Innovation has become a necessity for all firms wishing to continue their survival in this disruptive and competitive environment. But the process of innovation is much more easily conceived of than completed. So what is innovation, and how can a business set out to truly innovate?

Profits can poison the porridge

For some companies constant modernization and advancement just seems natural. In these companies and new innovations are developed regularly, while others are confined to riding the wave of the last innovation by making small product adaptations or branding.

What sets these companies apart, though? What is the “stuff” that exists in one but not the other?

The start of a new product is always an idea, but where do ideas come from? In the new season of ‘F is for Family‘ on Netflix, there is a scene in the boardroom of a Tupperware company which is facing a loss of market share through increased competition, and needs a new product urgently.

An idea generation session is organised among the board members and the result are ideas which are totally disconnected from the company’s target consumers. The discussion of new products in this scenario started from the need to make up lost ground in market share and revenue. One can’t help but compare this backwards approach to innovation to companies who failed in their quest to stay relevant (Blockbuster video comes to mind) by missing the opportunity to create something new.

In his TEDx talk, ‘The Art of Innovation’ Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist of Canva suggests that the focus should never start with money, but rather meaning. The money will come after, once you understand what you want to achieve. He cites the examples of tech companies like Apple, which tried to bring computers to everyone, and Google, which tried to make information available to everyone. It is this vision of democratization which drove them. These are now two of the most profitable companies on the planet. But if profits were the only goal from the beginning, they may not exist as they are today.

Put the chef hats on the right people

The next question is – who should be involved in innovation? Are the board members the right people, or should this job reside in an R&D department? Forbes contributor Glen Llopis suggested that,

Innovation is not dependent on the participation of high-ranking executives, but on any employee that is a student of the business, knows their consumers and their specific need.

This makes sense because the employees are the ones engaged in production and sales and interacting with the customers. In many cases they are customers themselves. Llopis goes on to quote a Wall Street Journal article titled “Together We Innovate” which stated that most companies continue to assume innovation comes from the resident genius or small sequestered teams who retreat to a think tank and return with big ideas.

The article argues instead that “most innovations are created through networks – groups of people working in concert.” Chances are that a diverse group of people are more likely to generate unique ideas than a homogeneous group populated with people from similar backgrounds, education and life experiences.

Innovation does, however, require a certain type of person. Llopis describes them as courageous enough to take a leap of faith and follow it all the way through. Kawasaki supports this, adding that in the product development cycle there is a period when innovators need to shut out the naysayers, but as soon as the product is shipped they need to start listening to people and keep evolving the product.

Ideas and innovations can thus originate from anyone in the company who knows the business and consumer needs, but they must be courageous in seeing their ideas through. This also means that the leadership of the company needs to have some degree of trust in their employees. Llopis describes these leaders as ‘courageous enablers’ who take charge and embrace the role of a change agent in support of constructive disruption.

Finding clear blue water

The dream of most companies is to develop that product or service which has its own market space, often referred to the “clear blue water” around them. These products and services generate their own demand and have no close competitors. Companies may think that the only way to achieve this is through invention – developing something totally new. However, Llopis defines innovation as an idea that represents a communal adaptation or application used and embraced by the masses.

Oftentimes what is required for successful market entry is a public embrace of the benefits derived from products, rather than what they do.

If Uber saw itself as a taxi service it would be still be utilising licensed taxi drivers. Instead it saw itself as a transport company, and was thus able to introduce something new – ride share services. The real innovation was a mobile application connecting passengers to drivers for hire, resulting in a sharing economy which set the foundation for other companies like Airbnb, Kickstarter and Craigslist.

So, what is the “stuff” required for new product development or innovation? It would have to be the courage among leaders to trust and enable employees, and the courage among employees to see their ideas through to implementation. And it has to start with a good understanding of what the business means to people.

The post What’s the difference between Apple and Blockbuster? The secret ingredients of innovation appeared first on Trade Ready.

Everyone can agree that a good organizational culture is crucial. However, the difficult part is to define what “good culture” actually means. Many consultants and organizations still endorse structures created over a century ago.

Moreover, a large percentage of organizational culture research has been done by or for corporations based in the United States. So how does that apply to new cultures and organizations that are now emerging all over the world?

