Leadership Anecdotes

Leadership Exercise 13-3. I was walking around the store last week. I saw something that was somewhat familiar, but a little bit different. I won't go into the details for proprietary reasons, but this was a product that I had two thoughts about. The first was that I didn't have a need for it myself. The second is that I have a friend who might.

He has a small business that he is trying to get off the ground and he is looking for additional merchandising opportunity to help raise funds. This product was actually a great fit for his business, but I knew he didn't have anything like it yet. I thought I should get the information of the manufacturer and send that to my friend. He could find out what the price point on the product was, if he could get his logo on it, and all those sorts of details.

He ended up calling the company. It turns out they are a local company, and he would be able to actually pay them a visit. Or, more important, he would be able to pick up the merch himself and save some money on shipping if he did business with them. At last report, he is still mulling over the finer points of the offer, and evaluating the financial aspects of the deal. This is something he might well pursue.

But it takes that little bit of forethought and big picture thinking to move beyond "Oh, ok, well I don't really need that" to "Now there's a product we can make money off of." Exercise 14-3. I have some experience maybe not working with people from different cultures but certainly having some interactions with them. I must admit that I am not entirely sure what I am supposed to reflect on. I'm supposed to find someone different and "relate meaningfully" with them -- that just sounds awfully strange.

You can't fake a meaningful interaction, that's a bit of an oxymoron. But how this works in theory is this. I wasn't too worried about the differences at the time, and that's probably the right attitude to have about those types of situations. You just need to focus on the commonalities with other people, and not get too concerned about differences.

If you sweat making faux pas and things like that, I think you are more apt to be offensive than if you just be yourself and let them be themselves. You also have to remember that not all differences arise from cultural differences. Many differnces are just personality differneces. So as a manager or anybody else you cannot readiliy assume that differences relate to culture. Moreover, you also cannot tell just from looking at someone whether they come from a different culture or not.

You can get into a lot of trouble guessing about where a person is from or what their personality is going to be like. For me, that's a landmine I'd prefer not to step on, so when I'm dealing with people from other cultures -- or who I might suspect to be of another culture -- I just deal with them as people, and that seems to work well. When you're applying this to a managerial situation, obviously there are some differences.

You know the culture of the person you are dealing with. In that context, you have to understand some of the different communication dynamics in particular, but at the same time all that helps you do is deal with them more effectively on a human level.

There is a point where you can't let people just do what they want "because it's their culture," the organization is more important when they are on the job, so it is best to focus on the organizational culture and not get too caught up in cultural relativism and guesswork. Deal with people as people; work with them one-on-one, find out what they need and what motivates them, and you'll have a workforce pulling in the same direction. Quiz 13-1.

On this quiz I scored a 45, which indicates a somewhat neutral, detached attitude, according to the survey. Mind you, I tended to get this score by answering either a 5 or a 1, so I'm not sure that constitutes neutral. To put the score into context, I don't believe that my actions today will affect the company several years into the future -- they don't make a difference today to a billion-dollar enterprise.

I also don't believe that low-level workers are generally consulted about the strategic visions, and in that respect they should probably focus on doing what they are paid to do. If I'm paying somebody to serve burgers (or whatever), I don't need them telling me all about how I need to overhaul the organizational structure. I have an army of highly-trained professionals to inform me about my options there. That's not a lack of strategic mindset, that's being realistic.

In general, most of the questions got a 5 in support of the strategic mindset from me. Quiz.