DECONSTRUCTING ANCESTRAL EVE

Genetic anthropology demonstrates that human populations have been on the move for the past 200,000 years. We have been migrating from continents and immigrating to countries ever since African Eve -- the first "fearless woman"  walked out of Africa. As the first known female genetic ancestor of every person alive today, she proved we all share a common ancestor and therefore, all of us are related. I like to think she had a vision for herself, and for humanity and that in her quest for life, liberty and happiness, she saw the big picture. Peaceful coexistence in a world without squiggly black lines we call country borders. We do not exist without her drive, tenacity and open mindedness. None of us would. As she ambled across those planes and forests, waded through the swamps and trekked up the hills, I can't help but think that she not only had a yen for wanderlust, but a desire to do the right thing. I'm happy to trace my deep ancestry to her. We all ought to be. We've got optimistic genes in us all.

In a globalized world, people no longer move merely as a cog in the wheel of evolutionary survival. Rather, it has taken on a heightened sense of urgency for prosperity. Those arbitrary lines on our maps are man-made but the earth belongs to us all. While those lines have created fascinating cultures, humanity now seems destined for something bigger. It seems poised to transcend those black squiggles with all the ingenuity and spirituality the globalized world can muster because the globalized workforce must move across the boundaries of countries and continents to make a better life. This is the 21st century reality. Oddly enough, not every person, country or culture has caught up with that idea, especially the developed nations that practically invented this hot, flat and crowded world of moving people.

 

In order to understand the globalized world, I like to share an email I received a while back by a cross-cultural colleague who said that globalization looked like Princess Diana's death. And I thought, what an absolutely morbid and inappropriate thing to say! When I asked why, he replied:"Because she was an English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend, who crashes in a French tunnel, in a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian drunk on Scottish whisky, chased by Italian Paparazzi on Japanese motorcycles, treated by an American doctor, using Brazilian medicines. This email was sent to you by a Canadian, using American, Bill Gates' technology and you're probably reading this on your computer, that uses Taiwanese chips, a Korean monitor, assembled by Bangladeshi workers in a Singapore plant, transported by Indian truck drivers, hijacked by Indonesians, unloaded by Sicilian longshoremen and trucked to you by Mexicans." You get my meaning.

Improving the quality of life means different things to different people. Universally, though, despite cultural and religious differences, it can mean relocating for a career advancement, improving your financial future or immigrating because there are better educational and job opportunities for your kids. No matter what the reason is, people have moved, are moving and will continue to move. The pettiness of America's immigration reform xenophobia diminishes the globalized opportunities it was instrumental in creating. So it's incumbent on countries, like the U.S.A., reap what they have sown. To seize the change we have created and accept the human capital for the opportunities it creates. Yet, in my country of opportunities, success depends not only on what it can offer the world, but on what the world of people can deliver to the country they now call home.

 

For populations that come and go, the givers and receivers of countries, cultures and nations, there are gains and losses on both sides. There is no movement without change. No success without risk. However, this is the very process that has shaped the success of the U.S.A. and the American character. According to the cross-cultural literature, America is the most individualist-oriented culture compared to the rest of the collectivist-oriented world. Eighty percent of the rest of the world puts the needs of the group before the needs of the individual because fundamentally, people are born dependent and connected. While American individualism (or independence) may be hard to understand, it's not only desirable, but necessary.

Americans created (and practically invented) that singularly unique and remarkable quality, because they were unafraid of people moving either to the U.S.A. as immigrants, or within its borders to continue that momentum of success, achievement and opportunity, after they arrived. This mobile behavior benefits the entire planet. It's the change that fosters prosperity and improves living standards. With success comes risk and no one knows that better than a pioneer. The success of globalization has created a new reality (cooperation, synthesis). The pioneers who venture out (loss, thesis) and the host nations who receive them (gain, antithesis) form a new paradigm. People move the information, goods and services that are making globalization happen.

The "American way" of life or elevated standard of living is being aspired to by hundreds of millions of people around the world, especially the BRIC, but not as Americans understand it. We have a hard time understanding the hybrid versions of it. Many nations retain their political ideology and social values while embracing American free market capitalism. Oddly enough, like Americans, it is human nature to innovate, not copy.