According to the 2015 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends research “Business leaders gave HR a D-plus (an average of 1.32 on a five-point scale), while HR departments themselves “rated their teams the equivalent of a C-minus (an average of 1.65 on a five-point scale)”. The same report identifies that “culture, engagement and global leadership have now become urgent priorities,” while “the gap between readiness and need for improvement is actually widening”.

A new global business environment requires a new approach to HR

The 21^st Century entrepreneurship movement is further disrupting all organizational culture concepts, pointing out the fact that in a globalized and hyper-connected world, organizations are becoming networks of extremely diverse teams.

Company culture is no longer a fixed, easy to replicate environment, but a dynamic network of people with very different backgrounds in terms of nationality, age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and preferences.

Creating, developing, optimizing and maintaining such complex cultures requires the help of professionals who have specific skills and expertise.

For a while now HR departments have been working on changing the way they do business. Unfortunately, many companies, including some of the current tech “unicorns”, are known to have serious culture problems. Part of that is due to the complexity of the matter. A well-known issue is the claim that we are facing a “lack of qualified talent”.

You need to understand different cultures to hire diverse employees

Culture fundamentally influences labor supply and demand, since a specific culture will attract more of the same candidates. As it turns out, most recruiters and interviewers make their selection based on a very rigid values and beliefs system, which is further influenced by a complex chain of unconscious biases.

As an example, let’s suppose that an American company interviews a highly qualified job applicant from Sweden. If the interviewer doesn’t have any knowledge about Swedish cultural values, the Swedish applicant has fewer chances to be hired when compared to an American applicant.

The cultural values of an average Swedish individual direct them to be modest and downplay their accomplishments. Doing otherwise is considered throughout Scandinavia as impolite, even disrespectful behavior. The Swedish applicant will likely avoid spending time during the interview talking about their qualities and accomplishments.

By contrast, American culture differs in that candidates from this region will be much more comfortable highlighting their success and ambitions, and they frequently use a long array of superlatives to describe their skills and accomplishments.

Interviewers and recruiters who are not familiar with the culture metrics in the candidates’ home countries, have a greater chance of misinterpreting the candidates’ behaviors.

Even if the candidates make it through the interview and are hired, retention of diverse, internally motivated employees seems to be another big problem. It makes perfect sense that creative employees will not want to stay in a culture that they feel does not care about them on a human level, and focuses only on accomplishing the business tasks.

Culture shift needs to be more than fun titles

In fact, many organizations, in updating their cultures, in fact failed to change anything fundamental in the way they view and treat employees. Some of them simply changed labels, such as from “Human Resources” to “People’s Department”.

Even some of the newly formed -“progressive”- consulting companies are still referring to people as “Human Capital”. That seems to be seen as an improvement, although in my opinion treating humans as capital instead of as resources makes no difference at all. Perception of people as some sort of exchange currency, which can be manipulated at will, is what got companies into trouble in the first place.

So, it turns out that HR departments across the spectrum are now facing an interesting paradox: although their job is to ensure employees are in top shape, most of them employ no actual people specialists. This trend has been changing in the past year or so, with some visionary organizations hiring skilled Chief Diversity Officers (CDO).

The Culture Influencer concept takes the whole process a step further, focusing on training specialists in human behavior, human interaction, leadership and organizational culture, fully disrupting the current Human Resources model and bringing it into the 21^st Century.

Culture Influencer training builds on existing, invaluable practical expertise that many HR professionals already have. It’s providing them with a repertoire of knowledge and skills that address what Deloitte calls the “sweeping global forces that are reshaping the workplace, the workforce, and work itself. 

Automation and artificial intelligence is forcing us to move from a task-oriented economy (we will never be able to perform repetitive tasks better than a machine, that’s for sure) to a people-centered economy. It is therefore crucial to shift the focus on optimizing the way people interact, collaborate, and create value for each other.

The post Every global company needs its own culture influencer appeared first on Trade Ready.

Economies are more and more global, and so are our customers, employees and opportunities. But that means that our challenges have also gone global. A common mistake is that people want to do [business] exactly the same way they did before. We cannot afford to apply the same local solutions to very different, global, problems. – SAFRA CATZ, CEO, Oracle

Let me put it this way:

The good news is that the exponential development of technology allows many of us access to amazing opportunities. People, products and services are brought together in ways that have never happened before.

