a sequence. For instance, in Witches Abroad, Pratchett has a whole lot of similar comments, including “give me an alligator sandwich and make it immediately/right away/on the double etc. He NEVER says “and make it snappy” of course. The pun can only be implied.

In Watching the English (by Kate Fox) she explains that the English are have a type of social lack of ease(dis-ease) and cope with this by their pervasive, all-embracing passion for humor. Humor is the English default method of operation. She says:

Humour is  one of our most ‘deeply-ingrained impulses’, a ‘default mode’ of behaviour, a ‘culture-all equivalent of the laws of gravity’.

Probably the most important of our three basic reflexes. Humour is our most effective built-in antidote to our social dis-ease. When God (or Something) cursed us with The English Social Dis-ease, He/She/It softened the blow by also giving us The English Sense of Humour. The English do not have any sort of global monopoly on humour, but what is distinctive is the sheer pervasiveness and supreme importance of humour in English everyday life and culture. In other cultures, there is ‘a time and a place’ for humour: among the English it is a constant, a given – there is always an undercurrent of humour. Virtually all English conversations and social interactions involve at least some degree of banter, teasing, irony, wit, mockery, wordplay, satire, understatement, humorous self-deprecation, sarcasm, pomposity-pricking or just silliness. Humour is not a special, separate kind of talk: it is our ‘default mode’; it is like breathing; we cannot function without it. English humour is a reflex, a knee-jerk response, particularly when we are feeling uncomfortable or awkward: when in doubt, joke. The taboo on earnestness is deeply embedded in the English psyche. Our response to earnestness is a distinctively English blend of armchair cynicism, ironic detachment, a squeamish distaste for sentimentality, a stubborn refusal to be duped or taken in by fine rhetoric, and a mischievous delight in pricking the balloons of pomposity and self-importance. (English humour is not to be confused with ‘good humour’ or cheerfulness – it is often quite the opposite; we have satire instead of revolutions and uprisings.) Key phrases include: ‘Oh, come off it!’ (Our national catchphrase, along with ‘Typical!’) Others impossible to list – English humour is all in the context, e.g. understatement: ‘Not bad’ (meaning outstandingly brilliant); ‘A bit of a nuisance’ (meaning disastrous, traumatic, horrible); ‘Not very friendly’ (meaning abominably cruel); ‘I may be some time’ (meaning ‘I’m going to die’ – although, come to think of it, that one was possibly not intended to be funny). [402-3]

Many people who work with or for UK companies find English (or British) humour a major problem, but spare a moment to pity those who are deeply British acculturated, but live and/or work in other cultures. In US culture,  their “straight-faced but intentionally-humorous insult as opening conversational gambit” is seldom appreciated. Their tantalizing but oblique puns are ignored or congratulated. Black humour falls into the category of “talking about disagreeable things is disagreeable” and their whole beloved realm of politics and religion (which is the natural area of British conversation after the weather) is suddenly tabboo!

Culture … infinitely fascinating. On Wednesday I am off to Korea to find other ways to get into cultural trouble. And to see what it is like to do everything bali bali! (Fast. Fast.)

There are two basic reasons for tackling diversity (seriously) in an organization. Both are valid.

Compliance and liability fall within one category. This is the risk management or ‘away from problems’ strategy.

The second approach to diversity is a ‘towards strategy’. Here differentness of many kinds becomes a driver of both short- and long-term profitability. The organization moves towards inclusiveness, innovation and engagement.   Differentness is leveraged as part the strategic vision, sales and marketing strategy, branding, talent development and retention, networks and organizational culture.

If you’ve read Stephen James Joyce’s Teaching an Anthill to Fetch: Collaborative Intelligence at Work, you already have a significant piece of the diversity picture.

Compliance and Liability: A risk management or  ‘away from’ strategy.

Please note: there is absolutely nothing wrong with focusing on differentness as a way of keeping out of trouble and away from lawyers.  The point here is that this is only half the diversity story, and can create a focus on “classic”  or on the more legal issues of differentness.

Compliance is essentially a brand, legal and dollar issue. The law of the land is on the side of previously-disadvantaged classes of employees, who are often still statistically disadvantaged by race, gender, disability etc. Corporate liability discrimination suits run into the hundreds of millions of dollars (e.g. 19 May 2010 award against Novartis AG, in New York: $250 million in punitive damages).

Federal law is maintaining its support for diversity in the workplace and has been expanding the rights of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, women, the disabled and other protected classes in the workplace over the past two decades. This aligns with international trends, such as the new Scandinavian laws which mandate 40% of women on company boards.

Employers may lawfully make decisions about hiring, promotions and access to training, using protected employee classifications. However, the most effective ways to grow successful, diverse cultures are through diversity training initiatives, cultural education, outreach programs, diverse recruitment, mentoring, supplier diversity programs etc.

