An argument I often hear is that ‘everything is becoming the same’ because of the spread of American symbols and concepts via the media. At a superficial level this is true, but these memes are transmitted horizontally and are weakly implanted when compared with the lessons we learned from our parents and teachers.
Changing a deep-rooted culture is extraordinarily difficult: consider the introduction of the equal rights amendment in the USA, which removed, or at least started to remove, barriers based on skin colour. As Professor Markus (2002, 2010) from Stanford points out, this means that simultaneous and mutually reinforcing changes have to be made to people (their thoughts, feelings and actions); the everyday ‘practices and artefacts’ that reflect and shape those people; the institutions (such as education, law and media) that afford or discourage certain everyday practices and artefacts; and pervasive ideas about what is good, right and human.
At the risk of being repetitive, when you manage or work as part of a team that is predominately from a different culture, trying to force them into your ways of thinking and working will not work - there is too much to change and it’s too deeply rooted.
So if you can’t change the culture, what about influencing the individuals within it? You will still need to get your message across to your staff or to your potential customers in such a way that the message does not trigger the memetic immune systems of the recipients.
Consider countries with high tolerances of power difference, and which avoid ambiguity, such as Mexico. A message along the lines of ‘I’m the boss and I’ll tell you what the rules are’ would probably be welcome there, but if used in London it would send the British fleeing for the lifeboats.
So let’s go through our four key dimensions again, and look at how we might tailor our messages to ensure maximum acceptance by the recipients.
We will start with universalism (whether your duty is to rules or relationships). If you are communicating to a strongly universalist culture (e.g. Scandinavia, Switzerland, America, Australia, Canada) then the messages to send would be along the lines of "this is the way we will do things", "these rules apply to everyone" and "this is the path to efficiency". But in a weakly universalist culture (e.g. Yugoslavia, Russia, Serbia, Venezuela, Korea, China, Japan) the same message should be spun as "this is the path to excellence", "this will strengthen our relationship" or "we are friends, and friends help each other".
And now let’s look at tolerance of hierarchy, a much easier one to understand. In countries that are traditionally tolerant of differences in power (e.g. Malaysia, Philippines, Mexico, Venezuela, the Middle East, China, or India) you will get away with messages such as "do this or else". In countries such as Israel, Scandinavia, Germany and Switzerland, America, Canada, Australia, the UK or Ireland, that would be a recipe for instant rebellion.
The tolerance of ambiguity also matters. In the UK or Ireland, instructions should be wrapped up in "let’s try this out" or "this will retain flexibility" rather than "these are the rules"
Similarly, there will be no surprises when we look at messaging in individualist versus group-centred countries (remembering that ‘macho’ cultures like Venezuela, Mexico and Japan can be treated as individualist just as much as English-speaking countries can). In individualist countries the messages that work tend to be "this is an opportunity for you" or "you will be personally rewarded", but in the rest of the world the messages should be "we can all gain if we help each other", "this will benefit the team/family/group", "makes for a sensible life balance / good for the environment / protects the weak/fair to all"
We can sum these up in a diagram, in this case illustrating how you might phrase a difficult communication, such as a downsizing exercise, in the South Korean subsidiary of an American corporation:
The American version of the message might stress the importance of the change, how the organisation will be modified to cope with external conditions, and the wonderful opportunities this presents to the staff who will remain. The Korean version can be more directive, but should play on the benefit to the group as the whole. It should also emphasise the support that will be given to the team members who will be displaced, and should avoid any indication that things have not yet been decided.