April 16, 2024 โข 18 mins
The stakes are high and the financial implications massive. Justifying the costs associated with international assignments or preparing personnel for engaging with global markets can rest with various stakeholders. Questions can come thick and fast concerning just what is the value of the cultural intelligence learning aspect of the preparation.
In this episode we discuss that it is not just about the financial costs; we dig into the human element and spotlight the transformative power of cultural intelligence training. It's a game-changer for any organization looking to bolster its return on investment and ensure the triumph of its international ventures.
Join us for an honest and invigorating discussion that could redefine how you justify the support offered for individuals and families heading off on long term international assignments.ย
๐๐ฌ๐ค ๐พ๐๐๐ฅ๐จ โ ๐๐๐ฃ๐ฎ ๐พ๐ช๐ก๐ฉ๐ช๐ง๐๐จ is the worldโs #1 show on the business of culture and the culture of business. Christian Hรถferle and Brett Parry ponder culture in short bursts and deep dives, featuring your questions and comments related to culture, business, and personal growth.
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our YouTube channel for even more great content: https://www.youtube.com/@TwoChapsManyCultures
Visit https://theculturemastery.com/ for more information about the skills for working in a global context.
The music on this episode is provided courtesy of Sepalot.
โDuum Diipโ - Artist: Sepalot - Label: Eskapaden - Copyright control
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Imagine you're a HR professional or involved in the
human side of your business andall of a sudden you are tasked
with exploring some of thecultural aspects of the
international or foreignadventures your company is
undertaking, and that might evenmean moving people, supporting
moving people.
Well, what happens when yourexecutive team come in and you
(00:23):
explain to them why you want todo it, and all they say is show
me the money.
We're going to talk about that.
Welcome to 2Chaps.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Many Cultures In an increasingly globally connected
world it is vital to possess theessential skills of cultural
intelligence.
Listen along as we present thetopics, tips and strategies you
can use to develop the power ofcultural understanding in your
personal and professional life.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Here are your hosts Christian Hรผffler and Brett
Parry.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
How much is that going to cost us?
Show me the money.
Yeah, if you're in peoplebusiness, people side of things
of the organization justifyingyour expenses, that's the thing.
I know we've dealt with thismultiple times, it's not always
(01:16):
easy and we're going to talk alittle bit about what the ROI,
the return on investment, is forcultural intelligence in the
corporate world.
And if you like what we do,remember there is the bell that
you ring, ding, ding, ding, dingto subscribe.
Make sure you get updates onthe latest episodes.
This is Two Chaps, manyCultures, where we talk about
(01:40):
the culture of business and thebusiness of culture.
And we're Brett.
What is it?
There is culture.
There's never enough culture.
What, what's your phrase?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
too much culture is barely enough that is so true.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
So make sure to subscribe.
Never miss an update, weeklynew videos from the two chaps.
By the way, if you are inpeople business, like one of my
clients, they will tell you onthe phone.
Christian, I'm in this newprofessional development course
(02:15):
for my company and we're talkingabout diversity and I've used
one of your two chaps videos forour course.
That's how you do it, thank you, people, people.
Let's talk about the return oninvestment for cultural
intelligence.
Is it measurable?
(02:37):
Offer training, coaching,mentoring, seminars, workshops,
support for global organizationsto help them build their
cultural intelligence?
What arguments do we have tosay?
This is worth it, this isworthwhile doing.
(02:58):
Show your management the money.
How do we do that, brett?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Well, of course, both being in business, we
understand the importance oflooking at the numbers.
We want to go to data as tobuild the veracity of what we do
and why we do it and how weserve our clients.
So in that case, we understandthat from a perspective of other
people in the organization.
However, if you are tasked andyou are more directly involved
(03:24):
in the human side of yourbusiness and, as we said in the
intro, you are faced withlooking for resources, pulling
in different aspects that willsupport the cultural
intelligence adventure of yourcolleagues, whether again, they
are moving countries or in factengaging in some expansion of
(03:45):
the business in foreign lands,then you have to come up with
some kind of credible basis ofyour argument of why you do that
.