On the other hand, what happens when leaving what you know behind is met with rejection? What about the perception of a "selfish" America by new immigrants? It's important to know that upon closer inspection, the pioneering mindset of the U.S.A. means that Americans take care of themselves and expect others to do the same. Independence, or self-reliance, is a key American virtue because it means to be self-supporting. Films and TV show heroes, usually ordinary individuals, save the day (or the world) by acting on their own, sometimes bypassing rules and authorities and ignoring group opinion. This is the mindset -- for better or for worse -- that paved the way for the freedom to forge a better life.

Take the Tibetans and China, the Mexicans and America, the Middle Eastern people and Europe. Each one of these cultures fears losing their cultural identity and sometimes refuses to adapt in one way or another. They have created cultural conflicts and sometimes, outright rejection by the host culture or, on the other hand, may be a result of the immigrant rejecting the notion of total assimilation which was commonly adopted during the mass wave of immigration to America during the 19th century. However, those immigrants also chose to move here for a better future. It's a two way street though, and the nature of immigration is changing. How and why people move, migrate and immigrate, and when and where they will go continues to unfold.

If scientific evidence tells us that the journey of our fearless African Eve was driven by insufficient resources, food and land, then not much has changed. Today people still move for much the same reason, only now it's with a heightened sense of peace and prosperity. This is what it means to get globalized, fearlessly. To be unafraid to pioneer the idea of lifting yourself up and out of your current state of being, wherever that may be.

While America is no longer considered a "melting pot," it is still a country where there's a high chance of engagement among people of other cultures. Now we use the "salad bowl" metaphor, symbolizing the American Kaleidoscope -- in which different cultures mix, but remains distinct. At the same time, the days of the Great Wall of China or the Berlin Wall mindset of isolation is all but gone with the exception of countries like North Korea. People, countries and cultures that resist globalization, erecting barriers, are failing to ride the waves of culture and miss the opportunity for a better future. All that's left is the useless ethnocentrism that isolate and limit subsequent generations who may feel lost without a sense of belonging anywhere, much less cultural identity. What was considered home for one generation, may be something very different for another. While it's understandable that change brings uncertainty, tolerating risk comes with the territory of pioneering new frontiers.

 

This is the spirit that welcomes differences -- like America can -- along with new ideas and a different type of unity, one that may not be visible just yet, but may be looming, just over the horizon. Just as African Eve could not know what future she would bring humanity, our future may also unfold in ways we cannot imagine either. It may be that the globalization which first emerged from the American shores may evolve into something quite different. A hybrid of where we are now, if we move with the process and get out of our own way. One driven by the pioneering engine of Western style capitalism, atomized and individualistic, yet feel more Eastern and transcending, coexisting peacefully and harmoniously.

Some nations embrace the global movement of information, goods and services. Others may resist it, but undoubtedly humanity is the face of it. Whether nations embrace open borders for opportunities to improve living standards or they restrict them (and the potential revenue streams) it seems to be about fight or flight. A fear of losing part of ourselves or a perceived insecurity without a firm cultural identity. Perhaps we can transcend the impermanence of these man-made notions of what it means to be human because we think they preserve us and our species. However, we know that cultural values are learned behaviors and they can be unlearned however ingrained, but this takes time.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama said, the world is becoming smaller and one can easily recognize that everyone on earth is connected. We all suffer and experience joy. To meet the challenges of our times, though, we must develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. In a globalized society, we can find strength through that connection and forge a pathway to peace and prosperity for all.

DECONSTRUCTING GLOBALIZATION

Unless you’ve been living in a cave lately, you’re probably experiencing considerable anxiety about the economic condition of the United States. This emotion is immediately followed by further panic when recruiters or employers are asking you to “go global” to make yourself more marketable. That’s if you still have a job.

How and when is all this supposed to happen? Is this a form of outsourcing? I mean, it’s not like you’re ever really going to live or work outside the United States, right? So, why should going global concern you?

