Bag's Rants

The dictator style of compromise.

I was reading through some of the mail I get on a regular basis from our corporate area. One of the many articles is interviews with senior managers and this interview had questions about culture differences and respecting the culture of others. This guy who had moved into a senior position in another country was asked to give an example of values expressed differently because of cultural differences. I quote directly from the text.

"I’ll give a simple one — coffee break. When I first landed here, I expected a meeting to start punctually at 10 a.m. if that was the time I’d set for the meeting. I found instead that my team would arrive at 10 a.m., but then walk out immediately to get a cup of coffee. I could have seen this as a lack of respect for my time, except for the fact that it was completely accepted in the cultural context of Chile. So we came to an amicable solution — now my team members still get themselves a cup of coffee, but they get it before walking into the meeting area so we can still start the meeting at 10 a.m. sharp rather than 15 or 20 minutes later.
In other words, instead of thinking in terms of a clash between ABC¹ and South American values, we have to accommodate to local needs, so that cultural differences stop creating a problem and instead become a simple solution."

I nearly fell off my chair laughing and the others that read it didn't see anything wrong till I explained that he had basically told them to conform to his ideals and there was no compromise but instead a change in the local customs to meet a requirement from a foreigner. This was sold as an example of a clash of cultures that needed to be respected and a compromise made. Sometime these people shoot themselves in the foot but maybe not everybody is as picky as I am. After all the others I was with thought it was OK. To be honest our company is quite careful with cultural issues.

1 Names changed to protect the innocent.

posted by Bag @ 9:20 pm