Many large organizations are not currently positioned to leverage the existing cultural diversity within their resources and unleash its potential. Management in most cases still view the cultural diversity as ethnic or linguistic; and, their effort to support ‘diversity’ focuses on acceptance. This is the linear approach that has been in practice since the late eighties and which does not take into account demographics, technological advances and the rapid pace of globalization and migration.
In simple terms, we currently categorize cultural diversity and ask for people and staff to accept it. The best interest of most organization is in going beyond the acceptance stage. Delving further into what we believe is different or novel is likely to create a degree of anxiety; it may also create a false sense of expectations amongst the varied groups, even perhaps hostility. However, the potential benefits to the organizations and the desired synergies, such an interactive climate could create are far too great to ignore and worth the risk.
The manner by which organizations create such a climate requires bold leadership and determination; fortunately, it is not complicated. With each organization having its own particular internal and external stakeholder cultural differences, and its own level of cultural integration or acceptance, the approach is quasi-always situational. Still, the leadership will have to prioritize areas to integrate and phase it in according to plans, sequences and readiness. Leadership has to be bold and invest. Often, accommodating the different as opposed to leveraging the different impedes maximizing the potential of the human resource investments. Cross-cultural integration is not about accommodating; it is about creating a positive dynamic when challenges and opportunities are looked at through different prisms.
A common mistake continues to occur when organizations launch big-bang diversity initiatives based on an incident of harassment, a judicial finding or a political announcement. Some will benchmark results and establish goals; others revisit the initiative or the plan year after year with survey after survey. For these organizations, acceptance is the goal; this is something that is measurable and can satisfy the reason for which the initiative was launched. Organizations should go beyond the safe, slow and sometimes culturally disrespectful goals.
Optimizing organizational investments in cross-cultural integration and communications ought to be the goal and not the mere acceptance and results of surveys. This is an organization’s material and moral obligation.
Proposed models and approaches on how to integrate organizations that are big and small, internal and external, expanding and contracting, public and private, global and local, and young and old will follow in the upcoming months.
Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of any association or employer with whom I have worked in the past or with whom I am still currently working.
2) LEVERAGING A DIVERSE PEOPLE-BASED CULTURE IN ORGANIZATIONS
Cultures are behaviours, histories, beliefs and linguistic characteristics of a particular social, ethnic, or religious group.[2]
Although every organization or sub-organization has its own approach to fostering acceptance and promoting its own interpretation of cross-cultural communication and integration, there are steps that leaders can take to gauge the cross-cultural maturity of an organization. In my experience, Allied intelligence agencies have taken steps towards building on cross-cultural dynamics, especially post 9/11. Arguably, it was done to ensure survival in times of global hostility. It was the time when the threat has shifted from the traditional adversity between NATO and
Also, many global enterprises have leveraged this dynamic when expanding to developing countries-to emerging markets, albeit often after few failed attempts or a lower than predicted return on investments. Expectations for failure on initial attempts are even acknowledged by business strategists such as Dominic Deneault who states that “The first international venture often doesn’t work.” Still, global enterprises realize the importance of foreign markets to their raison-d’être and continue to expand. For governments and private sector organizations, cross-cultural communication and integration are increasingly becoming operational internal instruments to increase efficiencies and external strategies for investments and markets exploration.
To achieve a fruitful level of cross-cultural communication and integration, organizations must always take steps that are pertinent to their own situation and objectives starting by assessing their own readiness and maturity. Below, is a proposed blueprint to evaluate your organizational readiness to embark on a pilot approach to move your organization from acceptance of cultural diversity to actual integration from the bottom-up.
