Steen:
At 15:31 30/11/1995 MET, you wrote:
>Although it may look unpolite to our many good colleagues in the US the
>following is an invitation to join setting up an European Community funded
>project, which allows only participant from EEC countries.
As a US national that has lived offshore in Asia, Europe and the Middle
East, I am sympathetic to a Euro-centric focus for the following reasons.
Joint ventures, mergers, offshore distribution operations invariably fail
due to a clash of cultures, and that clash is driven, not by technology or
financials, but by the failure to set, and reset, mutual expectations and
the failure to build and maintain relationships that can span the barriers
of time zones, sheer distance, culture, and the customs agent. I was for
many years an "imported talking head" brought in to make sales
presentations in offshore regions, and I had the temerity to believe that
I understood European business practices. It was not until I went to live
there and participate in the daily scrum, that I came to understand the
flow and could make suggestions that could succeed with some consistency.
Much of my most important work was being the "ambassador" who interpreted
local needs back to home office. Americans often have the (unspoken)
feeling that different is wrong, rather than merely being different. The
EC had 12 ways to do business. EFTA added 4 more. Now the growing EU has
some 20. They are all different and must be dealt with accordingly.
In many ways, America is an intellectual island bounded by two oceans and
two neighbors, one of whom we ignore and the other we denigrate. We even
ignore the degrees of acceptance or resistance to an idea between regions
of our own nation. On average, Europeans have a much greater risk
aversion that their American colleagues -- my Euro-colleagues always smile
when I say that, "The risk-takers got on the boat to America and have been
breeding ever since." And that risk tolerance varies greatly country to
country.
One learns slowly but progress does come. I have been told things such
as, "We like you because we don't have to retrain you (before you can be
useful)." My German colleagues call me a seri=F6ser gesch=E4ftsmann, an=
honest businessman in good standing. It is a compliment not often given
to Americans and I prize it highly. I have many well intentioned domestic
colleagues who would never admit to having the biases mentioned above, and
at one time I was among their number.
My reasons for sharing this is as much to alert my domestic colleagues to
the pitfalls awaiting their international consultancy (or their domestic
guidance to local firms on handling their offshore subsidiaries) as it is
to assure our European colleagues that there are domestic ears that are
attuned to their needs. Why the latter? It was a German that noted that
while Americans lacked international marketing experience and
cross-cultural skills, they brought a new approach in terms of customer
focus, flexibility and responsiveness that the Europeans found useful.
Good fortune on your project.
-- Best regards, Gordon Housworth Intellectual Capital Group ghidra@mail.msen.com Tel: 810-626-1310