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The role of a manager is evolving in response to the needs of companies operating on the international stage. The complexities of globalisation brought to the area of management are great and require the 21st century manager to adapt in order to offer modern solutions to modern problems. One area in particular of growing importance is intercultural management skills.

The majority of companies can no longer escape the need to buy, sell or work with people from different cultures. Multinationals have offices spanning the globe; manufacturers increasingly rely on foreign markets and distributors; services and products are no longer solely marketed at native audiences and many industries rely on immigrant labour. In short, very few businesses escape the need for intercultural communication.

As a result, companies are increasingly recognising that in order to grow, diversify and retain a competitive advantage, intercultural management skills are critical. ‘Intercultural management skills’ is a loose term used to refer to the capability of a manager to communicate and deal effectively with people from different cultures. ‘Communication’ has long been recognised as the key to business success; however, ‘intercultural communication’ is now an increasingly critical term..

Intercultural communication is critical to business performance in a variety of ways. Internally, an intercultural manager needs to be able to act as a medium between senior personnel and staff; communicate clearly and effectively with colleagues; build and nurture efficient intercultural and transnational teams and display strategic global thinking.

Externally, an intercultural manger must demonstrate business acumen within a framework of intercultural awareness to supervise entrance into foreign markets; oversee the proper selection, mentoring and guidance of company representatives working with foreign interests; negotiate and manage conflict with clients and provide insight into potential areas of success or failure emanating from intercultural differences.

The intercultural manager is therefore tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that communication between colleagues, clients and customers is clear, coherent and free from intercultural misunderstandings.

In order to achieve this, the intercultural manager must possess certain key attributes. These are namely, intercultural awareness, flexibility, capitalizing on differences and patience.

Intercultural awareness is the fundamental foundation of all intercultural management skills. One must possess hands on experience of living and/or working in different cultures, an understanding of how culture manifests in interpersonal interaction and have received intercultural training to consolidate those insights and awareness. Only through an appreciation of intercultural differences will the manager develop further skills.

Once intercultural awareness is active within a manager and they are able to see beyond surface level manifestations of cultural differences, flexibility naturally occurs. Flexibility refers to the ability of the manager to adapt their behaviour and management style to deal effectively with intercultural challenges and to think out of the box when it comes to offering solutions. The flexible intercultural manager is able to cushion intercultural tests and control outcomes positively.

Similarly, the intercultural manager needs to be astute in using intercultural differences positively. Cross cultural differences do not inherently lead to negative consequences. They only do so when mismanaged. It is therefore the responsibility of the intercultural manager to assess the potential of personnel, products and policies being steered by cultural differences and ensuring it does so for a constructive outcome.

Finally, the intercultural manager needs patience. As the Dutch proverb says, “A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains.” Patience is the key to a successful intercultural manager as it allows one to maintain focus, analyse problems coherently, evaluate options and implement solutions.

In conclusion, the success of businesses in today’s globalized world economy relies heavily upon them investing in cultivating intercultural managers. With human traffic across borders constantly on the increase and business interests dependent on foreign markets, the intercultural manager is critical to the co-ordination, supervision and implementation of clear intercultural communication.

Neil Payne is Managing Director of Kwintessential, a London based cross cultural training provider.
Visit their site at:
http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/cross-cultural/cross-cultural-awareness.html

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In a true merger, no one culture should win. Having one side win over the other can be the kiss of death to the deal. Unfortunately, more often than not, what we have experienced in the merger frenzy are acquisitions disguised as mergers. There is typically an acquirer and an acquiree, and the lead company’s culture typically dominates. If you are the acquiring company in a deal and you are not interested in blending cultures, we hope you will at least respect your partner’s culture. Respectfulness helps the "merged" employees see what you as the lead company have to offer in the way of structure, processes, and business behavior. One simple way to accomplish this is to ask people how and why they do the things. People enjoy talking about their work. It gives them a sense of pride and their contributions need to be honored. In the age of the internet, accessing a fast and powerful cultural assessment can be conducted and analyzed in the first 90 days is key.

You must recognize in M&A activity that the elements that make up the company you are acquiring culture are being threatened, and the status quo or aspects of the employees’ way of life may be changed or, worse yet, lost. The first step in managing a cultural collision is to understand both cultures. You must spend time developing a Cultural Resume, yours and theirs. This process allows you to visualize in detail where there is congruence and incongruence between the two cultures. This process prevents you from jumping into the integration process blindfolded.

Creating a Cultural Resume also allows you to determine the potential fallout of imposing your culture on your potential partner, which may cause you to have second thoughts about such an imposition. You may even have second thoughts about potentially eliminating a culture that is deep-rooted and is very successful. Remember, people join organizations for lots of different reasons. You can readily see the obvious extrinsic benefits, but a cultural assessment will help you see the intrinsic cultural benefits - flexible work hours, educational opportunities, casual work environment the level of trust and empowerment the organization values. The list goes on of what attracted people to your potential partner. Show respect for each other’s cultures. They are what brought you to the point of considering and moving forward on this deal.

If you do choose the path of cultural assimilation, be aware that you will encounter more negative force and resistance than if you make an effort to work together in building a combined cultural future state.

