When I got to know that Credit Suisse wanted me as their employee I was very excited. An international marketing department, global marketing projects and a diverse team, made out of Swiss, Indian, Russian, Italien and other culturally interesting people awaited me and I was in heaven. Zurich being a cosmopolitan and beautiful city located close to ski slopes and Italy at a lake was just the cherry on my cake.

Traveling the world I had bumbed into quite my share of Swiss people, if it was at 4.30 am at a hot spring on the tiny Green Island in Taiwan or the fanciest club in Shanghai. They not only knew were the great places are, they also were great company. How they felt about Germans coming to their country I did not quite grasp when a Swiss friend of an old friend said: “You are going to feel just like home in Zurich, there are as many Germans as it Germany”

Not being oblivious to his hostile tone and an interculturally trained person I asked another Swiss friend from university if she could recommend any books on swiss culture and so I started reading “Gebrauchsanweisung für die Schweiz” (Manual for Switzerland) by Thomas Küng (born in Zurich). It sure was fascinating: you should not use the Swiss hello “Gruetzi” until a Swiss person signed off on it and understanding the Swiss German with its many terms which originate in the French language were things to be learned.

After one year here I could add few things to the list of what I had to learn living in Switzerland:

• When calling someone and you say your name, wait until the person at the other line could say something like “Hallo Frau Rogge” before explaining your matter
• If you don’t have a German dialect at all (Bavarian or such) like me and speak a very clear German, it’s hard for Swiss people to speak in Swiss German to you, they tend to switch to high German
• Swiss soccer is just as serious as German soccer
• When coming back from Germany I realized that I had missed Swiss German
• It’s hard to make Swiss friends, patience is needed

Sure I could list a few more, but let’s stop here. I am convinced that every foreigner in Switzerland has a different list and only a few things may be the same. Truth is, that I never felt as much as a foreigner as in Switzerland. Maybe it’s the differences in the similarities of Germany and Switzerland, maybe it’s the Germans I meet on the street who are of the kind I also would not like to have in my country (I guess every country has countrymen they would rather not know of.) It’s hard to say.

What I can say is: I made friends, even if the percentage of Swiss amongst them is still small, but I am working on it. I also learn a lot at work being responsible for online marketing and Switzerland’s stunning nature is what I enjoy every day. That being said, it’s not so bad when a colleague is trying to make a joke pointing at a political poster with the slogan “Stop mass immigration” and then points at me saying “See.. mind that!”.

Power distance is one of the four dimensions of cultural variation identified by Hofstede. He defines it as the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations (and similar systems) within a nation expect and accept that power is distributed unequally.

That practically means that in countries with high power distance (Asian, African, Latin American..), the employees expect the boss to give orders and they won’t criticise his desicions or give suggestions (among other characteristics). In countries with low power distance (North America, Netherlands…), the relationship between the boss and the inferior is more equal, the superior asks for his employees opinion and they more often call them on their mistakes.

In front of this background I thought about the experiences I had when researching on Asian Websites, which I did during my internship in Taipei. Those are the features on these websites, which could have been caused by the high power distance:

• organization charts – one person on the top
• message from the CEO prominently placed
• often absence of corporate blogs or any other envolvement of employees
• almost no pictures of “real” employees (as the people behind the brand)
• …

These are a few I thought are the most obvious. I’d like to know about your experiences surfing Asian websites!

low-context vs. high-context

These are terms first used by E.T. Hall to describe an attribute of communication. In relation to this context is ‘the information that surrounds an event’ (Hall & Hall, 1990) The opposite of context is text, which is according to Hall ‘the coded explicit, transmitted part of the message’ (Hall, 1976).

To make this concept clear and accessible to you I’ll tell you a little story:
Karl from Germany is studying Chinese Culture together with Monika. When they invite their Chinese friends Ling and Nan over for dinner, Ling gives them a wrapped box. Karl takes the gift and says “Thanks”, but the moment he makes a move to unwrap it, Monika says: “Karl” and gives him a special look. Karl understands and puts the gift aside.

The text in this communication is “Thanks” and “Karl”, but the context is more interesting, because the context behind “Karl” is rather large. Monika and Karl share the same knowledge about Chinese culture, which includes the custom of Chinese to unwrap gifts only when their guests are gone, in order to hide their feelings concerning it. This is a method to protect their guest’s and their own “face“. So Monika actually reminded Karl of this principle by simply calling him by his name. A different person, which doesn’t share the context would not have been able to understand this message.
According to that cultures with high-context communication generally use less text and more context, for example Chinese or Asians. Cultures with low-context communications use more text than context.

That’s why you would expect the German website of Yahoo to have more text than the Chinese or Taiwanese one, which is not the fact. This is the contradiction I mentioned above and which threw me a curve.
Just now I was able to create a theory explaining WHY.

Since Germans are used to low-context communications they put their message across in an effective way using a certain amount of text. But Chinese are used to high-context, so since in the web, there is hardly any context, they try to make up for it by more text which leads to bigger websites than the ones of low-context cultures.

But here I have to state that this is only one possible explanation. Aside from culture which influences communication there are several factors which we shouldn’t forget. What kind of website are we dealing with here? How big is the target group they are focussing on? What characteristics does this target group have? And what goals is the company trying to achieve with the website.
I am just trying to give all this yet another angle.

To demonstrate what I mean and analyze it I picked out the website of yahoo for Taiwan and the USA.