3) ORGANIZATIONAL READINESS ASSESSMENT FOR A CROSS-CULTURAL INTEGRATION INITIATIVE
The assessment of an organization's readiness to take on a cross-cultural integration initiative should be based on several situational factors such as the organization's mandate and objectives, its long term and mid-term planning, its size and sensitivities, its tolerance levels to risks, the impact on other initiatives, and the strategic timing of the cross-cultural communications and integration initiative. While organizational leaders may assess readiness, it is important to note that the initiative of cross-cultural integration should be implemented primarily by the employees for employees to change the culture from the bottom up, preferably starting with a pilot project. The pilot project will aim to demonstrate tangible results; and will narrow the focus to measure actual benefits and communicate them more widely while mitigating risks.
Readiness Factors To Be Assessed - Checklist
- Mandate: Organizational leaders should identify benefits to their mandate and to their stakeholders and shareholders’ interests to be gained by an internal and external cross-cultural integration. The benefits should be tangible and measurable compared to a status quo. If at this point, despite the current state-of-affairs with respect to intensified global integration, leaders do not see the benefits that could be gained by leveraging diverse demographic, cultural, and multi-disciplinary approaches, then the organization is not ready.
- Human Resource Assets: Leaders should also identify groups and individuals who have the mixture of cultures that can serve as the launching pad for the initiative. If such groups or individuals cannot be found, then the organization is presumably quite homogenous in terms of its cultural diversity, or the leaders do not know their staff demographic or personalities very well. In either case, the organization is not ready for a cross-cultural integration initiative.
- Human Resource Risks: The shift from acceptance to integration carries with it a risk as with any other investment. The risk in this case is a human resource risk. Leaders within the organization should assess their tolerance level to risks associated with potential staff anxieties and discomfort. If the timing of the risk, should it materialize, coincides with major organizational deliverables or if management is likely to abandon the initiative at the first sign of trouble, the organization is not ready.
- Objective: The pilot project, which will become the laboratory for the cross-cultural integration initiative, should have a concrete objective that directly relates to the organization’s priority. The objective should be measurable and should act as a cohesive purpose amongst the group members. The members of the team tasked with this objective should also be fully committed. In the case the team’s priority is likely to suddenly shift, or if members are likely to be pulled away, the organization is not ready.
- Initiative Leader: To select a leader for this initiative, management should conduct a careful solicitation and recruitment process. This selected leader should be able to produce results while working with ambiguity, work through adversity, and create a climate of respect to demonstrate the value of diversity. He or she should also be able to lead soft, social and formal communications throughout the organization. In the case that a suitable leader cannot be identified internally, consideration of external candidates may work, however, if none are found, the initiative should not be launched.
4) PLANNING AND LAUNCHING A CROSS-CULTURAL INTEGRATION INITIATIVE
In terms of how to conduct a cross-cultural integration initiative, a simple roadmap of dos and don’ts is provided in the list below. This list, which is focused primarily on internal management systems and efforts, should be familiar to managers and employees as it applies to a variety of common management issues that are not necessarily limited to cross-cultural communications and integration efforts.
- Team not Organization. While the management of the organization sets the vision and direction for the cross-cultural integration initiative, the effort is most efficiently conducted by the team. “From the bottom up” is an approach that is generally well accepted by team members who share a common purpose and do not hold adverse moral values. Team members should be familiar with one another’s backgrounds, strengths, and resilience and experience in overcoming adversity. Cross-cultural integration is the vehicle the team will use to achieve its pre-set objective.
- Task not Strategy. The objective that would be relevant to the team’s specific mandate should take the form of a task or a project that has clear start and a finish points to be accomplished within a reasonable timeframe and that produces tangible and measurable results. The team should achieve its task benefiting from the diverse views generated by the team’s multi-cultural dynamic. The objective should not be some sort of a strategy or a policy proposal that takes years to conduct and be measured.
- New not Old. Any objective to be addressed by the team through a cross-cultural initiative should be a new objective. If it is not, then it should be framed from a new perspective with the new contributing factors clearly articulated. It could be detrimental to the integration effort if the issue or the opportunity has been previously tackled. A group-think environment, based on previous outcomes could render all cross-cultural communication and integration efforts ineffective. A sense of a team effort when an initiative is believed to have purpose and value is the best foundation for cross-cultural integration.
