Many training organizations approach cross cultural training from the perspective of knowledge and tips on cross cultural practices - and a little knowledge can be very helpful - particularly in contexts like greetings where you only get one chance to make a good impression - as in our cross cultural cartoon below.

Cross cultural training tips from www.global-integration.com

However this is not the most valuable part of cross cultural training. Much of the basic knowledge you can get from books - a much more cost effective and convenient way to get access to this information.

If you try to absorb all this detail in a cross cultural training session it makes for boring training and participants do not retain all the detail. Best is to pick up a guide on a specific country you are visiting and read it on the trip or have a regional or global guide such as the Kiss Bow and Shake Hands series to look up the specifics before you go.

In training thousands of participants in cross cultural skills we have learned that cross cultural training should focus on the skills of diagnosing and understanding cross cultural differences and learning what to do about these differences in practical business settings like meetings, projects and decision making.

Find out more about our tools for cross cultural success training. Listen to our podcast on cross cultural skills development. See more of our cartoons

What was the most important cross cultural skill that you learned in your career so far?

Oct 02 2008

Face to face contact is essential to getting things done in remote and virtual teams - it may always be the best and most comfortable for us a human beings. But time, cost and carton mean that we cant always get face to face in a distributed organization.

Because of ths we have no choice as managers of remote and virtual teams but to prioritise our face to face time rigorously to get the very best value from it. 

For example you can build relationships remotely, we can all think of people we “know” and work with who we never met face to face- but it takes more time and in a serious situation do you know you could absolutely rely on them?

A second good reason to get your remote or virtual team face to face is where you genuinely need participation, involvement or interaction of a group of people, what I call spaghetti team working. 

Thirdly, things like one to one discussions on sensitive issues like career or appraisal.  I think we show people respect by doing this face to face.

Fourthly there are things like celebration and recognition which are just hard to do remotely so maybe we need to put more focus on these issues when we are face to face. 

Our experience of facilitating hundreds of remote and virtual team projects is that the biggest impact and the number one for reason for travel should be project or activity kick offs.  A well run kick off can reduce project cycle time by 25% or more and also reduce the need for total travel during the project by getting the ways of working agreed at the start. 

So what about the worst reasons for travel – ones where you should really push back and say no?  Well I would certainly start by challenging the need for many internal meetings.  I would also look at the flip side to our good reasons for travel, so if you already know people well, if the purpose is to be presented to or given information rather than participation, if it can be delivered through technology then it is certainly worth challenging the travel or trying alternatives.

Find out more about our remote and virtual teams training or managing without travel programs.

What do you think is the worst reason you have to travel at work?

Sep 29 2008

Matrix management is not so different right at the top of organizations. If you are the most senior matrix manager then everyone still works for you! At the top of the functions, business units and geographies there are a small group of managers who themselves only have one boss and for whom the exercise of personal power can still get most things done even they don’t have a formal reporting relationship in the matrix management structure.

As a result, there is a tendency for these people at the top to underestimate the impact that the matrix has on the matrix managers below them.

In addition to this, because their environment has changed less they may tend to assume that the legacy management behaviours that worked in the pre-matrix days are appropriate to matrix management. In fact senior managers reverting to pre-matrix behaviors can cause big problems for the rest of the new matrix organization as managers try to “get things back under control / the way it used to be”

The role of these senior matrix managers is critical. They need to be advocates and sponsors of the principles of matrix management. This is particularly challenging for the next level down of matrix managers who do have dial reporting and often feel that they have lost control or power in the matrix management structure.

The key challenges for senior matrix managers include

• Creating a clear rationale and value proposition for matrix management – and communicating and modeling it.
• Dealing with political and legacy cultural barriers to the success of matrix management (including removing senior managers who cannot adapt to matrix management)
• Building matrix management skills throughout the management population and reinforcing good matrix management practices.
• Sponsoring and building the networks and communities needed to make matrix management work.
• Providing high level clarity on direction to allows the competing priorities that inevitably arise in matrix management to be resolved in the interest of the organization as a whole.

Further into the middle of the organization are matrix managers who operate where the matrix reporting lines intersect, we call them the matrixed middle - more on matrix management at this level in a future post.

See more about our approach to matrix mangement training or some of the other matrix management issues we see in our matrix organization consulting

Check out our dedicated “Life in a Matrix” blog with ideas, podcasts and other resurces on matrix management

Do your senior matrix manages do a good job of leading in the matrix?

Sep 25 2008

BT have published a very useful guide to remote working, available free on pdf here.

It contains some useful information on setting up and managing remote and home based workers, including management practices and use of technology.

If you are considering home based or remote working for the first time it is a good place to start.

Check here to find out more about our approach to managing remote and virtual teams

Sep 24 2008

The average employee’s productivity within the workplace is little more than a few hours a day. So why are people stuck in the office from early morning until evening, complaining of a poor work-life balance? International CEO and management guru Kevan Hall talks to Nicola O’Connell about the epidemic of unnecessary work that plagues today’s offices.

