Thought Of The Week

While working on a project in Mexico this week, I was reminded of the great cultural differences that exist between there and the U.S. Not just those that affect consumers and their buying preferences but the business culture as well and how one must adapt to how partners, vendors and suppliers go about their business everyday.

Cultural bias affects us all. Those who think they have no bias are in denial. The challenge for each of us is how to confront our own bias, determine how it affects our business relationships in other countries and then try and tame it. I don’t say eliminate it. That’s delusional. All we can do, realistically, is recognize we each have it and try and mitigate how it affects us. Everyone is different and bias is intensely personal.

In my classes at NYU before I began each semester, I gave my students bias tests just to show them, in a humorous way, how we are all affected by it and just how ingrained it is. It can be influenced by personal experience but often is more generational as how people act in a culture and how they are perceived by others changes over time. My students’ biases were not mine as there was a generation gap between us. But theirs were just as inaccurate and misleading as mine. Some things never change.

To succeed in international marketing each of us has to recognize and control our bias demons. If you are interested in testing yourself, drop me a line and I’ll send some self-tests. In a week or two I’ll post these on our website. It’s fun and doesn’t hurt! Not much anyway. My e-mail is: doug@focus-worldwide.com