Cross-Culture

The Glory that was Greece

The Greeks may currently owe us a lot; but our debt to the Greeks is immeasurable.

Small comfort to a country for which – according to Jeff Randall in a recent article in The Daily Telegraph – ‘there is no deus ex machina. The tragic dénouement will involve its default or withdrawal from the single currency, perhaps both.’

The deus ex machina, in classical drama, was the god who descended from the stage machinery, in order to intervene in human affairs and the phrase is generally used to mean a positive intervention, or rescue of the hero.

Randall’s whole article casts what is happening in Greece as a tragedy – which, of course, they invented, along with the foundations for Western philosophy, literature, mathematics, science, art, architecture etc. Greek intellectual achievements have been unparalleled in the history of the Western world, and they know it.

They also feel that we often fail to respect the source of our heritage enough. So the present humiliation must be all the more bitter for a justifiably proud people.

Starting with Minoan Crete, where there was evidence of settlement in 128,000 BC, real signs of civilization from 5,000 BC, and reaching a pinnacle with the city states of Sparta and Athens – which established the basis for Western civilization and liberal democracies – Greece really was the cradle of Europe.

No wonder that the Greek ideal inspired the Romantics – so much so that Lord Byron, the British poet, died (admittedly of a fever) fighting for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire, into which it had been absorbed for hundreds of years. Independence was finally achieved in 1832 with the Treaty of Constantinople.

Some of the most famous lines written about Greece are in fact Byron’s:

‘The mountains look on Marathon/And Marathon looks on the sea/And musing there an hour alone/I dream’d that Greece might yet be free.’

Modern Greeks tend to see themselves as culturally-aware, eloquent, sophisticated Europeans, experienced in social and commercial matters, with strong intellectual powers, intuition and a sense of artistry.

Key values are reason, freedom, thrift (paradoxically in the current circumstances!), a love of the sea, theatre, rationalism, debate, close family ties, a talent for business (especially small entrepreneurism), democracy, and architecture.

They are a multi-active, dialogue-oriented culture, very tactile, putting lively human interaction above clock-time, and having been scientifically proven to have the strongest eye contact in Europe. Their style of communication tends to be verbose, theatrical and intense.

Yet their intellectual heritage has given them a strong rationalism to counter the emotion, rather like the French.

To deal with them effectively in business, you should really read up something on their illustrious history as the longer-term historical perspective is important for them and a source of great pride.

Other advice:

• Avoid discussion of Greece’s decline, historical and current
• Don’t mention the problems with Cyprus
• Avoid the topics of Serbia, Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia
• Don’t praise the Turks too much
• Use some Greek
• Be prepared for long, roundabout discussion
• Let them get their emotions off their chest – they can use emotion as a weapon, so remain calm yet show compassion
• Be aware of differences in body language – a backward nod of the head means ‘no’. A tilt of the head to either side means ‘yes’
• Keep strong eye contact
• Identify the boss and address him or her directly. The boss can be extremely tough, in a paternalistic way, especially in more traditional businesses like shipping. Even nowadays, he may motivate his senior team by lining them up and slapping their faces to show them who is boss!
• Be flexible – they may well be flexible on agreements, so be prepared for them to propose modifications
• Be generous and friendly, but remain tough enough
• Even if they are in a weak position, preserve their dignity at all times
• Socialise (even till the late hours) and invest time in relationships
• Be aware they may try to charm you, so try to use your own charisma too
• Bow to their experience
• Understand that, in the end, they are pragmatic
• Above all, be aware of their shrewdness. It is probably their key defining characteristic. It is no coincidence that Odysseus, the best-known hero in Greek literature was primarily characterised for his cunning. It was he, after all, who came up with the idea of the Trojan Horse.

We began by referring to the current Greek tragedy, but does the word describe the current situation in the truest sense of the word? For instance, however sad it is, an accident is not a tragedy. A tragedy is a fall, usually ending in death, brought about by a fatal flaw in character of an otherwise great hero.

There is no doubt that Greece is a heroic nation, based on its intellectual achievements, but do those achievements contain a fatal flaw?

Probably the greatest philosophical contribution the Greeks made to the world was the idea that it is rational to strive for an ideal – whether that is at a personal or political level. The question then arises, as to what that ideal should be. At a political level, Plato’s Republic tries to build a picture of the ideal state, governed not as a democracy – maybe surprisingly – but by the ‘guardians’, who, to simplify it grossly, ‘know best.’

This idea of a Utopia has probably been the root cause of all the various ‘-isms’ that have eventually had to give way to more pragmatic forms of government.

Could it be that the European Union, with its bold single currency experiment, has pushed the ideal of an economically united Europe too far too soon?

If so, how ironic and how truly tragic, that Greece – the source of the idealism that made Europe great, and the concept of the EU possible – should be the first EU member state to bear the brunt of the harsh realities of real politik. The gods above Olympus must be shaking their heads at human hubris, or maybe giving a backward nod or two.

by Michael Gates

Culture and the Failures of our Time

Thanks to a growing adoption of training programmes aimed at fostering cross-cultural sensitization and understanding, many of today’s managers will have been exposed at some stage in their careers, at least cursorily, to the essential tools of cross-cultural analysis, such as Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. In fact, some of the senior executives who attend business school programmes on leadership and achieving organizational excellence may feel reasonably well-versed in the theory as well as the best practices of managing across cultures.

