The IIPM Think Tank - The Last Word

Women don’t wear pants in Japan! Now before your imagination runs riot, let me tell you this is one of the guidelines prescribed to many female business travellers to Japan. As per Google, “Japanese business etiquette” is one of the most searched for Japan business related keywords. According to these guidelines, Japanese men do not relate easily to women with authority in business and that can cause problems while doing business. The Japanese culture encourages women to wear long skirt suits to work. Most Japanese companies prefer that their female employees not wear high-heeled shoes as Japanese men are not very tall, and towering over them might offend some.

While “Going Dutch” is a culture common to Netherlands and accepted in many other cultures, the Turks don’t believe in “Going Dutch” at all, and a suggestion to that effect may not be appreciated much.

The head is considered a sacred place and nobody in Singapore appreciates it if you fondly pat a child on his head. In India, it’s a way of showing affection – not there.

Each country comes with its unique cultural nuances, and as a business traveller, it’s of utmost importance that one remains sensitive to these seemingly small irrelevant details. They will help you strengthen your bonds with your foreign partner and help you do business better. Though it might not in any way affect your balance sheets but it helps to understand your counterpart better when you know that sitting cross-legged in Singapore may be considered offensive, or that Germans consider a weak handshake as a signal that you are insecure and not convinced of your abilities, or that in Israel (due to years of fighting) men prefer to sit with their legs slightly apart and upper body leaning forward (akin to a position where they are ready to get up at a moment’s notice), or that in Switzerland, before starting a conversation, it’s important to shake hands with everyone – including children. While Arabs consider it a show of trust and solidarity when they put their arms around you and hold your hand with both their hands, doing the same in Germany could be one of the biggest etiquette blunders one could make. Germans avoid physical contact and placing your hand on someone’s’ shoulder could make you appear too authoritative and not appreciated.

Knowledge about the etiquettes of other cultures is becoming very vital as it could as well be a deciding factor in whether you succeed in that country or not.

ACROSS THE SEAS

Yes, gone are the days when simply understanding your own country’s business environment well was enough to succeed. Today, if you really want to make it big, you need to stretch out, go beyond the boundaries and learn to do business in strange, foreign cultures.

Ratan Tata, during his 18-year tenure as Chairman of the Tata Group, ensured that his company expanded internationally – a strategy that India’s other business houses copied and are still trying. Today, the Tatas have annual revenue of about $70 billion – that’s great, but what’s of significance is that 65% of the group’s sales are derived from outside India. If you really want to grow big, you not only need to expand but also need to have a global mind-set too.

WHEN YOU DON’T THINK GLOBAL

This company’s revenues are more than the GDP of at least 144 nations, and today, it’s the world’s second largest company – yes, you guessed it right, it’s the retailing giant Wal-Mart! It’s an organisation that’s been super successful in America. As someone once said, “If you want to reach the Christian population on Sunday, you do it from the church pulpit. If you want to reach them on Saturday, you do it in Wal-Mart.” There is hardly any American who has not shopped at least once in Wal-Mart. That’s the power and reach of this retailer.

Yet, when it comes to going global, this is one company that has committed some very costly mistakes, for it failed to understand the local culture.

In Mexico, Wal-Mart started its stores and set up huge parking lots. Little did it realise that what was considered as a “facility” had no meaning for Mexicans as most came to the outlets in buses. It entered China in 1997 and in spite of doing business in the country for more than 12 years, the company has still not made a profit – it definitely has failed to understand the Chinese market. It tried to bulldoze its American styles into the Chinese market; a move that failed as expected. Selling golf balls in a low-income country like Mexico was as wrong as selling meat, neatly packaged in Styrofoam and cellophane to Chinese customers. A country where consumers insist on live fishes in grocery stores and on killing them in front of their eyes, packaged meat was looked upon as stale food and did not sell – despite being correctly priced and being of good quality.