Reams have been written about how Facebook's grand plan to connect millions of Indians to the internet went horribly wrong and they faced one of their biggest setbacks ever. You would expect that a company of that size would know better than to trip on poor understanding of local culture and aspirations. As someone who started my working life in India, I have lost count of the number of times multinationals come in with a campaign or an idea that has worked for them in another market(namely HQ), that they want executed verbatim (an occasional client would consider language). 

While the world appears fragmented the reality is that we live in an increasingly interconnected world. And if we consider the local context and the UK it is more likely than not that your co-workers, employees, suppliers, customers are likely to be from different cultural backgrounds. The ability to engage effectively with people who are not like us or cultures that are different does not come naturally to everyone. Being able to successfully navigate internally and externally is a skill, it requires us to develop some level of cultural competence. 

My guest on this episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast is Melanie Chevalier, Founder of Creative Culture. Melanie set up her consultancy long before it was fashionable to talk about culture and cultural diversity. Her passion is rooted in her love for languages and her upbringing as the daughter of expats - living in Taiwan, Brazil, Cameroon, France, Spain before settling down in the UK 

In this episode we talk about importance for cross cultural understanding for businesses

How important is language in understanding cultural nuances and barriers? 

Making sure local cultural insights are used at the design process of campaigns/processes. Rather than trying to fit it in at the last stage - when it is more likely than not that it is too late. 

How cross cultural understanding has moved up the agenda of the C-suite?

What can organisations do to exhibit cultural sensitivity? 

Poor understanding and it's impact on the bottomline? 

We also speak about future tense languages, best practice, examples of those who are doing it right and what organisations can do to get started on their journey. 

Memorable passages from the interview:

👉🏾 Thank you very much, it's a pleasure to be here. 

👉🏾 Sure. So I'm Melanie, I'm French a hundred percent as it happens, but I was very fortunate to be the daughter of an expat, which means I was raised around the world. So I grew up in Taiwan, Brazil, Cameroon came back to France for a few years and then moved on to Spain and then the UK, which I've been living in for 16 years now.

👉🏾 So really very much of an international background. I went both to the American and the French schooling system, which obviously opened my mind to different ways, very different ways. And so it was only a natural that I ended up studying languages and I had a really keen interest in marketing and advertising. So I built my career really around my passion for languages and cultures and prior to setting Creative Culture, I spent a few years in transcreation which is typically the process of adapting creative copy to multiple languages, but always retaining this really important cultural aspect behind it, both in terms of the company culture, tone of voice and values of the brand, but also from a country culture perspective.

👉🏾 Sure. So as I was mentioning before I set up the business, I was in transcreation, solely. So looking a bit at the end part of the process when you're communicating to different markets. And I realised that there was a gap in the market whereby the cultural element was always left to the last minutes, which was always too late because effectively as much as you can adapt some copy, if concepts or messages are irrelevant to a culture and they won't work, well there's not much you can do.

👉🏾 So this leads to either cultural disasters or local markets not using the assets that are developed centrally. So I wanted to come up with a concept which I have named Creative Culture where we would have a much more holistic view of culture and we would really look at taking it much more upstream in the process to really give, central teams or global teams the tools they needed to understand their markets before they finalise a concept, an idea, a campaign. And really by infiltrating all those local insights, you would really enrich the whole process.

👉🏾 So effectively what it is we do, is cross-cultural consultancy and the idea is really to come and support international companies and brands in developing messages and concepts across international cultures or local cultures, I should say, by providing this level insight and understanding. So it comes in many different shapes and forms because we work with marcomms, we work with brand, we work with corporate digital. We also work with HR and learning & development, but it's providing whatever knowledge and intelligence that seems require to understand multiple cultures. 

👉🏾 And the way we do this is we have a network of over 2,800 experts in over 120 countries. And that pool of talent is growing everyday because typically we have new requirements across different industries or specific subjects, new countries of course. And historically we were doing, as I mentioned a lot of international work but over the last couple of years, we've been having a lot more requests around domestic work and cultural sensitivity, obviously in light of what's happened with black lives matter, I think there is and particularly, I guess, in the UK where a lot of our clients are, this needs to make sure that the messages are coming across in the best way to lots of different cultures and subcultures within one nation. 