And that's when we come in interms of the cultural side of it
, because if we just look atexpats, there's certainly a
salary cost that doesn't go away, but then you're adding to that
travel and the cost of livingallowance that might come along
(04:11):
with that.
All of these are really reallysubstantial.
And what is it Christian?
One or two million bucks a year, one or two million dollars for
the life cycle of an assignment.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Most average expatriate assignments come up
to two, three million for athree-year assignment.
That is additional cost for theemployer.
It really depends on wherepeople are sent right.
If you're sent into a high costdestination like Hong Kong,
singapore, I don't know, angolaused to be super high then those
(04:43):
expenses might even be moreenormous.
It is an investment in talent.
You're bringing experts, peoplewho have a high degree of
expertise in whatever theirfield is.
You're sending them somewhereelse to do their job there
because they were really good atwhat they're doing at the home
office.
And now you're expanding.
Or you need to fill a positionabroad and you have just the
(05:05):
right candidate, and now you'reexpanding, or you need to fill a
position abroad and you havejust the right candidate.
So the move the family, thehousehold, goods, the school
very often private school, ifit's a country whose educational
system is not up to par withwhat the home system is.
There are so many hidden coststhat factor into this.
It's going to cost you a chunkof money.
Cost that factor into this,it's gonna cost you a chunk of
(05:29):
money.
Are you willing to sacrificeall that investment by not
preparing your people for thatjourney, for that cultural wall
that they're gonna hit at somepoint.
It would be, from ourperspective, unwise to do so
right?
So comparatively low are thenumbers you will add to the
overall expense for languagesupport, for destination service
(05:55):
support and for culturalintelligence support.
That's peanuts compared to thewhole expense basket of what
you're spending for thatexpatriate employee and their
household.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Right Now, if you're listening to this, this is where
you should be taking notes,because you should be ready for
this discussion with yourcolleagues, whether they be at
board level or management level,executive level, and these are
the things that we encouragepeople to take back to these
folks and say this is a humanadventure at its very core.
(06:33):
Yes, there's business involved,but there's humans at all
levels of life, whether it beprofessional or personal.
And so when you're talkingabout the human cost, we just
look at the cost side of things.
I mean, we can speak to a lotabout the cost, right, mate?
Speaker 2 (06:50):
We can speak a lot about the cost, and yet it's not
only the human cost attached tothe expatriate and this is
something that that's aconversation I very often have
with clients, and I'm sure it'ssimilar for you, brett it's not
only the person who is changingcultures for work or changing
(07:11):
locations for work that wants tobe prepared, that needs to be
prepared for this, it's also thereceiving side.
I just had this conversationrecently with one of our
long-term clients who themselvesare in the leadership role as
expatriates, who themselves arein the leadership role as
expatriates, and they said afternow, their second assignment is
about to end, they're going toreturn to their home country.
(07:33):
They said, yes, it was helpfulfor us to receive cultural
preparation for this assignment.
It was equally important thatour team here in this foreign
location is prepared forreceiving us.
So if you're in a multinational,bilateral, trilateral,
(07:54):
multilateral matrix organization, not only do you prepare the
people you're sending away, youalso want to prepare the team
that is incorporating foreignexecutives, foreign employees,
because now you have a mixedteam.
Why would you only prepare oneside of the equation?
They're going to collaborateright and most cultural
(08:19):
intelligence initiatives workreally well if it starts at
leadership level and it'scascaded down through the levels
of the organizations that willbenefit most from this
professional developmentexercise.
And very often this is anoverlooked factor, because we
(08:41):
have people say well, what isthis going to cost us?
Is this going to immediatelymake us more money or is it
going to save us money?
What would be your answer tothat, brett?
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Well, as you said before, mate.
So think about that person whohas been chosen for these tasks,
whether it be physical movementor, in fact, in charge of the
expansion.
They're not there by accident.
Their management has identifiedthat they have a certain set of
skills that allows them, asleaders, to pass on knowledge
(09:15):
right to pass on intelligence tothe team, and hopefully that's
going to translate no matterwhere they go.
