With true Mediterranean flair, Dario, CEO of an Italian IT company, raised his eyes to heaven, stood up and said:
“So that is what you mean by ziz Performance Management, Patrichia. It eez all about productivity, efficiency and profit (accompanied by graphic hand gestures) !
Why deedn’t you say zo before?!!”
We were discussing how to make the Performance Appraisal discussions (as part of the Performance Management process), really effective. I had been struggling to find the right way to express myself, and so gain his buy-in to the process.
Cross-Cultural thinking is now essential for almost every single organisation (unless you are living up a mountain or on an island that is smaller than a pin-head). Whether working in New York, Singapore or London what a wonderful multi-cultural world we live in – but how culturally very complex.
Many managers and staff have been ‘brought up’ to believe they should only do what they are told – and not use their initiative. When sharing the concept of empowerment, both for them and their staff it is quite a mind-shift for many managers, who still believe that Knowledge is Power, and Absolute Knowledge is Absolute Power: when the reverse is truer.
We happily parachute people in from other cultures and countries and imagine they will integrate with the team without perhaps considering the issues involved. What we often fail to appreciate is that to achieve any shift in culture i.e. attitude and values, (and in this case devolving decision making,) management have to actually alter the way they behave.
- Culture is what we say we would like to happen,
- Climate is what you do and so what your staff actually experience.
It is this reality we have to manage. So to have an integrated or Cross-Cultural environment, you have to do far more than just say you think it is a good idea. Some organisations have been using an International Cultural inventory, run independently and externally, to assess how aligned their culture and strategy are. ‘Most businesses describe their culture using generalities like ‘team-spirited,’ ‘ethical’, ‘collegiate’ or ‘client-focused’ but have not worked out how to measure these accurately and then to work out which drive profitability the most. Once you know this, specific action can be taken to improve performance’.
We are bombarded with how many staff in the UK workforce who have English as their second language. Each business has a responsibility to help their staff integrate into our society; we don’t have to change our British-ness although we may develop and extend our core values as part of a natural evolution.
Why not test your organisation:
- How multicultural are you?
- How imaginative are you to ensure you communicate in a way that all your staff can understand?
- Do your policies and procedures stand up to the SMOG test? (Simple Measure of Gobbledygook) www.wordscount.info;
- How obedient or empowered are your people really?
It can be a sobering exercise to test your organisation. The benefits could mean you can employ from a far wider pool of candidates, that you get your message understood, not only by your staff – but of course by your customers and clients.
Can you afford not to be understood in all languages?
Patricia