manager firmer Cedar’s bends and you’re
getting this cool job you can actually
start introducing your brand in China
now you know that luxury products from
the West do very well in the whole of
Asia so you know you’re gonna be a
success but China is a bit of a weird
place for you it’s different than what
you’re used to so they they pronounce
bends differently and whenever you
actually demonstrate what your cars are
all about they look at you weird but hey
you don’t understand the culture so you
really don’t know what’s going on it
will be okay and then after a while you
find out that the pronunciation of bends
is actually completely wrong so the
Chinese the way they say bends is wrong
they say and my apologies to the Chinese
amongst you because I don’t speak
Chinese but I was helped for this and
what they say is then see which is
actually rush to the death so you have a
car in which you can rush through the
death now you don’t want to pay a lot of
money for that do you so you don’t find
that out as a foreigner
and when you do and these it can be
easily corrected at least that is not
too hard to do but of course it’s
already cost you millions of dollars
because you have to now pronunciation
and every ad campaign and everything
differently so it is easy to change it
is called over the translation is now or
the pronunciation
now is venture which is called dashing
speed so that’s much better for your car
now Gerber a brand of baby milk actually
didn’t get the skyrocketing success they
were waiting for in South America and
they didn’t understand and they started
asking why and then it turned out that
parents didn’t want to buy the baby milk
for their children because Conibear in
Spanish means to vomit this it sounds so
so easy to to not do but it’s actually
hard to miss if you don’t speak the
language and you don’t really get
involved and these are costly but small
mistakes and they’re just the tip of the
iceberg there are many layers of
cross-cultural problems and many layers
of cross-cultural communication mistakes
now let’s talk about feet we are happy
with feet right we are relaxed about
feet feet can’t really offend us not
here but they can offend us of they can
offend people in Asia and in Arab
cultures their feet are considered very
unclean and when they’re unclean that
means that you can’t show them so if you
show the soles of feet to Asians or to
Arabs they are very offended you should
actually not show them at all not
covered not bare so my clients a
financial service provider in Amsterdam
asked me to look into his cross-cultural
communication that he was doing for his
markets in Asia and his son and in the
Middle East so he had a service he said
if you use this service then you don’t
have to worry about everything is ok now
his enthusiastic web designer
looked for a picture for the front page
that would be actually very close to
that feeling so when all is happiness
and enthusiasm he showed me this so this
is exactly what you shouldn’t do this is
exactly what is the most offending thing
that you can do in Asia and in Arab
countries now when I told the web
designer he had processed this through
his own set of values when I told him he
actually still wasn’t impressed and he
thought yeah you know people can
actually be difficult but everything and
uh well you know leave it there and I
said well there’s no point to actually
even start selling your product if this
is what you put on your home page so
people filter this through their own
ideas people get confused also about
what perceptions are in different areas
of the world generally we offend without
knowing it we make each other sometimes
angry without knowing it between
cultures we don’t want to offend we
don’t want to make people angry but we
misinterpret and once we do that we
actually start retracting getting
annoyed getting into our own normal way
of behaving and we cannot communicate at
all anymore
wouldn’t it be fantastic if we would
understand each other’s perceptions if
we would understand what somebody else
sees when they look at us what somebody
else feels when they look at us when we
do the simplest things somebody else
might be offended and we don’t know
wouldn’t it be great if we would know
that because if we would know that we
would actually be able to to connect to
each other and not feel offended or feel
disrespected or even fear each other now
clap the culture what is culture
actually culture is actually
a perception the the collective
perceptions that people have with each
other it’s like glue it’s like DNA
within a group of people so culture is
determined by circumstances often it’s
determined by geography and history now
if you have hot climates people live
outside they live outdoors so they they
trade in the streets they work with each
other in the streets they meet and they
also spent their money outside of the
house when you have a cold climate
people stay inside say in Scandinavian
countries it’s cold and hot outside so
people stay inside inside of their
houses inside of their rooms and that’s
where they spend their money on also
it’s not a coincidence that IKEA
actually started in Scandinavia so the
Dutch have actually also adjusted to
their natural surroundings we are a
