jacaranda group
about jacaranda
Jacaranda Whats in a name
Intercultural Training
The Jacaranda Product Range
Press Articles and News
Multimedia Initiatives
Contact Us
Links
making management work worldwide


INTERCULTURAL TRAINING
Some Urgent Questions for the HR Manager

INTERCULTURAL TRAINING


Is Intercultural Training Really Necessary?

Let one of our blue chip, multinational customers answer:

‘The benefits of understanding your customer’s culture is an absolutely essential capability that today’s global business must acquire to maintain competitive advantage.’


Below is a list of questions that will help you to decide whether your company could benefit from Jacaranda’s specialized Intercultural Training.


Preparing for the future: Is your company considering or in the process of:

  • a cross-border merger?
  • a cross-border acquisition?
  • the expatriation, repatriation or inpatriation of staff?
  • the creation of multinational project teams (or the improvement of existing ones)?
  • entering a new overseas market?
  • increasing the number and frequency of international business contacts such as meetings, visits, telephone calls?
  • upgrading the skills of reception staff to deal with a variety of foreign visitors?
  • increasing senior management involvement in cross-border, high level contacts?
  • negotiating new cross-border business?
  • recruiting staff outside your own national culture?
  • making presentations to audiences from different cultures?


If your answer to any of the questions above is 'yes' then some people in your company would certainly benefit from Jacaranda's high quality, intercultural training.

Making your people aware of the potential problems of communicating across cultures before they start can prevent the misunderstandings which will inevitably occur. These small problems can, over a period of time, grow so serious that entire projects can fail with enormous financial loss.

70% of all mergers fail.
Culture problems are a major contribution towards such failures.





Handling the present: Is your company already showing symptoms of culture based problems?

  • Are individual members of your project teams not achieving the expected levels of performance when working with colleagues from other cultures?
  • Are higher than expected levels of expatriated staff returning home prematurely?
  • Do your staff show symptoms of demotivation when working in a new culture?
  • Are your managers having difficulties managing staff from a different culture?
  • Have international negotiations "inexplicably" broken down?
  • Do your international presentations fail to get the response you hoped for?
  • Do meetings with international colleagues end up as sullen stand-offs, endless, ineffective debates or even shouting matches?
  • Do telephone calls create instant resentment?
  • Do your managers fail to convince in the decision making process of a different culture?
  • Does one part of your organisation resist change initiated in another part of your organisation?
  • Are personal relationships across cultural divides failing to develop despite all efforts?


If you answered 'yes' to any of the above questions then some people in your organisation are probably in urgent need of some help.

Jacaranda works with people in major companies in all of the situations above and has achieved significant results: in some cases whole contracts have been saved.

You may be surprised by the "insignificant" cultural differences that given time cause major problems. These differences range from the very simple e.g. the way we greet people to the very complex e.g fundamental differences in thinking and logic. In either case Jacaranda can help you.