The law permits companies to take direct action to redress imbalances, but diversity training initiatives are preferable.  One reason for a sophisticated approach is that reverse-discrimination claims occasionally arise. Their dollar liability value is minimal, but this is not only about money. This of Sonia Sotomayor’s firemen’s decision and how that became a public debate.  College entrance cases have also received publicity.  Given a polarized political climate, unionized employees or a conservative brand, it is more effective to improve your diversity culture with education than with the considerable power of diversity law.

Profitability: a ‘towards’ strategy.

In many economic thinkers’ opinions, profitability is the better reason for investing in a culture of diversity or differentness.

A culture of diversity attracts the best and the brightest. Many companies take a very keen interest in diversity because they keep an eye on Vault.com, GreatPlaceToWork.com, Glassdoor.com, Jobvent.com and other websites, that GenX and GenY use when researching companies to work for. High-talented members of these generations generally check cultural diversity as a basic requirement for career plans.

The core challenge of the 21st century is innovation. Competitive advantage lies in new perspectives on the eternal question: how do we create and sell more new products and services, or more of our existing products and services, to new or existing customers? How do we create better processes and higher quality? How do we do this cost-effectively, sustainably and creatively while having at least some fun along the way?

Innovation thrives in an environment of diversity of perspective, experience and input. The numeric-based business case for this is in places like Mobilizing Minds: Creating Wealth from Talent in the 21st-Century Organization, 2007, by McKinsey’s Bryan and Joyce. Richard Florida is more a accessible writer if you prefer something you can browse at bedtime.

Diverse environments widen people’s worldviews, remove people’s blinders, and build cognitive flexibility. People possess many areas of competence, knowledge and insight that remain separated from their working lives by an arbitrary boundary of “this is not work stuff.” Training and experience in differentness dissolve this artificial barrier, and a vast range of skills and knowledge becomes available.

Diverse environments attract many different types of differentness. Once a company culture opens up to different races and ethnicities, languages, gender and gender orientations, generations, religions, disabilities, veterans, parents etc (all the ‘classic’ diversities), this encourages other types of differentness to emerge. The gardener and the part-time artist, the choir leader and the runner, the geek, the writer and the traveller suddenly appear from amongst your people and their idiosyncratic skills, perspectives and experiences become team resources.

A truly diverse culture delivers an emotionally mature workforce with problem solving skills, project management competencies and interpersonal intelligence, and it has many other advantages. Customers, project partners, high-talent colleagues and valuable network members are often from different genders, races, ethnicities, religions or nations.

Many of these people are from diffuse cultures, and it takes time and trust to get to know them. Mainstream Caucasian US culture one of the most specific cultures in the world. The specific/diffuse cultural difference is one of those invisible cultural boundaries that cannot be seen, or truly understood, without either training or long-term interaction with diffuse culture members. The same is true of the individualist/collectivist divide, the universalist/particularist gap etc.

Companies who do not pay attention to differentness suffer “revolving door syndrome” as they lose high-talent minority hires. They are also mystified as their minority, multinational and diverse customers bleed away to competitors.

Similarly, organizations with good differentness programs and real diversity commitment (from recruitment and development to supplier diversity) find themselves making steady profits, and building trust, networks, employment brand and other advantages. They too are sometimes mystified at how powerful diversity values are in delivering dollar-based results.

Away from and towards:

In Teaching an Anthill to Fetch, Joyce observes that an ‘away from’ strategy begins strongly and tails off as it achieves most of its objectives. For instance, if a service desk wants to very few complaints, they will do enough work to get very few complaints , then ease off. A target of zero does not make a good, continuous goal.

A ‘towards’ strategy grows as it moves towards its objectives, because it is not based on avoidance. For example, a “get out the vote” initiative has no limits, a design team goes all out for better designs as an event draws nearer, or an entrepreneur’s dreams grow with success.

Business needs to pay attention to diversity-differentness for many reasons. They are all valid, and there’s no need to pick only one good reason, when you can pick all of them.

But ‘building a vibrant, creative, inclusive and thriving economy” is more fun that “avoiding lawyers” any day of the week.

Tampa Bay Medical and Technology Expo: 2:15 pm – 3:15 pm: 15th July 2010.

This workshop reviews the challenges that arise at the interface of healthcare and information technology, and points the way towards realistic and cost-effective solutions.

• Glynis and Greg Ross-Munro will offer research and insights into the cultural gap between the healthcare clinical world, and IT world, and the position of Medical Informatics, caught between two different occupational cultures.
• ‬The presenters will focus on the occupational cultures of each stakeholder, and the ways in which this affects interactive processes, assumptions, communication, innovation and other factors.
• The workshop considers how these factors influence project and process outcomes, including collaboration, satisfaction, safety, project success, failure, or abandonment, costs and employee retention.

The aquatic metaphor is also apt. We swim in our culture, so like fish we do not notice it. It is the water that surrounds us, and we don’t analyze it. It is simply the environment in which we live.

