Monocle Magazine

We find Monocle Magazine fun and ridiculous in equal measure.  We love the focus on international affairs, politics and travel.  Thearticles about the best interior design of private fleet aircraft are a little out of our league in terms of potential benefit.  That said, magazines are escapism, right?  So, onto the private jet and off to have a chat to Kim Jong-Un about his basketball fetish and lavish collection of Nike trainers…One edition and series of articles worth a look is the March 2012 special on Australia.

The Social Animal, David Brooks

This book was our BI Christmas gift.  A controversial one as some of us loved it, and some of us hated it.  I liked the book for the perspective it provides regarding how people from diverse backgrounds often have insights others don’t have access to, and how important it is that we can tap into their perspectives.  It also explores power and how easy it is to surround yourself with people ‘like me’ and how dangerous this insulation is in terms of understanding the complex and diverse realities of the societies we live in.  That said, the method the book uses to explore these themes has a few drawbacks.  Here’s where we get to the hatred part – Brooks uses two fictitious characters as the narrative thread throughout the book.  These characters in the book are titled ‘Julia’ and ‘Rob’.  Among our BI team members,  Emma, Tom, (and Tom’s wife for that matter) found Brook’s characters immensely irritating.  Emma said she preferred watching Brooks on TED.  I saw him on TED and preferred his book!  Ramona on the other hand loved the storytelling style, saying she enjoyed how Brooks’ focused on the impact of early lessons and experiences influencing the people we become was fascinating.  We’d love to know what you thought if you read it?!

The Art of Choosing, Sheena Iyengar

Ramona gave me this book for Christmas and it is great.  I prefer Iyengar when she delves into the depths of intercultural perception and attitudes toward choice, but much of her market share in the ‘business space’ I am sure is due to the value of her insights on consumer behaviour.  Iyengar is the source of the famous jam study – you remember the one where they tested purchasing behaviour when people had the option to taste and buy more than 30 flavours or just six?  Her results were so powerful, we see groupings of six or less in most consumer contexts to enable us to get our heads around the cognitive challenges of choice leading to action.  Iyengar has a compelling personal story.  She is the child of Indian Sikh migrants to the USA, and blind – a lifestory which causes her to reflect deeply on the cultural attitudes of her family and the navigation of choice in life. Well worth reading.

The Lady and the Peacock: The life of Aung San Suu Kyi, by Peter Popham

I loved this book.  What’s not to love?  A gripping story of an amazing woman, a very current and topical issue, and a focus on something we are all looking to learn more about.  These types of biographies have the potential to be a bit dry with endless historical recitations, but Peter Popham manages to tell the story of the person and her journey and keeps us interested at every turn.  Myanmar is rapidly changing and the removal of sanctions and ‘opening’ is creating a gold rush mentality in the business space.  At the Australia Thailand Business Council we’ve now appointed a ‘Regional Collaboration: Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia’ Committee Chair to keep us focused on this and the implications.  Christa Avery presented on the changes last week at our strategic business dialogue.  Christa lived in Myanmar in the 1990′s during the last ‘opening’ – we hope this round will be more long lasting.

Radio/Podcasting – Start the Week on BBC

Emma Kettle recommended this programme and what a discovery.  Start the week is hosted by Andrew Marr and features an extraordinary diversity of guests.  The episode last week on the science of creativity with neuroscientist Jonah Lehrer; author Joanna Kavenna; musician and sound artist Scanner; and chemist Rachel O’Reilly was one of Emma’s favourites.  I really liked the episodes on National Identity and China.  The ‘Australian culture’ episode with Thomas Kenneally, Deborah Cheetham and Kate Grenville was a highlight for me.  It’s always refreshing and suprising to learn about your own culture as perceived by others.

Watch  this space – Our Business Book

I attended a Sydney Writers Centre workshop last week on ‘How to write a business book’.  Hopefully a BI book will eventuate.  Valerie Khoo, the presenter was very honest and I am back to the drawing board!  Watch this space…

Tom and his China map!

What we’ve been up to:

- Rolling out ‘Unconscious Bias’ training to the entire staff of a large financial institution focusing on the skills to engage with and leverage diversity

-  Delivering ‘Global Virtual Team Effectiveness’ Programs to corporate clients

- Delivering the ‘Parents Understanding  Asia Literacy‘ program around Australia.   I also went to Canberra to meet with Peter Garrett to discuss business needs for an Asia literate workforce.  Click here to see his related press release

- Meeting with the Review Team to provide input, and writing our submission into the ‘Australia in the Asian Century’ Government Review. Click here to read.