 👉🏾 I think the answer is because obviously the world is getting more diverse as we go. A lot of people think actually the world is very global it's an oyster and it's great we're all very similar. The reality is actually cultures are mixing more and more and it's making the landscape a lot more fragmented and complex, obviously to understand because there's no such thing as an Indian person or a French person, and that being a profile that ticks all the boxes to some sort of framework that could allow you to understand that. But also because cultural differences and cultural diversity is actually a strength. And historically it's actually been seen as a challenge and one that's a lot of global teams, sort of feel they can't handle and they will just leave to the local markets to deal with.

👉🏾 But the reality is if you don't give the platform to the company in itself and particularly at a global level to have this understanding of how it functions . Well, it typically doesn't because you become an entity that is very siloed and an entity that has a lot of conflicts because people don't speak the same language typically, and it's not just a language of a country. It's just, they don't think in the same way. They don't know how to collaborate together. 

👉🏾 So, it becomes very difficult if you don't get it right. And you're right, I think we're having very different conversations now over the last few years. There's more of an understanding of the importance of it, but I think many businesses, still don't know what to do about it and how to tackle that. And from our perspective, if you have this knowledge and this understanding, actually you get real competitive advantage because at the end of the day diverse teams are more productive, they're more creative, they challenge the status quo because there's not the one way of thinking. It's very similar to diversity and inclusion as a piece, but in the cultural sort of area, because you're more representative of the world out there and the people you're talking to, to whether they are employees internally or consumers externally. And so I think it really allows brands to thrive and have a point of view on things.

👉🏾 So to me, the businesses that will get this rights first will have a huge competitive advantage compared to the others. Hopefully we'll get to a place where everyone levels up, but I think it's a really powerful tool. 

👉🏾 It is very important language is our main form of communication as human beings. This is how we interact effectively. And actually many studies have been undertaken to prove that languages have a real impact and really shapes our behaviour and how we think as people, without us understanding just as do culture as effectively. And there was a really interesting paper entitled 'Talking in the present, caring for the future' language and the environment, and effectively it is proven that future tense languages impacts our behaviour.

👉🏾 So english is a future tense language, because you say next week I will do this, or I will do that. Other languages like German, Finnish and even Chinese do not have any distinct future tense. So typically they go next week I do this. And it concludes the study that the speakers who have a language that is not future tense, have more ability to put themselves in the future because to them there's no barrier the future is not actually something that may or may not happen. You're already in the future and you're building it. 

👉🏾And in people's behaviour to the environment-specific is really interesting because the survey shows that there would be a 20% increase in individual's tendency to help protect the environment, if they went from present tense to future tense languages. So it just really, really, really influences how we speak. So I think it is absolutely critical to be aware of it and aware of the differences between a language and another. And going back to diversity and inclusion, the whole piece around inclusive language is also absolutely fundamental to change people's behaviour towards being more inclusive obviously.

👉🏾 Absolutely, I think the topic has moved up the agenda for sure within organisations up to the C-suite, I'm not sure yet, but hopefully it's making progress somehow. But I think it also depends on geographies, typically going back to the Black Lives Matter movement it has had a huge impact in the Western world and particularly in the Anglo-Saxon nations, such as the US or the UK. But the conversation is still in its infancy or non existing in some countries, particularly in those that historically have not been very culturally diverse. So you take for example, countries like Russia or Korea, Japan or China. It's not considered as a challenge because typically they haven't been faced with diversity as much as other countries have to date.

👉🏾 So they're not even aware that it might exist or it is a thing. So I think it's definitely coming up and I agree with you, there is an absolute need to upskill people because there's a lack of confidence. People know it's important and they want to make a change, but they don't know how to go about it.

👉🏾 So a lot of the cultural understanding work that we do specifically is external audience facing. So that will be anything between marketing and branding external, in that sense. But within organisations it might come from internal teams that work at an international level and are struggling and they don't necessarily go through HR directly, but the piece around cultural sensitivity that is tied into diversity and inclusion is very much HR and learning and development driven.

👉🏾 I think the key is to provide the teams with the right ammunition and the tools to becoming aware first and then sensitive in a second stage effectively. So there are lots of different ways of doing this of course. So cultural awareness training is one way so understanding how to work with different cultures, the fact that we speak and behave in a different way and how we can align to each other, because at the end of the day it's about reconciliation, and us coming to a common ground where we can communicate in a constructive manner together. 