small country by the sea with a lot of
neighbours and these neighbours actually
spoke other languages so we learnt many
languages and we’re very known for this
people are very amazed that we speak so
many languages and that’s because we
wanted to trade we had to protect
ourselves against the water so doing
this we actually learned how to protect
land how to reclaim land and now we are
the best water managers in the world
because of the challenges we’ve had
we’ve created some real business all all
over the world have any of you ever
looked outside of the window when you
land at Schiphol Airport every single
centimeter of our country is organized
and I I have been with foreigners next
to me in a plane and they were just
looking outside and going what it’s so
organized
we had to that’s how we survived so this
is what has become part of who we are
perceptions are actually something we
are not aware of
we meet other people to meet other
people that are different it’s like
looking through yellow glasses all of
your life you don’t know that you’re
looking through yellow glasses because
there’s nothing else that’s all you see
but actually if everybody around you
also has yellow glasses that will be the
end of it the moment you meet somebody
with pink glasses that look at the world
in a different way then it gets
complicated because you don’t know
they’re wearing pink glasses they don’t
know that you’re wearing yellow glasses
so actually it’s sometimes very hard to
communicate unless you start
understanding you have actually met
somebody with other glasses and this is
how we start understanding other
cultures by meeting them by starting to
understand how they think when I went
abroad that was when I understood what
it was to be a Dutch person I didn’t
know how we thought that was just normal
I never thought about it but the moment
I went outside of my country I
understood who we were who we
collectively are and also what we what
others think about us and would others
feel about us I started understanding
that wouldn’t it be great if we could
look through each other’s glasses and
see how somebody else sees the world and
see how somebody else these
possibilities and success were we don’t
if you look at different perceptions
this is one that actually causes a lot
of emotions here in Europe we cannot not
react to this picture this is so intense
for us because of our history but I’ve
seen a boy with this kind of shirts many
of times in Asia and in India in India
this is the symbol of fertility there’s
nothing wrong nobody understands in
India that we think about Second World
War when we are old in the net in Europe
or in the Netherlands or in the West we
lose youth
in the East East and in Africa we
actually gain wisdom there’s a
difference in perception like the Dutch
have actually been excelling in water
management there is a way of every
culture to excel and we have to find out
what other cultures have become good in
because of what they have gone through
in their existence what they’ve had to
battle so if you look at Asian and
African nations you will see that they
have learned a lot of sustainability
because of what happened in their lives
because of what happened in their
existence they had to face daily
challenges that we didn’t have to face
or don’t have to face anymore so they
have actually created creative muscles
and they actually know how to solve
things that we don’t know anymore if you
look at Africa people in Africa most
people in Africa at the first phone they
ever used was the handful they never had
the system of landlines and we are all
happy with our smart phones right but
let’s be honest guys they run out of
power continuously you have to update
them continuously
and you have to buy a new one every two
years so are they so great the Africans
have actually created a banking system
with a simple telephone they’ve actually
created a lot of potential just by this
small device it’s sustainable it’s
practical they use it as a radio they
use it as a flashlight and they actually
do it in a far smarter way than we do I
am an advisor voluntarily to my shining
star foundation in Malaysia and in this
role I actually work as the only
Caucasian with Asians I see that my team
is flexible I see that they are
innovative and they actually asked me to
structure the organisation but they are
doing all the fence
ethic work and they solve all the
problems in the end with the means they
have with the network they have I am
very inspired by the way they want to
grow professionally and personally and
spiritually and I really learned from it
as a Dutch person with a good education
to understand how to solve problems in a
different way so what I would like to
say to end with is we actually are a
fantastic group of amazing people we all
have different talents we all have
different gifts we need to respect each
other we need to find out what each
other’s gifts are and we need to start
working and evolving together it will
take a bit of energy from all sides but
there is so much to gain there is so
much to work with and we can grow and
develop and find solutions we could
never have found in one culture between
cultures so let’s grow let’s evolve
let’s be bright together [Music]