-  Delivering ‘Re-entry’ de-briefings, ‘Pre-posting Training’, ‘Intercultural Effectiveness’ training and ‘Working with Local Staff’ training for internationally engaged government departments

-  Advising the CEO’s and Senior Leadership teams of three large companies who are navigating key challenges in Asia

Tom, Judy, John and Ramona at BI Planning Session

-  Working with the leadership team and staff involved at a corporate client to facilitate transitioning key work to Malaysia

-  Submitting a tender to renew our preferred provider status with the Dept of Immigration & Citizenship

-  Working with a highly diverse team of an International NGO in SEAsia focusing on enabling better intercultural collaboration, dialogue and engagement

-  Planning for the Australia Thailand Business Council key event on 28 May, and the 14th International Conference on Thai Studies

Phew!  I promise our next blog post will be a review of the great books and podcasts we’ve enjoyed over the Easter break.  Hope you have a good one.

Tamerlaine

Be grateful for the freedom to see other dreams. Bless your loneliness as much as you drank of your former companionships. All that you are experiencing now will become moods of future joys. So bless it all.

Do not think your way superior to another’s. Do not venture to judge, but see things with fresh and open eyes. Do not condemn, but praise when you can, and when you can’t, be silent.

Time now is a gift for you. A gift of freedom to think and remember and understand the ever perplexing past and to recreate yourself anew in order to transform time.

Live while you are alive. Learn the ways of silence and wisdom. Learn to act, learn a new speech. Learn to be what you are in the seed of your spirit. Learn to free yourself from all the things that have moulded you and which limit your secret and undiscovered road.

Remember that all things which happen to you are raw materials. Endlessly fertile. Endlessly yielding of thoughts that could change your life and go on doing so forever.

Never forget to pray and be thankful for all things good or bad on the rich road; for everything is changeable so long as you live while you are alive.

Fear not, but be full of light and love. Fear not, but be alert and receptive. Fear not, but act decisively when you should. Fear not, but know when to stop. Fear not, for you are loved by me. Fear not, for death is not the real terror, but life magically is.

Be joyful in your silence, be strong in your patience. Do not try to wrestle with the universe, but be sometimes like water or air, sometimes like fire, and constant like the earth.

Live slowly, think slowly, for time is a mystery. Never forget that love requires always that you be the greatest person you are capable of being, self-regenerating and strong and gentle–your own hero and star.

Love demands the best in us. To always and in time oversome the worst and lowest in our souls. Love the world wisely.  It is love alone that is the greatest weapon and the deepest and hardest secret.

So fear not, my friend. The darkness is gentler than you think. Be grateful for the manifold, dreams of creation, and the many ways of the unnumbered peoples.

Be grateful for life as you live it. And may a wonderful light always guide you on the unfolding road.

Filed under: Complexity, Connectivity, Cross-cultural, Culture, Diversity, Education, Globalisation, Travel ]]> http://intercultural.com.au/2011/12/14/my-favourite-poem-to-an-english-friend-in-africa-by-ben-okri/feed/ 0 bintercultural afroca http://intercultural.com.au/2011/11/03/parents-understanding-asia-literacy/ http://intercultural.com.au/2011/11/03/parents-understanding-asia-literacy/#comments Thu, 03 Nov 2011 02:05:21 +0000 Tamerlaine Beasley http://bintercultural.wordpress.com/?p=598 ]]>

Tom Parker and I are gearing up to deliver a series of 15 training workshops to networks of over 220 parents from around Australia in 2012 focusing on the why and how of Asia literacy.  The project will establish a network of parents who can work collaboratively with school leaders to build student demand for knowledge, skills and understanding of Asia and increase opportunities for them to be exposed to high quality and sustainable teaching programs.

Click here to listen to project leader Ian Dalton, and BI Consultant Tom Parker discuss the project on ABC Life Matters.

As parents of school age children, Tom and I, are deeply committed to Asia literacy in our schools, and concerned about the lack of momentum on this issue.  In Australia, Asia focused curriculum content and language competencies are both really important.  It’s vital our children understand the geographic region they live in; are well rounded individuals who thrive in the diverse cultures of Australia; and have the requisite skills and knowledge to be global citizens.

Parents play an important role in the subject choices of their children, and have the capacity to influence important choices in their local communities and schools regarding Asia literacy.  In recognition of the role of parents, this exciting new program is funded by the Department of Education and Workplace Relations to build parent understanding and advocacy for Asia literacy.  A consortium of providers consisting of Beasley Intercultural, the Asia Education Foundation,  the Australian Parents Council, The Australian Council of State School Organisations, the Family School & Community Partnerships Bureau,  and Erebus are working together to design and deliver the program.

