“I also do believe that for personal success in life, in a much more interdependent world, the capacity to understand another culture has to become one of the prerequisites of an educated person.”

 Wow.  I’m making a .ppt slide of that right now for use in seminars on leading across cultures.  “Look folks its true - the Pres of Yale says so.”

Aside from the minor cavill that I’d substitute “understanding other cultures” for “another culture” (why just one?), I’d also ask leaders, and those responsible for their development, to think of another angle.  Here’s a hypothesis:

 1. In recent decades we have seen the emergence of an “international management class” - probably most obviously in Europe, but elsewhere too (Levin is right that US  leaders are less likely to be members of that class).  I call these people “the road-warriors of globalisation” - the legions of middle-to-senior managers, specialists and professional advisers who serve global corporations -  that we see dragging their wheelie-bags through the world’s airports at ungodly hours of the morning; off to another meeting/assignment/negotiation with other people like themselves.

2. Most of these people have been educated in business schools throughout Europe and the US, or their outposts elsewhere, and have been taught common conceptions of what “leadership” and “management” mean.  This makes it easier for them to bridge the cultural gaps among themselves - or so you’d think.

3. Most of (>75%?) the material used to teach in these schools - the case studies, the texts, the business games - originates in the US or is at least heavily influenced by a world-view shaped by Anglo-Saxon cultures - results driven, action-oriented, individualistic, pragmatic, empirical.

 So what?  Isn’t this a facet of globalsiation - the convergence of international management culture around a common set of norms?  Well, yes, but…

1. What happens when they encounter people who have not been exposed to this common outlook?  

I have seen these folks move between two national units of an MNC, believing that they share an organisation culture with their colleagues, only to find that they are now managing a large local workforce whose culture is a long way from that of the international management cadre and where (no matter what HQ says) the on-the-ground practices of the middle managers are shaped by their shared culture - not the espoused values of the corporate mission statement written 1,000 miles away.  It can come as an awful shock - how do you get stuff done?

 2. When they meet other members of the “road warrior tribe”, can they really be sure that they share a world-view? 

Shaw described the Americans and the British as being “divided by a common language”, and most Americans or Brits who have worked together will tell you to be very careful of assuming that we are “much the same, really” (we ain’t),   just as any Scandinavian manager will tell you that the biggest intra-Nordic management problems often arise because (e.g.) Danes and Swedes over-estimate the strength of their similarities and underestimate the differences.

Applying that logic to the “road warrior tribe” there is a serious danger that they (and their developers?) become complacent about their differences and wrongly assume that because they went to the same schools and espouse the same corporate values they have become “the same”.  To believe that would be to believe that the 15 years between 20 and 35 have more influence on shaping behaviour than the 15 between 5 and 20.

The risk in that is that differences are more likely to be seen as personality clashes or arising from political conflicts over e.g. resource allocation, rather than what they really are.

Beware of assuming that the road-warriors have vanquished the culture dragon.