The other common image of culture is the onion. Our daily lives are framed by layers upon layers of  unseen assumptions and mind-sets. Because we have no need to conceptualizing our world differently, we seldom see it through different interpretations, until some rather dramatic event gives us new eyes. Or until we choose to study behavioural sciences that may help us see many things are hiding, in plain sight, right in front of us.

One layer of the onion that interests me particularly (especially in recession) is the way that trust and collaboration operate in US business, and how this often limits opportunity and prosperity. I am also interested by the way that numerous scientific studies and popular books prove that our tendency to withhold trust and collaboration is ineffective, but it still prevails.

Let us call the general trend we can all observe the “small pie approach”. Small pie behavior says “If you win, then I am probably losing.” Small pie behavior prevents sharing ideas (they could be stolen and claimed by others), networking (others may get to know our prospects and then steal them), growing and building others (they may grow more powerful/successful that us and displace us) or trusting others (they may use us and then stab us in the back when they have gained all the benefit there is to gain.)

Let’s look at the science.  As always when examining culture, remember the mantra: cultures are not right or wrong, they is simply different. We are all acculturated, and one cannot make value judgments about cultures.

Firstly, as a culture, in the US we think short-term. Trompenaars noted that the US is a very present-oriented culture. Geert Hofstede measured the United States’ Long Term Orientation at 29, compared to the world average of 45. This aspect of culture is one of those deep, unseen and unnoticed dimensions which one seldom sees if one has lived all one’s life within a short-horizon thinking world.

Planning horizons in the US are less than 5 years, whereas they are about 10 years in Europe. They are closer to 20 years in the Far East.

Present-oriented cultures tend to expect shorter term relationships. Long-term “people farming” (which includes putting oneself on the line for people, and demonstrating caring and integrity over long periods of time) is therefore not core to such cultures.

Secondly, the US is a specific-oriented culture. We therefore tend to keep private and business agendas separate, and we tend to “box” our relationships into clearly defined sectors. We do not invite our contractors home to hold our babies and play with our dogs, and we are surprised when this happens in certain foreign countries. We have ‘mental boxes’ for tennis friends, gym friends, place-of-worship friends, and work friends. Few people overlap between these categories. As such, trust and collaboration are limited to the particular box in which a person fits.

Thirdly, as all social scientists note, the US is the most individualist nation on earth. We value individual achievement and self-determination as the highest form of personal development. While collectivist cultures value group well-being, and group belonging, as the apex of development, individualist cultures measure self-improvement by the achievement of our own potential.

(This is only beginning to sink into some US human resources departments, who are often still happily using Maslow’s hierarchy. This has started changing because individualist reward systems have produced some very odd results with collectivist Asian, African and Hispanic employees.)

Anthropological data like Trompenaars’ and Hofstede’s research is neither new nor secret. There is a Hofstede iPhone application (CultureGPS) to help international business people to understand US-international differences when traveling. You don’t get more mainstream than that free Mac apps!  http://www.culturegps.com/About.html

Let us turn to the many books and websites that prove that the “small pie” approach is more than ineffective: it is counter-productive to the development of wealth.

• Many things from McKinsey (e.g. Lowell L. Bryan, Claudia L. Joyce’s Mobilizing Minds)
• Most things from FranklinCovey (e.g. The Speed of Trust)
• Anything (almost) with the words Integrity, Innovation, Ethics, Collaborative Intelligence or Collaboration in the title (e.g. The Integrity Dividend, by Tony Simons)
• Anything (almost) that you can Google that talks about how ethics, trust and collaborative intelligence are profitable.

We live in a world where our international competition is often better educated, less fearful and more confident that we are. They are forging ahead in an age when collaborative intelligence and innovation are the keys to wealth, and when cooperation in the only answer to an Age of Complexity.

We can, however, collaborate more, trust more, make our pie bigger, and keep enlarging it.

The barriers we need to fear are the barriers we cannot see, or which we become defensive about, when we do see them.

So it is now time to look at Big Pie people. You can probably look around you and see who builds you, connects you, inspires you and encourages, irrespective of the gain to themselves. There is your first collection.

Visit www.zipcar.com, an example of bigger pie thinking, that uses the concepts of mutual trust, also known as cooperative capitalism.  Robin Chase has another new venture too, called GoLoco.

Bigger pie thinking is seen in many of the ventures called social entrepreneurship, where trust, ethics, and social responsibility move from non-profit to a ‘more-than-profit’ or blended business models, in which everyone wins.

You have seen an example of small pie thinking in the last week or two. You have probably behaved in a small pie way in the last week or two. So have I.

We can do better. Each day we can consciously reach out and make a bigger pie for everyone, build our community, our region and our nation.

I will work with you. Tell me what I can do to make your pie bigger, now or in years to come. I’d like to invite you around to play with the dog and baby, but my ‘baby’ has a masters degree now, and lives in Korea. My old dog has passed on.  Perhaps you have another suggestion? I’m listening.

If we make a bigger pie now, our children will dine well.