So in many ways, as you werespeaking there, I'm thinking,
you know, we're encouraging thisand we're kind of doing
ourselves out of a job, becauseif we do a very good job of the
actual cultural education sideof it, the cultural training or
(09:38):
coaching, if we do a very goodjob of that, we're also doing
the job of building the skillsfor that person to be able to
pass that information on.
So that's a really key pointyou make there.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Well and I might be wrong about this, and yet some
of my mentors have taught methis that the role of anyone who
manages something whether it bea process or people or both is
to make themselves redundant.
And if you do your job well,then at some point you're not
(10:11):
needed any longer because theprocess has been implemented and
installed and it runs itself.
So if we work ourselves out ofa job, then we did our job well,
and I only recently had this,what you just mentioned or
alluded to.
I had this wonderful experience.
I've been working with a salesand distribution executive who,
(10:40):
later in their career, was sentabroad, and it was their first
time going abroad and they were,from their behaviors and from
their personality, pretty muchwell it's hard to put it that
way, but they were set a littlebit.
There was very littlebehavioral flexibility and also
a low desire to adjust.
They were like, yeah, take meas I am, take me or leave me,
(11:04):
but this is how I'm going to beand you're going to figure me
out.
Of course, as you probablyguessed it, that didn't work
very well at the foreigndestination, and so we got to
work with each other.
I became their coach for morethan half a year and we had very
intense one-on-ones where I wasable to challenge them on some
(11:28):
of their behavioral quirks, andit was sometimes like knocking
my head against the wall.
I'm not going to lie.
This was a really toughcandidate to engage with and
they were rather reluctant tolisten and apply what we work
through.
And now that their assignmenthas come to an end, they're
(11:50):
about to pack their things andgo back home.
I had to sit down with them andtheir successor to pass on
lessons learned, right?
So best practice, we're notjust doing this in isolation,
we're saying, ok, so what didyou learn in these three years
and what can your successorlearn from your experience?
And then they sat with theirhandwritten notes from our
(12:11):
coaching call and they werebasically reciting the material
that we had worked through,where I thought, okay, they're
never going to get this or theydon't want to.
Now they were sitting there andtelling their colleague hey,
watch out for this, watch outfor that.
And this is what I learned.
And, like hallelujah, it doeswork.
(12:32):
It does not exist in a vacuum,right?
So in an ideal scenario, you'remanaging company knowledge.
It's knowledge management,right?
Doesn't always work that way.
When it does, it is gold.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Well, I think that experience and of course, in our
work we often talk about thereward we get out of this, but
the reward comes from sometimessome discomfort and that point
that you made to this personsome of our job is to confront.
We're not we're not trying to beadversarial, but we're trying
to actually build in the thisperson that we are sitting
(13:14):
across, the ability to kind ofput a mirror up to themselves
and see where perhaps there aresome limitations, that just
whether it's been theirupbringing or their experience,
that's every.
All of us have got those and weunderstand that.
And but that is part of our jobtoo.
It's been their upbringing ortheir experience.
All of us have got those and weunderstand that.
But that is part of our job too.
It's not just to be agreeableand sitting there and banking
the checks for free.
(13:34):
It is actually real work.
And I think when you told methat story, chris, I think it
was a really great, satisfying,rewarding experience to see that
person passing on and that'sthe ripple effect, that little
pebble that you put there, andnow it's rippling and that
person's going back to theircountry and they're going to
(13:55):
recite those same things topeople that look up to them as
mentors.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, and I'm not going to lie, I had watery eyes
when that happened.
I was like damn it, this reallydoes work Nice.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
We do take it personally right, and that's the
other.
Getting back to the point isthat if you surround yourselves
with people that are going togive you the tools and the
messaging back to your company,understanding that this is a
human endeavor, this is, yes,there's dollars and cents that
are involved in this, but thisis a human endeavor, especially
when there's families and centsthat are involved in this.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
But this is a human endeavor especially when there's
families and children, allthose things that take place and
you said, just counting thechecks or monitoring the checks
coming in, and again we're atthe cost.
Right, and as I was thinkingabout this and preparing for
this episode, senior managementor those with budgetary
decision-making powers they willwant to say show me the money.
(14:50):
They want to know what do weneed to budget for this and is
this a smart investment?