It’s Official: Wake Up and Smell the Outsourcing
With the stunning realization that America’s financial crisis is the world’s crisis, the biggest misstep an American woman can make, is to think that fluttering of her entrepreneurial wings does not affect the rest of the world. Or the reverse, that what is happening around the world, doesn’t affect your business. Today, when one country sneezes, very often we all catch a cold.

The other mistake is to not have a passport and think that it’s unlikely that you’ll ever have to work, travel, or live in another country. According to the State Department, although the number of passports issued to Americans has risen, because of post 9/11 homeland security measures, to the tune of about 74 million in 2008, most Americans still view them as just another form of identification.

No Culture Is Foreign, It’s Just Different.
But there is a great deal of fear that comes with going global and things “foreign”. How can you deal with it? One way is to reframe the issue of what is “foreign”. How you frame, or name, what you speak about, determines how to think about it. If you change the semantics, you change your perceptions. With a “clear lens” cultures become less foreign and more familiar. You can also readjust how you think about your place on the earth. You’re part of the global village. You breathe the same air as 4 billion fellow inhabitants. You are not separate from them. In any way. No matter who you are or where you live. Calcutta. Copenhagen. Cincinnati. All. The. Same. Therefore, you, as an American business woman, are a part of the global community. The term international doesn’t refer to those people “over there”. Reframing the way you refer to your place in the world will help you get more comfortable in it. For many Americans, who are like coming of age adolescents, it’s time to get down to business if we are to compete up in the 21st Century global economy.

Multicultural Manners: Handle With Care
As women business owners, the statistically fastest growing sector of the economy, it is incumbent upon us to look ahead to the all the trends that affect our businesses and embrace them with education and an awareness into multicultural manners, in order to do great global business. Because even if you don’t speak another language, as you will find many other people around the world do, it’s wise to know the soft skills that will make your professional, hard skills sing if you are involved in:

• Intercultural Business: In a position to manufacture your scarves in China? You’re going to need to pull guanxi (pronounced gwan-SHEE) or make the right connections before you begin the deal
• Diverse Teams or Intra-Office: Is the new team member on your design project, from India, but you don’t know why he seems unenthused about your concept. Maybe it’s because he is waiting for his boss to tell you.
• ExPat: Have you been assigned to work for an upper management ExPat (Ex-Patriot) who’s just returned from a two-year stint in Prague, but can’t understand his moodiness?
• Relocation: Is your finance background an asset to a firm in Portugal? Do you find yourself upending your life to work there for a year, but unable to cope with the preparations?

These are just a few of the typical examples that require cross cultural professionals to help you do global business, better.

What Makes Them Tick
Of course it’s important to know how to handle ourselves in another culture, but what’s more important, is how we’re being perceived by the other culture. And which behavior on our part will make a good impression. The following chart is actually applicable to many other cultures, with a few tweaks here and there.

Understanding the cognitive behavior — how people process information, or what makes them tick — is the key to giving your business dealings traction, and therefore revenue. Here are some key personality traits that delineate between Western and Eastern national character.

After setting my cultural compass, one way to continue to bridge the cultural gap is to focus on making personal connections, when the time is right. It’s not just these national values one should learn, but also our shared personal interests that can create deeper, more harmonious relationships. After the foundational elements are addressed – whether to kiss, bow or shake hands – you can progress to a more sophisticated level of communication with the help of topic starters. A positive “point of entry” to socialize, conduct business, and create personal relationships.

I find that point of entry through film. You may find it through food, music, or some other conversation starter other than the usual off limits topics like religion and politics. But it’s usually a popular cultural topic that will “speak” to you. Before I travel, I relish in conducting pre-travel homework by starting with a trip to Barnes & Noble. Combing the stacks to find that travel perfect guidebook. Some are linear; others are more contextual. I prefer the contextual ones like the Insight Guides and the Rough Guide because I can understand the story of a culture through literature and film, which gives me a human interest story to relate to. And then of course, there is nothing like researching on the web. Cultural Detective has some really good tools called the Values Lens that have dozens of country specific guides. But no matter where in the world you come from, it’s good to know where you’re going and how to act once you get there, because a little local knowledge goes a long way.