To find out more or register your interest at the project website click here.

Our new office

We talk so frequently about the joys and realities of the global, yet an equal and necessary counterbalance is that of the local.  To belong and be a part of a community is so very important in this world of mobility, speed and change.  The capacity to connect and to be grounded in relationships that matter is essential for our wellbeing.  For our clients, the capacity to get involved with and belong to healthy communities, whether they be global or local, is essential.

What a joy to now have our business situated in the heart of a community of connected people who live and work in the one place. The capacity to have everything you need within a short walk, and so many close friends nearby is an absolute delight.  I travel interstate or internationally on an almost weekly basis, and there is nothing more special than coming ‘home’ to the community where our business resides.

The Marrickville main street is a vibrant mix of locally owned and run businesses.  McDonalds and KFC have both gone out of business here, and to sample some of the local food is to know just why. I often start the day with a coffee made by Sascha at Marrickville Road café – the guy who knows my family, and my kids. At the café, I’m guaranteed to bump into a few locals, our real estate agent, the beauticians from the local salon, or parents from the school. The alternative is Coffee Alchemy, known as ‘The Temple’ – a place where people come to wait and pay homage to the best coffee in Sydney.   At the time of day I was previously spending travelling to our city office in packed trains of cranky commuters, I now take my daughter to the local school.  At the assembly I, and a gaggle of other parents are greeted by 150 kids chorusing “good morning, parents up the back”.  The school teaches Vietnamese, Greek and Mandarin and is another hub of the local community.

At Beasley Intercultural we assist clients negotiate the challenges of traversing, engaging and working with highly complex and diverse communities. In recent months we have been fortunate to work with individuals involved in the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, also worked with senior corporate leaders in a multinational accounting company focusing on client engagement in complex, global contexts, and are preparing to facilitate discussions with the Community Detention Network in Australia with the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the Red Cross, The theme cutting across these contexts is that in our businesses and our organisations, we neglect the local, and the community at our peril.  The thread that binds, is the necessity of engaging with and acknowledging the existing strengths and resilience of diverse communities.

Community is what grounds us, what feeds our soul, and what enables us to be at our best.  Our capacity to get involved in, and connect with our community matters.

I have learned heaps of new things during this time at BI. I am ‘interculturally trained’, since I have taken part in so many BI workshops, while documenting them. Trust me, every single one has been interesting and raised my awareness a lot.

I think one of the many great things I learned, is the SURF model:
-Stop and suspend judgement
-Use your observation skills
-Recognize and respect difference
-Find common ground.

I think this model is great when you are experiencing cultural differences: either at home or abroad.  I use the model with the different people I meet, when I am unaware of their culture, for example sometimes with Aussies.

Getting to know culture or language is interesting and exciting process.  It’s the same thing than trying to learn to surf.  I have been really unfamiliar with surfing, since I have never lived near the beach and since all the sports that I do are related to snow, not ocean and waves! No matter how hard I try, there are always the waves that I won’t catch, but I just keep on trying and trying. It’s kind of the same thing when for example going abroad or working with people from different countries: no matter how well you think you understand the cultural differences, there is always something that you can’t understand. But when you keep going and trying you always learn more.

In the first blog post I was wondering am I in the ‘panic zone’? Well, now I can tell you, I’m definitely not in the panic zone.   I have been in the learning zone for a long time and I’m fully enjoying it. I have been learning bunch of different things, that I can use the rest of my life.

It’s been great to work for this team, thanks BI team for this good opportunity. Now, I’ll start new projects; including writing my Master’s Thesis and looking for some new opportunities in the Australian job markets. My adventure in Down Under will continue and I’m excitedly waiting for the new challenges.

Remember to keep on surfing!

Cheers!

  Emilia

“The revolutionary study of how the place where we grew up constrains the way we think, feel and act.” Hofstede writes about cultural differences across nations from a qualitative and quantitative perspective. Hofstede has defined cultures along five different dimensions, these include: Individual/collective, power distance, masculine/feminine, time orientation, uncertainty avoidance.

‘Cultures and Organizations’ is a must for people working and living in a global world – that means all of us. Reading the book is a thought-provoking journey into one’s own mind. For me, it provided explanations to some of the questions that I have been wondering about while studying, working and travelling around the world. Yet, the most exciting part of the book is that it enables you to see your own values; That, I think is mind broadening. I understand my values much better after reading the book.

