Friday 31 October 2014

Connecting with Culture

Connecting with Culture
for Futurpreneur
When doing business with people outside your home country or culture, do your utmost to gain an understanding of best practices, customs, and protocols. Simply knowing how to behave in a manner that is polite and respectful will ensure that you establish a basic level of human understanding. Just remember that what is polite in one culture may not be in another.

Sometimes your best resource for this is closer than you think, as I learned the first time when doing business in China.  I had the opportunity to work on a project that included the executive team from a Chinese company, as well as the local and regional government officials from their city. Having never worked in this part of the world before, and being under severe time constraints, I needed a crash course in etiquette, practice, and communication. As well as needing to understanding the hierarchy, interaction, and status that had to be observed with the officials and their team. And... none of them spoke English, so everything would be done through an interpreter.

When asking my associates how to tackle this challenge, I was very fortunate to be connected to a member of the Chinese Student Society at a local University. He was most gracious in guiding me through the formality of the business negotiations, gave me a quick, intensive understanding of the underlying social observances, and most importantly, accompanied me to the after dinner food and drink where the real trust building happened, and the business objectives achieved.

Find someone that has already made the connection between the two cultures, and learn from them. You don't have to travel to learn about a foreign business environment. You can engage people in your own community to connect on a deeper level, learn more about their world experience, and perhaps allow them into your world as well.
Posted by at No comments:

No substitute for experience.

No substitute for experience.
for Futurpreneur

The most important thing a mentor can provide is real experience. Finding someone that has been through what you are going through is of incalculable value. 

The mentor that has gone through the challenge you are facing can tell you what worked and what didn't, what succeeded or failed, what they tried, what they didn't, and why. But more importantly they can tell how it felt to go through it. The emotional impact of the challenges you face as an entrepreneur is rarely discussed, but can often be the single greatest factor in whether you come through it successfully or not. Do you feel overwhelmed? Do small problems become seemingly insurmountable? Can you discern whether a specific problem is as big as you think it is? Do you feel like you are going through this alone? Do you feel like the people around you don't really understand what you're going through?

Find a mentor that has faced the challenges that you have. Whether they have faced them and won, or faced them and failed, there are things you can learn from what happened, how they dealt with it, and most important, how they balanced how they felt while they were going through it. 

Too often as business owners, entrepreneurs, and startup teams, we rely far to heavily on theory, third hand knowledge, outside opinion and criticism. But someone who has never faced your challenge cannot tell you what it's like to go through it. Find the mentor with real experience and you will be best equipped to face the emotional aspects of your business with confidence, calm, and focus.

There is no substitute for experience.


Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)