Now, it may not be very nice toargue with.
What are you standing to loseif you don't invest, but that is
often something that people aremuch easier motivated by is the
(15:13):
fear of losing something thanthe prospect of gaining
something.
That's a little bit vague, butwhat you will definitely lose if
you do not invest in culturalintelligence is business, and
you will not even know why.
I have had this happen in somany client relationships where
we had these analyticaldiscussions.
(15:35):
What happened?
What went well, what went wrong?
Well, this client walked away.
We thought it was this and thatTurns out.
Their prospect did not committo a deal and it was because of
culture and the service provideror the company my client trying
to sell them their product orservice did not realize it was a
(15:57):
cultural mistake.
They thought it was price, theythought it was delivery
conditions, whatever otherbusiness factor or supply chain
factors it may have been.
When in fact it turned out, theperson negotiating the deal
made a mistake, wasn't aware ofit, the company wasn't aware of
it.
So it's in your blind spot andyou don't even know which
(16:19):
mistake you're analyzing.
So it's not a.
You don't make more or youdon't save something with
cultural intelligence in thisexample.
If you don't have it, you standto lose something and you don't
even know how much it isabsolutely well.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Hopefully we've given you a few uh tips and uh
strategies to approach thoseconversations.
I'm not saying they're easy,they are difficult and these are
just parts of many levers thatyou have to take.
So we are certainly reallygrateful for the work you do.
If you're listening to this asa human professional, as a
person who is tasked with this,because we're in your corner and
(17:02):
many of the people that do thissame work are, and we
understand we get to meet withthe people right and understand
that this is a very human impactthat you're having.
So thank you for doing that.
And, of course, the image weshowed before with the little
circle of costs and the theamounts there.
We're going to throw that linkto the cultural mastery website.
(17:24):
You'll see, there'll be thatlink to the cultural mastery
website.
You'll see, there'll be a linkin the notes.
So thank you again for joiningtwo chaps, many cultures for
another week of absolute madness, where too much culture is
never enough.
And um, show me the money.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And I'll show you the big seat.
Right, it's right here.
Ah yeah, Cash Is that cash?
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Is that cash?
Is that Culture?
Come on, culture, there see.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
There we go.
Culture might be cash if you doit right.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Absolutely, you can turn culture into cash.
Yeah, so, before we get toocarried away with metaphors and
cerebral irreferencesAlliterations.
Yes, let's get the hell out ofhere.
Ciao for now.
Good to see you again, mate.
Two Chaps, many Cultures Again,subscribe, hit the bell.
Don't forget our new podcast.
It's fresh to the platforms, onall of the best platforms in
(18:16):
the world, and we will see youin the next edition of Two Chaps
, many Cultures.
Have a good one, see y'all.
Imagine you're a HR professional or involved in the
human side of your business andall of a sudden you are tasked
with exploring some of thecultural aspects of the
international or foreignadventures your company is
undertaking, and that might evenmean moving people, supporting
moving people.
Well, what happens when yourexecutive team come in and you
(00:23):
explain to them why you want todo it, and all they say is show
me the money.
We're going to talk about that.
Welcome to 2Chaps.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Many Cultures In an increasingly globally connected
world it is vital to possess theessential skills of cultural
intelligence.
Listen along as we present thetopics, tips and strategies you
can use to develop the power ofcultural understanding in your
personal and professional life.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Here are your hosts Christian Hรผffler and Brett
Parry.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
How much is that going to cost us?
Show me the money.
Yeah, if you're in peoplebusiness, people side of things
of the organization justifyingyour expenses, that's the thing.
I know we've dealt with thismultiple times, it's not always
(01:16):
easy and we're going to talk alittle bit about what the ROI,
the return on investment, is forcultural intelligence in the
corporate world.
And if you like what we do,remember there is the bell that
you ring, ding, ding, ding, dingto subscribe.
Make sure you get updates onthe latest episodes.
This is Two Chaps, manyCultures, where we talk about
(01:40):
the culture of business and thebusiness of culture.
And we're Brett.
What is it?
There is culture.
There's never enough culture.
What, what's your phrase?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
too much culture is barely enough that is so true.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
So make sure to subscribe.