I have studied Hofstede’s cultural dimensions before, but I never actually realised that they go so deep to our mind and ways how we act as culturally taught human beings. That we are actually “products” of our culture and cannot avoid that, because we are culturally programmed from as early as 6 months old.

The examples Hofstede uses are old and occasionally I cannot see the link between a real life example and his study. Sometimes he goes too far with his analysis or interprets some real life situations; seeing only his own study. On the other hand, these things are something that all of us interpret in a different way. Even though he tries to avoid stereotyping, I had a feeling that sometimes he doesn’t succeed. Fair enough, breaking our stereotypes is really hard. I was still left wondering: would this study and the book be written differently if the author wasn’t a white male?

The dimensions about cultural differences provide very interesting figures to study, but everything cannot be interpreted by these measures alone. Also I think everything is just not culturally related. As much as we misunderstand people from other cultures, we misunderstand people from our own culture too. Our values and thinking aren’t the same in any given culture.

I think the main point of this book is to point out how we are victims of ‘groupthink’.  Human beings are just “sheep” behaving the way we have been taught without realising it. We all definitely need more cross cultural awareness and knowledge of other ways of thinking, but more than that I think we need to question our own values that are inherited via our culture.

Emilia

It’s been exciting time for me; I have been in Australia only for few weeks. I started my first workday by watching the whales while waiting for the bus on Monday morning. That was a great start of the week and an amazing start for my internship at Beasley Intercultural in Sydney.

I had an idea that in Australia the working culture is relaxed and so far my smooth start at Beasley has been proving that. I spent the first days reading and going through what BI team has done recently, the same time my task was to update the BI Blog.

After working on the Blog I have been analyzing and resuming some of the Intercultural Essentials -training feedback. I went through feedback that about 1000 participants had written. It was interesting to read what the clients had thought about the training. Some of them said that their awareness of cultural issues grew and that now they are thinking out of the box. I’m impatiently waiting to grow awareness of Australian culture, while working at BI!

At the same time, I have been reading Hofstede’s book Cultures and Organizations – Software of the Mind. Since I have been interested in intercultural communication while doing my Masters degree, I was already familiar with the cultural dimensions. Although by reading more of Hofstede’s work each of the dimensions got so much deeper and I could understand much more why we humans are so different.

The most interesting day so far has been Monday last week. It was my first chance to go to see one of the workshops that Tamerlaine is facilitating. I was supposed to take notes in the training, but since it was so interesting, I spent my time just listening, learning and enjoying. Also it was interesting to watch the participants and their reactions to the activities that we did. Overall, the training was fascinating and it was nice to know how the trainings are facilitated.

Monday’s workshop we learnt about Comfort-, Learning- and Panic Zones. Afterwards, I have been thinking about the Zones and I’ve been wondering am I in a Learning Zone or in a Panic Zone right now? I mean definitely I’m learning new stuff in every minute that I spend here, but sometimes I feel a hint of panic because I’m Down Under!

Emilia

Whale photo by: puttpoke

Last week I attended the briefing by Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and Minister for Small Business Dr Craig Emerson.  The presentation was compelling in it’s case for engagement with China.  I asked Mr Rudd what he thought the challenges were for Australian businesses are in engaging with China and he said “re-imagining the future”.  Take a look at the presentation – I think you will get a sense of what he meant.

Tamerlaine

I have been really enjoying reading Geoff Aigner’s book ‘Leadership beyond good intentions – what it takes to really make a difference’    So many of his points resonate with the experiences many of our clients are having with leadership in complex global contexts.  Aigner tells it how it is – leadership these days can be tough!  Leaders are faced with both the ‘fantasy’ version of the leader as ‘rescuer’ or ‘hero’ which is simply impossible to live up to, while being required to lead in a context where there are numerous complex and adaptive systems changes required.  While tempting, it is not possible to simply work harder and technically excel in such contexts.  Rather, leaders are required to: engage and connect with people who have very different world-views and ways of operating, navigate increasingly complex and dynamic markets and global systems; and concurrently transform the core systems of their organisation to ‘work’ within the new context.

Aigner explores the dynamics of power/compassion, authority/freedom, betrayal/trust/and identity among others.  I found a lot of parallels with the core Beasley Intercultural model which anchors so much of our work.  In globalising organisations and complex intercultural situations, we use our model SURF™

Stop & suspend judgement

Use your observation & listening skills

Recognise & respect common ground

Find common ground & be flexible in your approach

So much of the core skill required to perform in these contexts really comes down the the personal capacity of individuals to connect with others and be self-aware enough to negotiate difference.