The bad news is that the growing interdependence of different regions and communities around the world also has a great potential to produce conflict, ranging from global refugee and financial crises to missed business opportunities.

Why you need cultural intelligence

One of the (still) commonly held beliefs, even here in the highly innovative Silicon Valley, is that doing business across the globe means simply replicating the models that have already brought financial prosperity in a certain country or region. I lost count of how many times I heard or read about how the solution to global business is to clone Silicon Valley in various places around the world.

There is one issue with this strategy: it does not work. A business strategy does not, and cannot, exist independently of the people and circumstances that made it possible. There is no one single way of doing business, and the reason for that can be summarized in one word: culture.

Culture forms the matrix of all human interactions. As social beings, we tend to interact and associate with people who hold similar values, beliefs, expectations and symbols.

It is only normal to prefer the safety of the known, and to reject those with whom we have a hard time identifying. That worked relatively well when the cultures of the world were neatly separated into national, ethnic, and geographical communities, and only communicated with each other in a very slow and prescribed manner.

Technology is blurring geographical borders

Technology, however, is now blurring and even blowing up those lines, by facilitating instantaneous communication and exchanges across geographic borders.

For this reason, being successful in the 21st century business environment requires specific knowledge and a set of skills which we at ICQ Consulting define as cultural intelligence.

A few entrepreneurs and leaders have that naturally. But most of us simply behave (often unconsciously or subconsciously) according to values and beliefs we’ve acquired from our culture of origin.

What fascinates me is how few people, especially people in power, are willing to admit that their choices and decisions are seriously influenced by their cultural values and beliefs.

Of course, in certain circumstances, some of us are able to be more objective than others. But deep down within us are beliefs and symbols that are imprinted, branded at an emotional level. And from there they often dictate how we behave.

If we put this in the global context, we see why cultural intelligence is crucial. Globalization now forces us to interact in ways that we have never had to before. We need to interact not only with businesses from different countries, but also with our own multicultural, multigenerational and multi-ethnic organizations and teams.

We are now trying to acquire and service customers all over the world. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, over 135 different cultures live and work among each other.

Diversity + Inclusion = Success

According to Cisco, if a diverse team is managed and trained well, they produce results 6 times higher than homogeneous teams. What Cisco research shows is that not only is diversity important, but that diversity in itself is not enough. What gives diversity 6 times more value is something called inclusion.

Thus, in order to reap all the benefits of diversity, we need to create an optimal inclusion environment. And given the pace of technology and globalization, diversity is not a choice anymore. Diversity has become unavoidable, and that makes inclusion through cultural and organizational intelligence an absolute necessity.

The best way to figure out how to optimize interactions within or between diverse groups is to assess the needs, values, beliefs and expectations of each member of the group.

There are various tools (such as the Intercultural DISC) that assess key cultural metrics, which are even more helpful in an organization with employees who have lived and/or worked in multiple cultures.

Cultural intelligence is a paradigm shift in both business interaction and organizational culture, and it is one of the central pieces of Culture Influencer training.

What makes cultural intelligence different is that it addresses core dynamics of the human psyche. It takes into account not only the differences between individuals, but also the similarities that make us all humans.

How is your business working to build cultural intelligence? Has diversity changed your business?

The post In order to survive and thrive in 21st century business you need to embody this form of intelligence appeared first on Trade Ready.

Culture is complicated. Developing relationships and business across borders may be challenging, but developing relationships and business across cultures is where the real art lies.

Years ago, the Ambassador to Canada of an EU Member State addressed a luncheon crowd at one of the major chambers of commerce, and politely but rather directly, told a group of senior executives that Canada talks a good game about being a “trading nation”, but that in fact, we are not really exporters.

His argument was that most of Canada’s business is done with the U.S: a nation with which we share a common language and a significant list of other similar characteristics and reference points, including, the implication was, similar elements of culture and mindset.

This is not a piece about debating the differences between being Canadian and being American. I leave that for another contributor, and anyway, there are several very humorous lists floating around out there already.

I take this ambassador’s point. You are missing out on a great deal, and in some ways, not really doing “international” business, if your travels do not include a crossing of cultures as well as borders. And yet, books have been written about cultural gaffes that have cost individuals promising opportunities, and cost major corporations millions or more, to say nothing of the years of lost goodwill.