- Identify not Evaluate. One of the initial steps in any meaningful effort to leverage cross-cultural communications and integration capacities is to identify the team’s diversity. Often, management mistakenly has the tendency to start evaluating the cultural meanings and differences in order satisfy a sense of duty to accommodate; or, they are often restrained by political correctness. Cross-cultural integration is not about accommodating; it is about creating a positive dynamic when challenges and opportunities are looked at through different prisms. To achieve this, members of the team will benefit from simply identifying differences among their perspectives, as opposed to immediately evaluating them. Boldly identifying their differences should be perceived as an investment carrying a risk, but not a risky investment.
- What not Who. Listening is a key component of cross-cultural communication. It is crucial that the listening and understanding of the opinion or the view be divorced from its author or speaker. This allows for basic follow-up clarifying questions to trigger synergies. A commonly occurring disservice is when team members want to attribute cultural characteristics to the author or speaker in an effort to quickly understand, instead of thoroughly understanding. Unfortunately in many cases, a high-pitched voice, the presence of a high-ranking organizational official, or use of a non-domestic accent may impact the team’s acceptance of ideas or observations of the different.
- Understand not Translate. The team is likely to generate ideas and concept based on leveraging the differences amongst them. The natural reaction of individuals will be to try to fit a new concept into a traditional frame of thinking by translating it. This is a common mistake where the term lost in translation applies. To overcome this natural tendency, the team and its members will have to learn to absorb ideas carrying ambiguity and evolve with these ambiguities until the concept becomes clearer. This will allow the time for the team members and organizational leaders to recalibrate their frame of thinking to include newly introduced concepts.
- Trust not Loyalty. Often times, trust and loyalty are interchangeable in peoples’ minds. In instances of cross-cultural communication and integration efforts, they are quite the opposite. Once trust amongst team members is established, members of the team will feel at ease expressing their perspectives; whereas when a climate of loyalty is established, staunch allegiances are likely to develop at the expense of good ideas and honesty. An environment of trust creates independent leaders, whereas an environment of loyalty creates interdependent pleasers.
- Social Infrastructure not Organizational Structure. As the team comes together, evolves and creates the climate required for free cross-cultural synergies, the success should be communicated. The desired cross-cultural communication and integration behaviours and approaches should gradually be adopted by other smaller groups—bottom up. This could take various forms based on the situation of the organization. It should, however, be manifested through changes within the social infrastructure of the organization as opposed to a structured, organizational top-down structured approach. An institutional framework that purposefully imposes a desired behaviour is bound to take more time and face more resistance than behaviour resulting from informal relationships among smaller entities, groups or individuals. The latter is likely to create a desired and lasting pattern of behaviour between employees.
- Reach Out not In. Whenever an individual, a team or an organization is faced with a circumstance, be it a new predicament or an opportunity, that is quite abnormal or is fast evolving, the natural tendency is to reach in to the in-house reservoir of experiences and expertise to help deal with the situation. This will almost always recreate an old solution to a new circumstance. Cross-cultural integration enables a different way of thinking to address a predicament or an opportunity. Reaching out to the diversity within or outside the organization should be one of the initial reactions. Reaching in will carry the bias that does not usually offer a new solution to a new circumstance.
- Communicate not Educate. Communicating the initiative throughout the organization should take the social soft approach. Formal, structured one-way communication or education will give the perception that this cross-cultural integration initiative is institutionalized, yet may not be desired at the grass-roots level. The topic of this cross-cultural integration initiative is socially interesting to individuals; when socially communicated, the more individuals or teams talk about it, the more people espouse the idea of synergies in diversity.
The next publication will offer design studies assessed on an individual basis. These studies will apply the elements presented above to situations where organizations are large and small, private and public, expanding and contracting, global and domestic, young and old, among others.