See the rest of this new article at CEO Magazine

Find out how you compare on unnecessary work with our free speed survey or see more about our save a day a week training program.

Sep 23 2008

Just finished reading the excellent Economist special report this week on globalization, see it online here

Unsurprisingly, one of their conclusions is that management quality will be a deciding factor in whether companies in the developing economies are able to compete long term with the established multinationals (and vice versa).

One fascinating statistic from the report is that less than 5% of the members on the boards of American multinationals are non-Americans. If after all this time the even other “developed” economies in Europe and Asia are still not represented it could take several management generations before multinational boards in the USA become common.

Does this matter? Well if you believe that a range of cultures and backgrounds brings additional understanding and richness to decision making, then it does.

It also means that we need to develop the skills in our existing generation of mangers to buld a global mindset wherever they are from originally. Demographics at the top of organizations takes a long time to change.

It’s also not true that just because an individual is from another culture they are automatically good at working internationally or that increasing diversity leads to better decisions unless we change the behaviours of the existing dominant corporate culture too.

There is still a lot to do to build real global mangement capability - take a look at our approach to building global management skills.

Sep 23 2008

There seems to be some confusion in the use of the terms diversity and inclusiveness. Coupled to this is the problem that “diversity training” has become tagged in many organizations as a worthy but legalistic necessity.

What would be the typical reaction in your organization if you received an invite to diversity training?

I am going to leave the moral arguments aside, our area of specialization is cross cultural diversity and inclusiveness and this area is mercifully free of most of the negative legacies of some other forms of diversity training.

In cross cultural training we often see groups who look very similar, both enjoying and being frustrated by cultural differences but without a sense that one is right or wrong or one the oppressor or oppressed.
We think that, because of this, cross cultural differences make a great “front end” to making important points about diversity and inclusion that can then be applied to other forms of diversity.

Diversity is about variety - it is about bringing in a diverse group of people, irrespective of ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation and whatever other criteria are the diversity “hot buttons” in your company or geography - and what form of diversity we focus on does vary around the world.

As an aside it does make me smile when companies want a consistent approach to diversity around the world - that’s right a one size fits all approach to variety

Inclusiveness is about creating an environment where this variety of people can contribute and be successful and effective - irrespective of their diversity.

Most reputable organizations now do a reasonable job of bringing in diverse populations, the business case for access to talent is undeniable.

There is less attention paid to inclusiveness. Companies are full of “sausage factory” mechanisms for introducing (often without realizing) common approaches and reactions, our induction, job specifications, leadership criteria, appraisal processes and promotion criteria increasingly define “correct behaviors”.

In global organizations in particular this can be dangerous. Is effective leadership behaviour the same in USA, Japan, Netherlands and South Africa?

In our cross-cultural training we try to explore the differences and learn from each other. By having access to many different ways of operating we can increase our creativity and choose whatever works for the a particular situation.

We think it’s time to match the effort put into attracting diversity with a lot more focus on allowing that diversity to thrive and express itself inside large organizations.

How does your company promote inclusiveness?

Sep 22 2008

Following on our previous post on managing without travel, this post looks at the real cost of business travel.

I should say first that I think some face to face contact is essential.  Particularly when meeting with customers and building relationships, those kind of things are hard to do remotely - though sometimes we have to when budgets are cut.

I do think however that there is tremendous waste in internal meetings and I have talked about this in my life in a matrix podcasts.  If you listened to the podcast “Too much cooperation going on”, you will remember, according to our research, 40% of management time is spent in meetings and people tell us that half of this is completely unnecessary. 

We tend to deal with remote and virtual teams that are located in different places, different countries even continents, and I attended a two day meeting in London recently with 11 attendees from the UK, USA, Singapore, Italy and Australia, I calculated the cost of that two day meeting as

• 33 days of time, and that was including 11 days of completely unproductive travel,
• the expenses cost of hotel and travel was $60,000
• it produced 19 tonnes of carbon emissions. 

With these kind of costs, we better make sure we have a great meeting! … and often we don’t.

If you work in a large company, go and ask your finance people what the cost of travel is, when you add together the flights, the mileage allowances, the taxis, the hotels, etc… it is a staggering cost in most large organizations. 

A study of 89 corporate travel managers for American Express by Accenture in 2004 found an average air travel spend of just under $30M each. This represents an average of 65,000 business trips per year for each of these companies. It takes no account of taxis, hotels, time and other travel expenses

I know of one German organization who told us that each year from their head office they had a quarter of a million business class air trips from that head office location, so that gives you an idea of the scale.

Now if up to half of this is unnecessary or could be replaced by use of technology or delegation (look out for futureposts on alternatives to travel) this is a significant potential saving, useful in the current business environment.

Find out more about our work on managing without travel and remote and virtual teams training.

What is the most expensive, unnecessary business trip you ever had to make?