Never miss an update, weeklynew videos from the two chaps.
By the way, if you are inpeople business, like one of my
clients, they will tell you onthe phone.
Christian, I'm in this newprofessional development course
(02:15):
for my company and we're talkingabout diversity and I've used
one of your two chaps videos forour course.
That's how you do it, thank you, people, people.
Let's talk about the return oninvestment for cultural
intelligence.
Is it measurable?
(02:37):
Offer training, coaching,mentoring, seminars, workshops,
support for global organizationsto help them build their
cultural intelligence?
What arguments do we have tosay?
This is worth it, this isworthwhile doing.
(02:58):
Show your management the money.
How do we do that, brett?
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Well, of course, both being in business, we
understand the importance oflooking at the numbers.
We want to go to data as tobuild the veracity of what we do
and why we do it and how weserve our clients.
So in that case, we understandthat from a perspective of other
people in the organization.
However, if you are tasked andyou are more directly involved
(03:24):
in the human side of yourbusiness and, as we said in the
intro, you are faced withlooking for resources, pulling
in different aspects that willsupport the cultural
intelligence adventure of yourcolleagues, whether again, they
are moving countries or in factengaging in some expansion of
(03:45):
the business in foreign lands,then you have to come up with
some kind of credible basis ofyour argument of why you do that
.
And that's when we come in interms of the cultural side of it
, because if we just look atexpats, there's certainly a
salary cost that doesn't go away, but then you're adding to that
travel and the cost of livingallowance that might come along
(04:11):
with that.
All of these are really reallysubstantial.
And what is it Christian?
One or two million bucks a year, one or two million dollars for
the life cycle of an assignment.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Most average expatriate assignments come up
to two, three million for athree-year assignment.
That is additional cost for theemployer.
It really depends on wherepeople are sent right.
If you're sent into a high costdestination like Hong Kong,
singapore, I don't know, angolaused to be super high then those
(04:43):
expenses might even be moreenormous.
It is an investment in talent.
You're bringing experts, peoplewho have a high degree of
expertise in whatever theirfield is.
You're sending them somewhereelse to do their job there
because they were really good atwhat they're doing at the home
office.
And now you're expanding.
Or you need to fill a positionabroad and you have just the
(05:05):
right candidate, and now you'reexpanding, or you need to fill a
position abroad and you havejust the right candidate.
So the move the family, thehousehold, goods, the school
very often private school, ifit's a country whose educational
system is not up to par withwhat the home system is.
There are so many hidden coststhat factor into this.
It's going to cost you a chunkof money.
Cost that factor into this,it's gonna cost you a chunk of
(05:29):
money.
Are you willing to sacrificeall that investment by not
preparing your people for thatjourney, for that cultural wall
that they're gonna hit at somepoint.
It would be, from ourperspective, unwise to do so
right?
So comparatively low are thenumbers you will add to the
overall expense for languagesupport, for destination service
(05:55):
support and for culturalintelligence support.
That's peanuts compared to thewhole expense basket of what
you're spending for thatexpatriate employee and their
household.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Right Now, if you're listening to this, this is where
you should be taking notes,because you should be ready for
this discussion with yourcolleagues, whether they be at
board level or management level,executive level, and these are
the things that we encouragepeople to take back to these
folks and say this is a humanadventure at its very core.
(06:33):
Yes, there's business involved,but there's humans at all
levels of life, whether it beprofessional or personal.
And so when you're talkingabout the human cost, we just
look at the cost side of things.
I mean, we can speak to a lotabout the cost, right, mate?
Speaker 2 (06:50):
We can speak a lot about the cost, and yet it's not
only the human cost attached tothe expatriate and this is
something that that's aconversation I very often have
with clients, and I'm sure it'ssimilar for you, brett it's not
only the person who is changingcultures for work or changing
(07:11):
locations for work that wants tobe prepared, that needs to be
prepared for this, it's also thereceiving side.
I just had this conversationrecently with one of our
long-term clients who themselvesare in the leadership role as
expatriates, who themselves arein the leadership role as
expatriates, and they said afternow, their second assignment is
about to end, they're going toreturn to their home country.
