Knowledge of Local Culture is Crucial for Your Future Global Business
In the race for positive results, it is essential to consider the cultural differences and communication styles between employees and customers from different parts of the world.
What Is the Culture in General?
Culture is the knowledge people acquire to predict events and interpret experiences to create acceptable social and occupational behavior. This knowledge shapes value, builds relationships, and influences behavior. It plays a significant role in our life, in our present and future. This phenomenon is transmitted through experience and history, through a generation, and contains a spectrum of differences and religions.
Cross culture: focus on business
Recently, cross-cultural differences in managing processes, people, risks, and results have become more and more noticeable in global business.
What is it connected with? Local businesses began expanding their territorial boundaries and interacting with various countries and continents. Communication has emerged from the brick walls of offices, and for great results, we need a collective global mind, which is much more difficult to coordinate than business in one country.
Now culture is one of the prominent areas of interest for the younger generation, which proves the huge demand and interest: schools on cross-cultural theory are opening, a massive number of books appear on store shelves, the possibility of training with international certifications, company culture and strategy courses, various pieces of training and workshops for teams and clients.
The main focus of this interest is to teach intercultural differences in business management, to establish interactions between business participants, and to teach them to speak one understandable language with each other through various adaptation and communication programs.
Globalization has unified many things but has not dealt with cultural, national, and mental identities. How to reach an agreement and build a constructive dialogue while maintaining your uniqueness and respecting other people's features?
The phrases "cultural barrier" and "cultural differences" are increasingly heard in modern management and company culture strategies. New products introduced by companies to the global market are often rejected due to the difference in mentality. Business negotiations sometimes get bogged down in misunderstandings and end in nothing.
Often, the unappreciated cultural characteristics of different peoples can deprive an international enterprise of prospects and success. These invisible but powerful barriers have been facing us since the days when trade became international.
What Does the World Say About Cross-Culturalism?
The Global Business owner today is a leader who builds bridges between countries and continents, motivates and involves teams in a work environment where they do not feel isolated from each other, thanks to the ability to build practical cooperation. World leaders are convinced that the recipe for business success is a mix of team, cultural, and individual diversity. The essence of cross-culturalism is initially in understanding and then in the correct use and management with subsequent improvements.
Sweet Tips from Ally
- Is your local business ready to expand and engage in a new culture? Here are a few tips to help you globalize:
Study the cultural characteristics of your country. Looking from the outside at the features of your culture, we can more clearly and consciously approach the understanding of the components of another country. - Read various kinds of literature (books, articles, scientific papers, etc.) by the authors of the countries you are interested in.
- Travel around your chosen country as often as possible, tasting traditional dishes, visiting local vegetable markets, and more. The longer you stay in a particular country, the faster you will understand the country's mentality.
- Learn the language of the country whose culture you are passionate about.
- Visit the museums of the chosen country and learn what the locals are proud of.
Would you like a
coffee with ally?
and get tips on how to grow your business!
start a conversation