👉🏾 There are lots of academic work around this and tools we have. Trompenaars who is one of the masters of cross-cultural, intercultural management. And he's developed many, many tools across the years, they're really useful tools to use as teams. Inclusive language training is also very important, it goes back to the element of this is not inbred in people, they don't know how to do it. They are unsure of what should be said or shouldn't be said and how to go about it. So they need to be taught on how to communicate in a more sensitive manner and across different cultures that is also very relevant. 

👉🏾 I think then another element is to remember, to allocate a budget to it. We still see too often, companies thinking, "oh it's great" in principle, but when it comes to actioning it they go, "oh well, we don't really have a budget for this". And the same goes for diversity and inclusion, by the way. And I've seen this over the last 12 months a lot. And sometimes it doesn't mean allocating an extensive budget, but some trainings that are top line are sufficient on some areas to really raise this awareness and for people to be a bit more cautious when they're communicating across cultures from, different places around the world and who would do it differently from them. 

👉🏾 Working with the right experts is obviously really important because there are processes that can be implemented along the way. Typically again, looking at marcomms, developing global campaigns. There are steps you can take at the beginning of the process to ensure whatever you're putting across resonates before you actually go to your markets and it's either too late or they push back. And I think tying it into the conversation for recruitment is also very important because you have to be seen as wanting to be diverse and embracing diversity and cultural diversity. So trying to make a conscious effort when you're recruiting to look at teams from different horizons, from different cultures and so on is really also a way to exhibit that you're wanting to be sensitive and inclusive.

👉🏾 Absolutely, but obviously we are all in the midst of COVID. So you need to give companies the benefit of the doubt that they're looking to catch up. So we'll see how their react in the next 2, 3, 4, 5 years. 

👉🏾 There are plenty, I haven't thought of concrete examples specifically, but internally both globally and at a domestic level, it does create divides between teams and people. So obviously that in itself has a really negative impact in many many different respects of course. But not understanding each other is one of the worst things that can happen when you're trying to build something together, so this is really a big one. 

👉🏾 The one vision only side of things is also something that impacts performance, productivity and profitability because effectively we're just going down the same narrow route of thinking in the same manner, whereas bringing that diversity can create quite the opposite of course. And people can become difficult because they're not feeling they're being heard or given a voice in the process. So it's really, really important and obviously all of this has an impact on retention and attrition within a business. 

👉🏾 Externally, there is also quite a lot of consequences, poor corporate culture always has an impact on an employer brand and attractiveness, so it is harder to attract talent. The lack of relevance also has an impact on sales, if you're communicating in a way that is obviously not relevant you're not attractive, people don't trust you as a brand. So, that has quite a bit of an impact. Obviously there's a lot of elements around developing products or service offering that is again not going to be relevant. And a lot of crisis management is required when those mistakes happen. So it's something that can be very costly in very many ways, the impact on the brand and what you have to do to salvage the brand from some cultural blunders can be actually a lot more expensive than you would imagine.

👉🏾 Yes. So one I really like, sadly we're not working with them, but I've read a lot about it and I think is really interesting is HubSpot. So they have integrated and embedded cross-cultural intelligence and diversity, what they call diversity inclusion and belonging into their strategy as a company and including global expansion. One example is how they choose their office locations, they base it on their diversity and inclusion values, which are very much focused on gender. And they do that because they want to ensure the employees that they then recruit in specific markets where they've expanded, feel comfortable and included. 

👉🏾 And so when they opened operations in Latin America, they did a really thorough study of the whole continent and they ended up choosing Columbia as a location because it was the country with the highest support rate towards women and LGBTQ+. So this is how they made their decisions of opening offices in that location, in that region. And they also have a lot of training around anti-racism that is global and mandatory, so they don't give a choice to employees they actually make them all attend those training courses. And they also have a really good inclusive language policy, you can see on their websites the adaptation in languages like Spanish is genderless. So they've been really early in implementing this.

👉🏾 I think that again, its where culture and diversity and inclusion overlap in one sense, but I think it's a really, really good example of that. And then a company adapting to a local culture. I think Yum brands, which owns several restaurant chains, including KFC in China, they've been really, really successful because they have known to stay local.

👉🏾 So they have avoided the sort of standard offering that a lot of fast-food chains do. They've started sourcing local food. They've hired local staff and they've adapted all of their menus of course. And they've managed their company in a way that they're seen as part of the local community, as opposed to foreign company sort of arriving and imposing its way through local countries. And apparently there's very much of a family feel to the employer-employee relationship. So it's one that's worked out really, really well. And as we know China is a market that represent...