(07:33):
They said, yes, it was helpfulfor us to receive cultural
preparation for this assignment.
It was equally important thatour team here in this foreign
location is prepared forreceiving us.
So if you're in a multinational,bilateral, trilateral,
(07:54):
multilateral matrix organization, not only do you prepare the
people you're sending away, youalso want to prepare the team
that is incorporating foreignexecutives, foreign employees,
because now you have a mixedteam.
Why would you only prepare oneside of the equation?
They're going to collaborateright and most cultural
(08:19):
intelligence initiatives workreally well if it starts at
leadership level and it'scascaded down through the levels
of the organizations that willbenefit most from this
professional developmentexercise.
And very often this is anoverlooked factor, because we
(08:41):
have people say well, what isthis going to cost us?
Is this going to immediatelymake us more money or is it
going to save us money?
What would be your answer tothat, brett?
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Well, as you said before, mate.
So think about that person whohas been chosen for these tasks,
whether it be physical movementor, in fact, in charge of the
expansion.
They're not there by accident.
Their management has identifiedthat they have a certain set of
skills that allows them, asleaders, to pass on knowledge
(09:15):
right to pass on intelligence tothe team, and hopefully that's
going to translate no matterwhere they go.
So in many ways, as you werespeaking there, I'm thinking,
you know, we're encouraging thisand we're kind of doing
ourselves out of a job, becauseif we do a very good job of the
actual cultural education sideof it, the cultural training or
(09:38):
coaching, if we do a very goodjob of that, we're also doing
the job of building the skillsfor that person to be able to
pass that information on.
So that's a really key pointyou make there.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Well and I might be wrong about this, and yet some
of my mentors have taught methis that the role of anyone who
manages something whether it bea process or people or both is
to make themselves redundant.
And if you do your job well,then at some point you're not
(10:11):
needed any longer because theprocess has been implemented and
installed and it runs itself.
So if we work ourselves out ofa job, then we did our job well,
and I only recently had this,what you just mentioned or
alluded to.
I had this wonderful experience.
I've been working with a salesand distribution executive who,
(10:40):
later in their career, was sentabroad, and it was their first
time going abroad and they were,from their behaviors and from
their personality, pretty muchwell it's hard to put it that
way, but they were set a littlebit.
There was very littlebehavioral flexibility and also
a low desire to adjust.
They were like, yeah, take meas I am, take me or leave me,
(11:04):
but this is how I'm going to beand you're going to figure me
out.
Of course, as you probablyguessed it, that didn't work
very well at the foreigndestination, and so we got to
work with each other.
I became their coach for morethan half a year and we had very
intense one-on-ones where I wasable to challenge them on some
(11:28):
of their behavioral quirks, andit was sometimes like knocking
my head against the wall.
I'm not going to lie.
This was a really toughcandidate to engage with and
they were rather reluctant tolisten and apply what we work
through.
And now that their assignmenthas come to an end, they're
(11:50):
about to pack their things andgo back home.
I had to sit down with them andtheir successor to pass on
lessons learned, right?
So best practice, we're notjust doing this in isolation,
we're saying, ok, so what didyou learn in these three years
and what can your successorlearn from your experience?
And then they sat with theirhandwritten notes from our
(12:11):
coaching call and they werebasically reciting the material
that we had worked through,where I thought, okay, they're
never going to get this or theydon't want to.
Now they were sitting there andtelling their colleague hey,
watch out for this, watch outfor that.
And this is what I learned.
And, like hallelujah, it doeswork.
(12:32):
It does not exist in a vacuum,right?
So in an ideal scenario, you'remanaging company knowledge.
It's knowledge management,right?
Doesn't always work that way.
When it does, it is gold.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Well, I think that experience and of course, in our
work we often talk about thereward we get out of this, but
the reward comes from sometimessome discomfort and that point
that you made to this personsome of our job is to confront.
We're not we're not trying to beadversarial, but we're trying
to actually build in the thisperson that we are sitting
(13:14):
across, the ability to kind ofput a mirror up to themselves
and see where perhaps there aresome limitations, that just
whether it's been theirupbringing or their experience,
that's every.