There is very little ‘science’ to cultural awareness

Navigating cultural nuances can be a virtual minefield, and the complexity of the subject matter is reflected in the way it is handled, even in the most robust academic treatment of the topic. There are no hard and fast answers, and there is no hard science, because culture is a profoundly human expression of identity. In my view, it is a very personal experience that can be aggregated only up to a point.

It’s also the case that crossing cultures while crossing borders makes the whole process a lot more interesting, and let me just say it, much more FUN!

(You wouldn’t know it by my FITT photo or my professional profile, but I can be a fun guy, really!!)

The Canadian Foreign Service Institute published a short booklet fifteen years ago titled “A Profile of the Interculturally Effective Person”, then seen as a world-class guide on the topic, and probably still at the leading edge of practical thought on the subject.

The authors of this guide define an interculturally effective person as someone who is able to “live contentedly and work successfully in another culture.”  That definition might arguably apply to individuals who undertake medium-to-longer term assignments in foreign markets.

I would suggest that some variation of this applies equally to a ‘road warrior’ whose travel is shorter term, but may be quickly immersive, where ineffectiveness can have immediate and drastic consequences from which recovery is difficult (impossible?) due to the timeframes involved.

Adaptability is really the cost of entry

Being effective across cultures is important, whether you are relocating, or hopping to Manila for a two-day meeting after spending a week in Dubai, before heading to Geneva for meetings at the WTO. Whirlwind trips across oceans can sometimes involve equally ‘distant’ trips across cultures, and adaptability is nothing less than the price of entry.

If your instinct is to hit up the first hamburger joint after you get off the plane in a country you’ve never visited, I’m suggesting respectfully, please do better for yourself, and for the potentially enriching personal and professional experience you could otherwise have!

Put another way:

 If you’ve travelled a few thousand kilometres and the first thing you want to get your hands on is a French fry that tastes the same almost anywhere in the world…are you freakin’ serious??!!

OK, the French fry can be really good, but here’s one concept from economics that has proven useful: Opportunity Cost (slightly adjusted for this purpose): what else could you be doing in that moment, and what value is being lost as a result?

Of course, the poor French fry is just a proxy for any number of other aspects of an international experience, from reverting to familiar modes of negotiation, to seeking the “comfort” of familiar contractual terms or legal commercial/legal practice, even familiar modes of social interaction and relationship development. The list can be extensive.

Culture is like oxygen in some ways: we are surrounded by it, at the same time as it is in us: it is possible to make a conscious effort to be aware of one’s own culturally-based preferences, references, mindset and biases. But it is impossible to completely ‘step out’ of our own cultural reference points, and thus, equally impossible to completely adopt an unfamiliar culture, even if there is a sincere desire to do so, and even for a limited time or a particular purpose.

Hofstede and Hall are often quoted in reference to cultural considerations, and the Hofstede model of Cultural Dimensions offers six interesting ‘dimensions’ on which to understand and compare countries and their cultures.

Give the Zorkians a chance

OK, let’s get practical for a minute.

You arrive in an unfamiliar country and are immediately told (or maybe you were told this by a well-meaning colleague before you ever left home) that the local population, largely of Zorkian descent, are formal and distant, and very difficult to “connect” with.

You are invited some time later to conduct a two-day training session for a group of about fifty senior executives in Varnesia, where you are warmly greeted by the organizers, but gently warned not to take offense, because Varnesians NEVER interact or engage in public, and certainly will not do so when the session is facilitated in a second language by (GASP!) a foreigner.

Perhaps you have the unique pleasure (which can sometimes become a uniquely memorable type of headache, if only briefly until you get on top of things) of managing a team of professionals from multiple countries and cultural backgrounds.

The challenges and joys of engaging across cultures are numerous and endlessly interesting.

None are insurmountable, and despite the fact that this element of international activity can be a source of extreme tension, even near-paralyzing fear in some unfortunate cases, the reality on the ground is that it’s about basic respect, a bit of common sense, some homework, and a genuine desire to connect with people.

As it turns out, the group of Varnesians were reticent for about two hours, then it was possible to motivate their engagement by stepping behind a three-metre high projection screen, literally turning one’s back to the room to ensure that any brave speaker would not be seen, and asking a question from that ‘hidden’ position, providing a bit of initial comfort and a minor injection of humour into the process.