As a leader, you will begin to see what all engaged couples need to see. The marriage isn’t the wedding, nor is the merger the moment you sign all the documents to make it official. You must change your focus from getting the deal done to making the partnership viable over the long haul.

As a leader, you will need to begin to understand how to decode, translate and contextualize the overt messages and publicly available information about your potential partner or your new partner. Unless key players from both organizations learn to read the deeper meanings that the other side’s culture communicates, then mutual working relations remain under threat.

You will also need to develop a prudent, yet aggressive and solid transition plan when it comes to combining the two cultures. The plan must generate a road map outlining what needs to occur by when, and who will make each step happen from the human system integration perspective. Good project management is what we are talking about. You must be able to measure and track your progress. This cannot occur when you rely on your gut rather than on hard-core data. A process like Cultural Due Diligence provides you with that data.

Our experience shows that conducting an early and thorough assessment of organizational culture can help the acquiring company forecast the deal and manage cultural issues before they become bottlenecks and diminish deal value.

Facts and statistics on the role of culture in M&A activity:

• An independent study commissioned by New York based law firm, Wachtell, Lipton Rosen & Katz on merger and acquisition activity in the banking industry, found 7 common factors that affected M&A success. 4 of those factors were culturally related.
• 2004 Chaos Report, produced by the Standish Group found that only 34% of information technology projects achieve desired results. The remaining 66% of projects were found to experience two common issues:
• 1. Issues in problem solving or data gathering at project onset
• 2. The most significant factor impacting success revolved around a lack of employee or team commitment to implementation
• It has been proven that nearly 75% of merger and acquisitions fail. Failure is defined as not meeting their strategic or financial goals in a specified time frame. Using this benchmark, according to a Mergestat report there has been 4,879 deals as of June 2006 at an estimated value of $616 billion dollars. Given these statistics, there is a possibility that 3,659 deals may not reach their expected ROI for a potential loss of $462 billion dollars.
• Organizations do a great job of Legal Due Diligence and Financial Due Diligence. In fact, deals would not get done if not for these in-depth and significant processes. The missing link in M&A is the "Cultural Due Diligence" where the human systems of both organizations are assessed, diagnosed and combined. In business today, the bottom line is that you can’t just focus on the traditional bottom line!

We see a growing number of global mergers happening; more specifically a shift from US companies acquiring abroad and a more recent trend of foreign companies purchasing US companies. This trend leads to the complexity of blending national cultures as well as organizational cultures. With these trends, it is imperative that you secure sufficient information on both organizations that tell a very clear story about what is really going on. Otherwise, you may not be able to write an accurate and defensible prospectus/integration plan. In other words, your motive in gathering this information should allow you to truly grasp the magnitude of the integration process and differences in the human systems. Here are some questions you might ask:

• What is it going to take?
• Are we willing to make the investment?
• What are the congruencies?
• What are the incongruencies?
• Do we really need to combine both cultures?
• What are the advantages or disadvantages?
• How much work will be involved?
• What are the resources that must be committed to this process?
• What are each of our core organizational values and do they match?

As corporate culture experts, EMERGE International was formed in 1996 to support leaders in understanding what organizational culture actually is, why it is important and what can be done to create and sustain a healthy and productive culture.

At (EMERGE International), our team works with corporate leaders, human resources executives, organizational development professionals, and external consultants to thoroughly examine the culture of a business to help improve the bottom line. Check out our blog at Employee Surveys its an interactive community for everything employee - ranging from benefits to morale to management.

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Staff management is “getting things done by other people”. Although you must remember that you, as the manager have a part to play as well!

As a senior manager you have a number of roles which include, controlling stock and profits, meeting sales and profit targets and managing and mentoring staff. Treat your staff well and they will become important part of contributing to the success of the business. Remember, it is much easier to lead a stubborn mule than it is to push it!

Let’s look at some key skills you will need in order to manage your staff:

* Setting Expectations: Start with the premise that your staff will need to know what is expected from them and let them know what these expectations are.

* Task Planning: Set out your staff plan, so that you know what each member of your staff has to do over the next month in order to meet the goals, standards and targets that your department has been set. Ensure that your staff, should do it, can do it and are capable of doing it.

* Communication: Ensure that you keep your staff informed about changes, expectations and progress. Also make your self approachable so that your staff feel that they can talk to you about problems, mistakes and suggestions they have.

* Mentoring: Lead from the front, showing your staff how you want them to behave. Help any worker that you believe may be struggling a little, making mistakes or causing problems. Do this by suggesting changes, adding some changes and extra training.

* Feedback: Let your staff know when they done well by telling them so. Making your staff feel good and they will work harder. Remember happy staff are loyal and efficient staff.

The hardest problem you will have is the change that you will have to make from being part of the staff to the boss! Just don’t get arrogant or remote from your staff.

© Copyright 2006 Biz Guru LLC
Lee Lister, writes as The Biz Guru, for a number of web sites including her own sites http://www.BizGuru.us and http://www.clikks.com for all our informational products.

With over 20 year’s management and business consultancy experience with businesses large and small as well as being a serial entrepreneur, she now helps others set up, develop and market their businesses.

This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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