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.

You can guess a client’s or remote colleague’s generation from their writing, and give them appropriate service or packaged data.

Mature/Traditional: No emoticons. The writer thinks smiley faces are unprofessional and signs of lazy writing. You’ll tend to see longer, more complex sentences, and spelling is really good. Paragraphing is usually excellent, with careful punctuation.

Boomer: A few emoticons. The writer thinks that emoticons solve the time-consuming problems of conveying tone in text, and prevent costly misunderstandings. Homophones are correct. Their/there is always right, but sometimes insure/assure/ensure are confused, as are effect/affect. Apostrophes are usually correct.

GenXer: Quite a lot of emoticons, but none in formal documents like reports, resumés etc. The writer sees emoticons as valuable communication devices in a world of global communication, second language users, and lots of quick written messages. The classic GenX error is that the opposite of “a little” is “alot” instead of “a lot”. This generation may muddle homophones: break/ brake, aloud/allowed, bored/board, or even flower and flour.

GenY/Millennial. The writer considers emoticons part of punctuation. Smiley faces, hearts and creative symbols clarify the writer’s intentions. Text message abbreviations appear, sometimes with all-lower case letters. Another common sight is text without paragraphing. Your and you’re may be used interchangeably. GenYs may not know how to set out a snail-mail business letter, or even a business envelope.

These are, of course, merely general pointers. Some matures can’t string a sentence together, and many Millennials write and edit with an elegance and precision I envy.

The cost, to both women and organizations, is high.

Research proves that when women do ask for what they want, they do not do so as clearly, quickly or as often as men do. GenX and GenY women are following in the footsteps of their Boomer and Traditional predecessors in this pattern.

Women also tend to think that what is offered (“what is on the table”) is all that is available. Men draw on their socialization (which includes things like being taught how to slip the Maitre d’ a few bucks for a better table) and assume that their wants and needs might be met if they speak up, irrespective of what seems to be on offer.

Organizations suffer. Their valuable women work and wait for rewards or options, then one day, *poof*! They’re working for your competitor or running their own small business, and you’re saying “why didn’t she TELL me she wanted that position, the same salary as John, that title, a new computer screen, a more flexible schedule, a space heater? It would have cost so little … a tiny fraction of what this is costing us now!”

Linda Babcock, Co-author of “Women Don’t Ask”, admits that those who ask, often get. She describes how she, herself, gave more resources and opportunities to men in her department, while she was researching the way women are socialized to wait for rewards, and why women don’t imagine possibilities outside The System. She did this because men asked.

Great read: “Women Don’t Ask” (by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever) has some great strategies for managing men and women who are valuable assets to your organization, but do not ask clearly for what they want. It’s also a must-read for working women or parents of daughters.

But maybe Boomers should worry less about GenY (described by Marcus Buckingham as the generation who got prizes for coming 8th in a race). Some Boomers still need to learn that you can’t win against GenX if you use the old-fashioned methods of business power broking.

There are still a lot of Boomer and Traditional managers who have days of thinking “I’ll do it my way, now I am the boss”, forgetting that the rules of the business game have changed … forever.

Deep in the cubicles of the corporate jungles there is an army, trained to deal with their parents’ generation. One result is that the Boomer who thinks in terms of “my way or the highway” soon finds out that this only works if the person who is going to hit the highway is the Boomer him/herself.

Imagine you’re a Boomer and you don’t have your head in the game. You were born 1946-1964 (or perhaps you are a Traditionalist and born before ’46.)

Let’s assume you’re an innocent. You go to work to..um..work. You go home to socialize. You think you’re technologically sophisticated (yeah right!). You grew up in a world where you waited your turn for authority. You “paid your dues” by shutting-up-and-putting-up with stuff, until you got into a position of responsibility. Now it’s your turn and perhaps (like Frank Sinatra, whom you still remember) you think you’re going to do it your way.

There are the Xers, and (even more frightening) GenY. They’re probably better educated than you are, and they can show you the *real* meaning of “technologically savvy” (they can fix an IPod). They think that they can do your job now. They need your salary to pay for their college debt, or their techno-gadgets, or just a bit of gas for their hybrids at $4 a gallon, so they have little interest in doing schlep jobs. They have the skills, energy, technological currency and innovative ability to do “the interesting stuff” now.

The Xers probably have the concentration to do some schlep jobs. The Millennials can’t focus that long, unless you praise them every ten minutes.

“Oh nooooooo” you say. “A promotion Ms. X? No I need you there … with your techie skills. You are so not going anywhere. I’m the boss, and I pay the piper and I call the tune. A promotion? Get real, kid. It took me 20 years to get to this position.

That evening, over a glass of fine wine, you describe the unimpressed look on the Gen-Xer’s face to your significant other. But you’re in charge now, and your personal White House feels pretty darned good.

Perhaps you forgot how the GenX and Y terrorists socialize in their work-life continuum? (They will even move jobs to be with their friends.) They have networks of GenX/Y friends throughout the company. They don’t live in silos, like you do, and they bang out vast numbers of emails and texts to their whole network, hourly, while also keeping constant contact through their blurred work-social boundaries.

Hmmm… and perhaps you should have taken into consideration that the whole freaking IT department is Gen-X too, before you annoyed one of them.

GenXers use software to keep their to-do lists. [Did you know that GenYs sometimes use the company software and back it up on the flashdrives they wear on their keyrings or in their necklaces well some of them.]

Now your GenX has a number of tasks on his/her list. Your request has been done last. Why? you ask. There is a perfectly logical reason for tasks being done first, or last… sequencing. Your job just happens to be last today. Watch the GenXer’s “What is WRONG with you?” face as s/he shoves a handheld Blackberry-like device s under your nose, to show you the list.

Isn’t it strange how you are last on every list? In so many unconnected departments? Yesterday and tomorrow too? (Yup – you’re the last silo generations.)

Please don’t request anything verbally once you have annoyed a GenXer, as anything you ask for will be forgotten by all GenXers. When you ask again, the GenXer is puzzled: Did you ask Natasha or perhaps Darren? Please print the email and the GenXer will find the culprit and bring him/her to justice immediately! No email? NO EMAIL? *Gasp.* You must have asked Kimberli or Shawn, but no, it clearly wasn’t me.

If you ask for something by email, the GenXer will of course (eventually) give you what you asked for. Exactly what you asked for. And s/he will have filed the email which documented what you asked for. And the reply, and the confirmation that the reply was received, and opened. People on a GenXer’s good side get what they want, but you will get what you asked for, and exactly, and only that.

Yes… the power rules have changed, and the old system will never work again. The people who changed the rules are not going away – or if they do go away, you will be spending a lot of time and money begging them please, please to come back.

The training camps are not only in Afghanistan or Pakistan. They’ve been downtown for a long time.

We gave birth to the new terrorists. They work for us, we work for them: they are our employees, potential employees, customers and suppliers.

Some days, I rather enjoy them.