Be careful though, once they get comfortable and get started, Varnesians seem to actually enjoy engaging, and it will be impossible to have a ten minute break without someone wanting to come over for a chat!

Zorkians, on the other hand, are quite accustomed to asking how you are doing (and hearing the same question back), but not really prepared for you to actually pause for an answer from them. A couple of interactions of that nature might get you invited to a local steakhouse where a special “not for tourists” steak is served that can only be found in one particular neighbourhood. Strangely, several of those Zorkians, so difficult to connect with, may become excellent professional collaborators, and even – believe it or not – friends!

Focus on building genuine relationships

Managing teams that combine local and remote resources, and include members from multiple countries – or even different cultural groups in the same country – is a subject for another post, or a book.

Suffice it to say, one piece of advice offered years back to a colleague, may be worth repeating here: genuinely take care of the relationships and they will help you take care of the rest (mitigate and reduce challenges and amplify successes). This applies cross-culturally just as it applies in the comfort of your home markets.

Paralysis by analysis is a real risk in the context of intercultural effectiveness. Perhaps the best insight and advice I ever received on this subject, is to remain “yourself” at the core, irrespective of the context in which you are pursuing business.

That is to say:

Genuineness is important, and a contrived (or poorly executed) attempt to “go native”, no matter how well-intentioned, can seriously backfire.

Being yourself does not imply a negligent disregard for the context in which you are engaging: if the society is a conservative one, it is simply discourteous, possibly offensive, and potentially a personal danger to act in ways that would offend such sensibilities.

The subject of intercultural effectiveness can be studied and analyzed, and you can prepare diligently for international engagement, but it is much like tasting a new wine. The description on the bottle rarely does justice to the contents, and the best way to do well in terms of intercultural effectiveness is to engage, dive in, and actively seek opportunities to extend your own experience in this area.

One powerful gateway to effective cultural engagement is language: every language, it was once noted, brings with it a unique way of looking at life and at the world – much like every culture.

Like many other aspects of international business and trade, the ‘art’ of intercultural effectiveness, where personal approach and differentiation can be exercised to good effect, is perhaps the more interesting dimension than the ‘science’.

The navigation of intercultural effectiveness may be complex, but it is very much achievable, and it is personally and professionally enriching. The more you engage, the better you will get, and the more fun you will have.

Are there cultural “French fries” you need to cut down on to enjoy international experiences and become more interculturally effective?

The post How to befriend the Zorkians and other lessons in navigating cultural complexities in global business appeared first on Trade Ready.

In March, FITT hosted an intensive training course for locally engaged Trade Commissioners (DFATD) from all around the world.

In the two separate training groups there were over 30 nationalities present, creating a unique challenge to instructors Ennio Vita-Finzi, CITP®|FIBP® and Ray Joyce, CITP®|FIBP®. How does one maintain consistency in training while getting the message across to such a diverse group of people? We know the monumental differences in the way that cultures around the world communicate.

The use of specific words, body language, tone, and even the pitch of your message could be interpreted very differently, depending on the native culture and nationality of the individual you are speaking to.

In addition to the cultural differences, Ray and Ennio had to prepare their groups to pass exams in 4 of the FITTskills courses in only a week.

Here’s what they had to say about their approaches to these challenges, and their experiences working with these unique groups of people.

1) The importance of starting on the right foot and finding common ground

Both instructors felt that with groups this diverse, the first item on the agenda should be finding some common ground to start from. Establishing mutual respect, though opinions and objectives may vary, was the first challenge.

Ennio:

My experience with the locally-engaged Trade Commissioners was very positive. I told the group that they were the “golden persons” for Canadian exporters. They have the personal insights, the language, certainly the cultural secrets of what makes their market “tick”, as well as the contacts and sector expertise.

Ray:

I started in my usual way by asking them to tell me who they were, where they were from, what they did and what their expectations for the week were. I tried to find something to use in what everybody told me, to make a connection with them and to try and figure out who the active people in the group would be.

It turned out I had about 15 different nationalities in the room, all with different cultural traits and styles of learning.

I had some participants who were used to the teacher being in charge. I had some who were very excitable and outspoken.