Sep 18 2008

Following our previous post on the top 5 virtual team challenges I am going to start by looking at the 3rd most important challenge from our virtual team survey - how can we stay visible to the organization when we are working remotely.

Participants from our remote and virtual teams training programs tell us that visibility is important for many reasons, including

• to get access to attention and resources for your virtual team
• to keep priority on your activities
• to attract people to want to work on your virtual teams
• for career development

In large companies, especially where you are working in a virtual team away from the centre of power, there is a real risk of “out of sight, out of mind”. It is not enought to be doing a good job, you also need to be seen to be doing it.

Some of our participants, especially the engineers, argue that it should not be this way, doing good work should be enough. Part of me agrees but it the reality is….

I am definitely not advising you to become one of the horrible corporate politicians who spend more time “spinning” a good message than doing a good job, but if you are working remotely or in a virtual team you do need to manage your visibility.

One point of warning - I am assuming you are already doing a good job - if you are a lousy performer you should definitely not work on your visibility - just keep your head down

A framework that is used in some organizations for thinking about this is PIE - this stands for the 3 key elements of visibility - in virtual teams or anywhere

• performance
• image
• exposure

All 3 of these are important and need to be managed. According to some studies, exposure is the most important of the 3.

I found this html version of a PowerPoint presentation from GE online which explains the PIE concept in more detail. I hope you find it useful in planning to improve the visibility of your virtual team.

If you would like some help facilitating a workshop on virtual team branding and visibility please contact us,

How do you manage visibility in your virtual team?

Sep 16 2008

When you are looking to appoint a cross culture training consultant there are several factors you need to consider to make the most best choice.

First – what kind of training do you need? If you are preparing an expatriate to go to a specific culture, you will need someone with recent relevant experience of that particular culture.

You will probably be focusing on the specifics of work and more general living in the culture and the participant will usually want to know the practicalities of daily life even more than the subtleties of doing business in that culture.

In this market, be careful of language school teachers who have realized that there is more money to be earned as a cross culture trainer than as a language teacher. Sometimes they have good experiences of everyday life issues but are rarely strong on both this and how to do business in a culture. Check that they have actually worked in the country you are interested in and that they are able to process this cross culture working experience in a way they can transfer to others

Beware of the cross culture trainer who does not know that specific culture but “knows the region” and can generalize. For expatriates you are looking for recent actual experience of the culture, not cross cultural generalizations.

When working in this field be sure to “cherry pick” your cross culture trainer, look for specific individuals with the knowledge you need – this may mean you need a range of cross cultural  suppliers to meet all your needs. Just because a training supplier is good at one culture does not necessarily mean they are experts in all cultures.

At Global Integration, we have chosen to stay away from this part of the cross culture training market because of the difficulty in providing a consistent high quality service covering a wide range of cultures. Our best advice is to cherry pick and only work with specific individuals you have selected and validated.

If you are looking for cross culture training for a manager or a group of people who are working regularly across a number of cultures (which is becoming the norm today) then your selection criteria would be very different.

For people who are managing  of working in a cross cultural environment with a range of cultures, going into great detail on the specifics is not only unnecessary but positively harmful – people never remember all the details and lists of do’s and taboos can make for boring training – you would be better off buying a cross cultural management book for this kind of knowledge.

They also do not need to know how to live in the culture, just how to function whilst travelling and doing business.

If you are looking for this type of cross culture trainer, we advise that you check they have

• Personal experience of working with other cultures in a modern business setting.
• A systematic model and process for training train people, not just lots of stories.
• The ability to deliver training that develops skills and transfer tools that participants can use for themselves.
• If you are training business people, try to choose a cross culture trainer who has managed people in an international setting themselves – it is hard to have credibility with practical line managers if you have no real commercial experience.
• The skills and experience to facilitate different learning styles in a training program when participants are from a range of different cultures.

The biggest problem we see with cross culture training is trainers who tell lots of entertaining culture stories – participants are entertained and engaged by the stories, they often go home enthusiastic, but then it dawns on them that they have not developed any skills in the training that they can use on their next international business trip.

Stories are fun but it is skills that count, and often the cross culture trainers with the best stories are so keen to share them that they do not focus enough on the participants.

Finally -  check whether the cross culture training supplier you use is using their own staff who are experienced in delivering cross cultural training or relying on a loose network of associates. If they use associates find out how often the individual they are proposing delivers cross culture training and make sure you talk to them yourself before the training.

Choosing a trainer who matches your objective, has practical management experience, fits your corporate culture and builds real skills in your participants can take time but it is the only way to build a real capability in your people.

Take a look at our tools for cross culture success approach and the background of our people.

We are not the right people for country specific training or expatriate preparation but if you want to build real business management skills for people leading or working with a number of cultures then give us a call or take a look at some of the 300 major multinationals we already work with.

We are real specialists so we only take on training work where it fits our niche and we knowl we can really add value. If we cannot we will try to point you at the right people to help.

Sep 15 2008