I worked for a company a long time ago that sent us to a training about cultural differences between the US and UK. Most of our senior managers were in the UK or in the U.S. and we thought, we both speak English so why can’t we communicate? Well, even if you both speak English, we have two different cultures. The team would be debating something and somebody in the U.S. would say, “That’s history; that was six months ago.” And the British would say, “Yes, exactly, that’s history.” They had value placed on “history,” whereas we were dismissing it, saying let’s move on, get down the road. It’s important to realize these cultural differences.
Throughout my career, I have worked across geographic and cultural boundaries. I was the Global CISO for Manpower Group, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and we were in 80 countries. I was also the Global CISO for Grant Thornton International, and we were in 145 countries.
I think you have to meet other countries where they are. At one of my prior employers, we had employees in Quebec and Montréal. In Montréal, French is the first language, so everything must be in French. Luckily, I had nine years of French in school; I can’t speak it, but I can make out most of it when we’re sharing things like spreadsheets. It’s also important that you have some face-to-face time when you are working with other cultures. I think we lose something when we don’t have that connection. It helps to establish those relationships on a more personal level, and it can help to physically go to the countries. Video conferencing can fill in the gaps, however this cannot make up for the nuances of a personal relationship and getting to know the individual in an informal setting.
It has also been important to me when working with different countries to get all countries to the same level of security. We would use red, yellow and green lights to note the standards we were asking for, with green being the best. We would rank and show them by country to see where they were. One thing we learned is that some countries do not like the color red because it points out that they are not doing things right. So, we ended up using the color gray instead of red. This was a subtle change, but it made a difference and was a small way to work across cultural boundaries.
There were a couple books somebody had suggested to me that I found helpful for working across cultural boundaries. One was called, When Cultures Collide by Richard D. Lewis. It gives you three pages on each culture and gives an idea of why they think the way they do and how they approach a problem. Another one was The Culture Map by Erin Meyer.
Being a member of ISACA for the last 15 years has been a great experience. I’ve spoken in several countries and I met people I know I would not have met if it weren’t for ISACA. I think the world gets smaller when you meet people from other cultures, and you realize that we’re all dealing with very similar things. Some of the personally rewarding friendships I have made through ISACA extend into other places. For example, I have met people in Europe and then travelled to a conference in the U.S., and I resume our conversation in the U.S.! As I spend about 40-50% of my time in Dublin, Ireland, I’ve gone to several SheLeadsTech panels there and I have spoken at local ISACA chapter conference events.
ISACA is a great community to meet a lot of people and to have an appreciation of other cultures. The more we do that, the richer I believe our lives become and the more accepting we become of our different perspectives.