The rest were from a variety of cultures, and this meant that I had to think about all these things as I was deciding how to vary my presentation, in order to accommodate this.

 Add to this the range of ages in the room, the male/female ratio, and level of experience from almost beginner to 20 plus years of experience, and I began to appreciate the challenge facing me.

Having this many different cultures in the room at once was a new experience.

Ennio:

I also shared many of my own personal experiences in the field and they shared back (and I told them that I was learning from them!). I told them that I had also been a Trade Commissioner abroad, and had done the same “local” work they did (because I often did not have any locally-engaged staff to back me up). In short, I tried to show an understanding of their situation to build relationships with each of them.

I think that one of the most important things I was able to do with the group was to ensure that we were ALL TOGETHER in this program….there was no “teaching down” to them, and no “this is the way”.

In my experience/opinion, the only way to teach, instruct, learn, encourage, motivate or pass on information is to find some common ground to work with.

I was glad to see my group working together, particularly in the negotiating exercise we did on the last day.

2) Overcoming the first language obstacle

Ray felt it was important for him to address the first possible language barrier that his group would encounter – his own accent.

Ray:

I told them about my background, experiences, goals and objectives for the week. I told them that I was from Liverpool, England and that if I spoke too fast, or my accent became too heavy then they should tell me and I would attempt to slow down.

This was necessary because if I become very excited about what I am talking about I tend to speak quicker. In an effort to encourage participation and to utilise the experience in the room, I told them that I did not presume to know everything, as that was impossible, and if they did not understand what I said or if they wanted to add anything, then they should stop me and interject. As a result, this became the liveliest group I have ever been involved with.

We frequently paused to engage in lively discussions about the subject at hand, even when guest speakers were talking to the group. So it was interesting to see how this encouragement affected the group dynamic.

3) Setting the students up for success

Ray and Ennio had tricks up their sleeve for ensuring their groups learned, understood, and retained the material they were covering.

Ray:

For Ray, his particular concern was making the material relevant and interesting to this diverse group.

“My teaching style is very interactive and I like to tell lots of stories based on real life experiences, both my own and my clients. I want to make the course as interesting as possible for the participants so I establish some criteria as to how I will present the material.

The selection criteria that I used were; is the material critical to understanding the topic covered by the chapter? Does it have some significance to their daily job?

“Can I make it interesting with appropriate examples to bring it to life and to provide them with a mnemonic by which to remember the topic under review?”

“I reviewed the list of participants and where they were from to make sure that I had stories in my arsenal relevant to all of them. I am glad I chose to focus on the practical application of the knowledge being shared as that is what makes FITT training stand out from other international trade training materials.”

Ennio:

Ennio wanted to ensure his group was prepared for the types of questions they would encounter on the exams. Test-taking can be difficult enough in your own native language. Imagine taking one in a second or third language.

“I told them that multiple-choice questions are even difficult for native English-speakers, and showed them a few tricks from my own experience. In short, I tried to give them some pointers that would take off the pressure that the word “exam” brings with it.”

Final thoughts

Ray:

The participants came from a variety of countries with very different cultures and business practices. There were many interesting moments, and I made a lot of friends.

I will end with one last anecdote. At the end of the week long training, as we were all saying our goodbyes, I got probably the nicest criticism of my performance I have ever had.

Two young ladies who had sat quietly through my presentation came up to me with beautiful smiles on their faces and with no malice said to me, “Mr. Joyce we love your accent but we don’t understand what you say.”

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat; it was exhilarating and I learned a lot from the experience that I can use in the future. I also made many new friends that I look forward to seeing again.

Ennio:

“On my return home, I sent them all a personal email thanking them for their participation in the program and have had several emails in return, thanking me for the training and inviting me to see them at their posts if I ever go their way.”

FITT and DFATD have been working together on such sessions a couple of times each year since 2013. The feedback from Trade Commissioners has shown that the practical skills and knowledge acquired during these sessions are a valuable asset to the Trade Commissioners’ roles.

We look forward to bringing you more stories on the unique experiences we encounter during these sessions.

Do you have any experience in teaching culturally diverse groups of executives? What are your tips on overcoming the challenges faced in doing so?

The post 3 ways you can overcome the challenges of international trade training across diverse cultures appeared first on Trade Ready.