Does this mean then that cultural literacy and empathy are in good supply, and have become common attributes of good leadership? If the international events of the past few weeks are anything to go by, solid, consistent understanding of the cultural aspects, underlying assumptions and fundamental values that drive the actions and motivations of ‘the other’ continues to be conspicuous by its absence.

On the political front, Daniel C. Kurtzer and Scott B. Lasensky, authors of "Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East”, recall the 1978 Camp David negotiations between Egypt, Israel and the United States, and how "the lack of cross-cultural negotiating skills was so acute” that in the end the US State Department had to draft its top Arabic translator. It seems that a lack of expertise on Islam and dynamics of the Arab negotiating style is as prevalent in 2009 as it was 30 years ago. Not even the new, much-heralded US administration has held out much promise of a radical departure from this trend.

In education, universities in the developing world are becoming reluctant to remain on the treadmill of emulating the top-ranked and heavily-endowed Ivy League schools, and to measure success by the size of their graduates’ paycheques. As Henry Mintzberg, management professor at McGill, commented in his paper “Developing countries? Developing leaders? Learning from another place”: “The trouble with the outside-in [development] model is that it is based on imitation, and imitations are often second-rate, because copying is a mindless activity. People don’t learn.” In a recent newspaper column, the Vice-Chancellor of one of Malaysia’s top universities, Dato’ Zulkifli Abdul Razak, noted that Asia must have its own ideas of what a university is about. Own cultural values, indigenous knowledge and historical background are different from those of the West.”

Across domains and disciplines, disillusionment has set in at the visible lack of progress. In his 2006 book “Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn’t Working”, author and former World Bank official Robert Calderisi points out that “the world must now deal differently with the continent.” The Financial Times’ review of the book concurred that Africa has been for decades “suffocating under a blanket of well meant concern, ineffectual at best, and harmful at worst."

Developing countries in particular are becoming more vocal in questioning the relevance of Western rubrics and metrics, many of which were defined in the early days of Europe’s industrial revolution. As the global credit crisis morphs into a full-blown economic crisis, catching Western economists off-guard, venerable concepts like GDP, for instance, are slowly falling out of favour. In addition, many in the Third World are pointing to what they call ‘the tyranny of development’ transforming their countries’ natural and cultural landscapes to make them more receptive to First-World aid, products and expertise.

Then there is the perennial issue of how to go about, once the learning tools have been gained and the goodwill established, actually building bridges across cultures and traditions. In the media as well as in academic publications, one finds lively debates on this topic. The dominant argument at the moment, as expressed by the University of Malaya Centre for Civilizational Dialogue, is that a dialogue of civilizations “allows the drawing upon of common spiritual, cultural and civilizational values.” By contrast, H. A. Hellyer, a researcher at the University of Warwick and a prominent proponent of inter-faith dialogue, suggests that “the bridges must be built between differences, not commonalities,” and references medieval Islamdom where educated Muslims “understood the West on its own terms – but they understood the Muslim world on their own terms as well.”

Without proper tools and methodologies, efforts to induce meaningful communication between cultures tend to prove mechanical and counterproductive. For instance, given its diversity, an MBA classroom at a global business school is by definition a perfect ‘microcosm’ for fostering understanding between different backgrounds and ethnicities. Yet many MBA students come away disappointed from project group work that seemingly ‘brought together’ a healthy mix of nationalities. Trying to work together without setting up a proper context and a set of cross-cultural vocabulary to guide them through the group dynamics, they feel ‘thrown’ rather than brought together. Often, the result is resentment rather than a rich and varied new perspective.

Whatever form an emerging consensus may take, one can argue that underneath most of the major themes – and major failures – that are shaping today’s business and politics, lies a profound lack of cross-cultural empathy and understanding. Therefore, building a strong edifice of cross-cultural communication will be without a doubt one of the biggest, and most challenging, projects of our century.

by Martin Králik

The Crooked Timber of Humanity

Re-reading (amongst other things) Isaiah Berlin's wonderful collection of essays, The Crooked Timber of Humanity. The title is based on a quotation from Kant "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made."

At heart it is a passionate defence of diversity and the liberty to choose.

He traces his realisation that more than one system of values exists in principle as well as in practice to Machiavelli, and blames a lot of the '-isms' that caused so much turmoil and cruelty in the last century to a belief in absolute values running from Plato, via the French Enlightenment, to Marx. Berlin witnessed the Russian Revolution first hand as a young boy in St. Petersburg, so knows from experience – not just theory – what he is talking about.

One of his heroes is clearly the German philosopher Herder, pupil of Kant, who taught in Riga – the town of Berlin's birth. Herder reacted against French rationalism and a belief in absolute values and argued that values are culturally-determined and that our whole way of thinking is dictated by the language we are brought up with. This pre-dates the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis by about 200 years.

Nowadays the accepted wisdom seems to be somewhere between Sapir-Whorf and the opposite view of Chomsky who thinks that language is at bottom universal, or Pinker, who seems not to believe that we think in language at all. Who knows?

But the idea that not everything human can be unified into one all-embracing system, and that many of our problems arise from believing that we should try to find and impose one, is one that is of bigger relevance than ever today.

Being able to enter into other world-views and understand and feel them, rather than just know about them, is a must-have skill for the 21st century.

The Germans have a good linguistic distinction for this, which Berlin mentions – the difference between 'verstehen' which is more like understanding by putting yourself in someone else's place, and 'wissen' which is more like scientific knowledge.

Deep thinkers, these Germans!

by Michael Gates