Bridging the cultural divide – 3 tips for companies operating internationally

Adapting to the culture of a new market isn’t just about switching up your packaging or rebranding your company’s name so that it works overseas, although these things are important. Cultural difference begins with how a place looks or feels, what people eat and wear and how they speak, but it goes much deeper than that. This is where the complexity starts and where problems pop up.

Arriving in a new country or dealing with a new culture for the first time usually feels “different”, but (apart from very obvious things) it can be hard to put your finger on exactly what is different and why. This can cause confusion and make your initial engagement with the new setting difficult.

I have met many people who are domestically successful and believe that the strategies they used to build relationships and negotiate business at home will work overseas. It almost never works. Most people don’t have the tools to negotiate cross-cultural business, and when potential clients and partners react in unexpected or unwelcome ways, it creates excessive friction. That’s why many international businesses and global partnerships don’t get off the ground. Here are three tips to help you bridge the gap between your culture and the culture of your target market.

1. Assume that cultural differences will exist

Business owners often don’t appreciate just how different the culture of a new market is, before they get started.

This is normal. If you’ve always lived and worked in your own country, you probably aren’t keenly aware of your own culture and the way it has shaped you. Like the air you breathe, it’s a key part of life, but you can’t see, smell, taste, touch or hear it – it’s just there.

You also won’t be aware of how differently people in other cultures have been shaped by their own culture. The result? You’re unprepared for the extent of the cultural differences that you’ll face as you ‘go global’.

It’s better to begin by assuming that cultural differences will exist when you do business internationally… and acknowledge that it’s your job to uncover them.

2. Challenge Stereotypes

Challenge your stereotypes about other cultures. Stereotypes are oversimplified ideas about certain groups of people. We all have them and they affect our attitudes and expectations as we communicate with people from that group. When doing business in Europe for example, we might expect our Italian counterparts to be late for a meeting whereas a Swiss would always be punctual and well-organised.

We use stereotypes to simplify our social world, as they reduce the amount of thinking we have to do when we encounter a new culture. A stereotype gives the illusion of a predictable pattern we can learn, providing a kind of boilerplate for how to react to any given cross cultural situation. Unfortunately, while they can convey a general impression of a culture, stereotypes aren’t accurate and individual people often don’t conform to stereotypes. That’s why cross-cultural stereotypes need to be treated carefully – they can have a negative impact on our thinking and our capacity to perceive things with discernment.

When doing business internationally, get ready to challenge the initial stereotypes that you have about the people in your target market.

3. Appreciate that each market will need a different cultural approach

Because each country has its own culture, it’s important to appreciate that each market will need a slightly different cultural approach. It might need to be a little different or very different from your domestic approach.

When companies are expanding to another country which seems culturally similar, they do all sorts of other preparation – create a great pitch deck, work out pricing, investigate logistics – but they don’t do anything on culture because they figure that if they can communicate with their counterparts in the same language then everything will be ok. They make no effort to understand cultural differences and the impact that these could have on how successful they are in the new place.

A colleague experienced first-hand that what works in China, won’t work in Japan. He spent two years in China, setting up subsidiaries for a large international company, and learning how to do things. Just as he’d mastered China, he was transferred to Japan to do a similar job, because his company assumed he had “Asia skills”. He tried to apply his “China skills” to Japan but found that it didn’t work at all, because the business culture was different.

Once you recognise that you need to get prepared for cultural differences in the same way that you prepare for every other part of your international business strategy, you can get to work.