You can clearly see that the page of Yahoo USA is offering less information.
So what did Yahoo Taiwan do differently?

• the “sign in – field” is bigger and has more options
• advertising (acer, LG and a housing project)
• less news (above acer ad) and more shopping (shoes, mobile phones, cosmetic)
• when you view the page in your browser you’ll also notice that the Taiwanese site is longer
• less icons

(to only name a few)

I asked myself: Why do they do it that way?
Obviously their customers are different. Consequently does the difference between Chinese and Americans (please excuse my generalization here) dictate the way Yahoo sets up their websites.

And in general it’s a culture difference, because culture is:

“the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another, and which is transmitted from generation to generation through learning“ Bates DG, Plog F: Cultural Anthropology. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1990, p 7

If the members of a society use their culture as a “tool” to deal with the world, it is no wonder it should influence the design of websites online.  In the next few posts I will describe some aspects of culture, which are most influential for web design.

When I was a child I was the kind who drew a lot and whose parents would always be very impressed with their child’s drawing skills, which seemed to them beyond their kid’s age. So I got a drawing teacher, an art student from University, who taught me different techniques, like how to use oil paint, water colors or coal to draw or paint pictures. So when I was sitting in the heating room of our house, the heaters buzzing in the background, I was painting for hours without noticing how time passed by.
Back then I just needed a blank paper and a pen to fuel my creativity, but after I finished Junior High and studying became more important, the painting tools collected dust in a corner of my room.

Now when I take a blank page, I stare at it – not knowing what to paint, feeling the need of a creative genius to help me.

The creative genius is what the old Romans and Greek assigned to people, who where creative. That’s also what Nick Vasiljevic, managing director of the company pilotfish, mentioned in his presentation yesterday. “But today”, he said, “You are the creative genius”. You can not blame it on somebody else.
Nick sees creativity from a different point of view. He likes what Steve Jobs says about creativity. That it is like “connecting dots”. Steve Jobs also stated in this speech at Stanford University “Believing that the dots will connect down the road, will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path and that will make all the difference“.

So by connecting different fields of study, various industries and disciplines it is able to create new things. Jobs did it many times: connecting art (design) and state of the art electronics in Mac is just one example among others. But what Nick mentioned as well is, that today the education system is forcing us to make decisions. Do you want to study economics or art, social or political science? I myself chose two fields of study Chinese (language & culture) and business management, but would also have liked to learn more about web design and nurture my artistic nature. So is education actually constraining creativity?

The gist of the presentation was that creativity is not magic.
There are simple tools, which help to be more creative:

- listen
- be curious
- ask questions
- make connections
- observe

Now you might think: “well, that’s nothing new”, but do you really behave this way in life? Aren’t you sometimes finding yourself thinking of something else while the person in front of you is talking? Or do you feel too shy to ask a question, because you think it might sound stupid? I do admit all that, I also try to work on myself to reduce those occasions.

But what comes with creativity? It doesn’t mean that you just have to be creative to be successful. The presentation also stated, that you need to have other characteristics to use your creativity in a beneficial way:

- commercial sense
- strong morals

You need to know how to sell yourself and your ideas in a way that is creating additional value and is not harmful to society. Here you might excuse my rather intangible writing, but I am sure you can grasp my meaning.

Another premise for connecting the dots, when it comes to Nick Vasiljevic, is that you not only have a deep expertise, but also broad knowledge: T-shaped people. They are also often called Versatilists. Naturally, when you know more about different areas you can connect more dots.

All together it was a very inspiring presentation for me, so that I had to share these insights with you on my website.

By not only being an expert in one field, but also having interest and knowledge in others, you can be creative by connecting the dots via curiosity and attentiveness to the world around you to create value being both commercial and ethical.

His book ‘The Mindful International Manager‘, which he wrote in cooperation with his friend and founder of York Associates has been published, and his other book ‘Intercultural Interaction‘ will be soon. Moreover did he mention that the conference I helped him organize in 2007 titled ‘Developing people internationally’ and which was the first by dialogin and York associates, will take place this year September 17-18 in York, UK. It will be under the title ‘High performing international teams’ and I am really proud that I was involved in this conference’s launch and I am happy that it was so successful to become a regular event.

Peter Franklin had great influence on me by sparking the interest for intercultural studies in me. I took his course ‘Intercultural Communication’ in the first semester and was so lucky to become one of his assistants afterwards. Through working with him I was able to gain grater insight in this field and get to know scholars from different countries and backgrounds. During my Vocational Training in Hong Kong I had already experienced the misunderstandings and problems, which can arise from communication between people of different cultures. That is the reason why it was amazing for me to finally understand some of the reasons for these problems and learn how to solve them.

I have the strong belief that on a global market, where a country are highly affected by the policies of the other (see recent events), global cooperation is needed and empathy for not only fellow countrymen but fellow ‘worldmen’. This causes the need for better communication and understanding between people of different cultures and this can only be achieved with acquireing intercultural competences.

This need has not yet been generally acknowledged. Although not only large corporations like Daimler, GE or Lenovo have a want for smooth communication in their culturally diverse teams, small companies who export their goods overseas have to be able to communicate effectively with their clients as well. Most of the time the cause of miscommunication is perceived as a simple lack of language ability, but content or words make up the smallest part in the communication.

So now I ask you: Do you think it’s worth investing in a consulting service on intercultural competences?