All of us have got those and weunderstand that.
And but that is part of our jobtoo.
It's been their upbringing ortheir experience.
All of us have got those and weunderstand that.
But that is part of our job too.
It's not just to be agreeableand sitting there and banking
the checks for free.
(13:34):
It is actually real work.
And I think when you told methat story, chris, I think it
was a really great, satisfying,rewarding experience to see that
person passing on and that'sthe ripple effect, that little
pebble that you put there, andnow it's rippling and that
person's going back to theircountry and they're going to
(13:55):
recite those same things topeople that look up to them as
mentors.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, and I'm not going to lie, I had watery eyes
when that happened.
I was like damn it, this reallydoes work Nice.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
We do take it personally right, and that's the
other.
Getting back to the point isthat if you surround yourselves
with people that are going togive you the tools and the
messaging back to your company,understanding that this is a
human endeavor, this is, yes,there's dollars and cents that
are involved in this, but thisis a human endeavor, especially
when there's families and centsthat are involved in this.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
But this is a human endeavor especially when there's
families and children, allthose things that take place and
you said, just counting thechecks or monitoring the checks
coming in, and again we're atthe cost.
Right, and as I was thinkingabout this and preparing for
this episode, senior managementor those with budgetary
decision-making powers they willwant to say show me the money.
(14:50):
They want to know what do weneed to budget for this and is
this a smart investment?
Now, it may not be very nice toargue with.
What are you standing to loseif you don't invest, but that is
often something that people aremuch easier motivated by is the
(15:13):
fear of losing something thanthe prospect of gaining
something.
That's a little bit vague, butwhat you will definitely lose if
you do not invest in culturalintelligence is business, and
you will not even know why.
I have had this happen in somany client relationships where
we had these analyticaldiscussions.
(15:35):
What happened?
What went well, what went wrong?
Well, this client walked away.
We thought it was this and thatTurns out.
Their prospect did not committo a deal and it was because of
culture and the service provideror the company my client trying
to sell them their product orservice did not realize it was a
(15:57):
cultural mistake.
They thought it was price, theythought it was delivery
conditions, whatever otherbusiness factor or supply chain
factors it may have been.
When in fact it turned out, theperson negotiating the deal
made a mistake, wasn't aware ofit, the company wasn't aware of
it.
So it's in your blind spot andyou don't even know which
(16:19):
mistake you're analyzing.
So it's not a.
You don't make more or youdon't save something with
cultural intelligence in thisexample.
If you don't have it, you standto lose something and you don't
even know how much it isabsolutely well.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Hopefully we've given you a few uh tips and uh
strategies to approach thoseconversations.
I'm not saying they're easy,they are difficult and these are
just parts of many levers thatyou have to take.
So we are certainly reallygrateful for the work you do.
If you're listening to this asa human professional, as a
person who is tasked with this,because we're in your corner and
(17:02):
many of the people that do thissame work are, and we
understand we get to meet withthe people right and understand
that this is a very human impactthat you're having.
So thank you for doing that.
And, of course, the image weshowed before with the little
circle of costs and the theamounts there.
We're going to throw that linkto the cultural mastery website.
(17:24):
You'll see, there'll be thatlink to the cultural mastery
website.
You'll see, there'll be a linkin the notes.
So thank you again for joiningtwo chaps, many cultures for
another week of absolute madness, where too much culture is
never enough.
And um, show me the money.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And I'll show you the big seat.
Right, it's right here.
Ah yeah, Cash Is that cash?
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Is that cash?
Is that Culture?
Come on, culture, there see.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
There we go.
Culture might be cash if you doit right.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Absolutely, you can turn culture into cash.
Yeah, so, before we get toocarried away with metaphors and
cerebral irreferencesAlliterations.
Yes, let's get the hell out ofhere.
Ciao for now.
Good to see you again, mate.
Two Chaps, many Cultures Again,subscribe, hit the bell.
Don't forget our new podcast.
It's fresh to the platforms, onall of the best platforms in
(18:16):
the world, and we will see youin the next edition of Two Chaps
, many Cultures.
Have a good one, see y'all.
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