The Global Mindset, the Esperanto of International Business?

Posted on 28 May, 2013 by

Today’s blog can be read by clicking on this Huffington Post link or seen below:

Yesterday, I taught a workshop on cultural intelligence to a group of consultants from all around the world. In my class was a lovely lady from Germany who told me that she wrote a book on the international language of business that would soon be translated into English. When I inquired about her book, she told me that in her view, to be effective across cultures, people would have to embrace new behaviors that would ensure their success in the global arena. Her method is based on the Esperanto model where several languages are combined together to create a new one nobody can claim. When pressed for more details, I quickly realized however that her view of global success is mainly based on her cultural assumptions of what is important to succeed in business: tight time management, direct communication, flat reporting system, profit driven, etc. As such, becoming globally minded means becoming Westernized.

Recently, my work has revolved around assisting companies to understand why project management methods such as Agile create so many internal problems. When taken across cultures, I notice that few people in the world fully understand how powerful the cultural make up of each employee really is. The reality is that, according to experts like Genevieve Bell, chief anthropologist at Intel, culture does trump strategy and it is indeed essential to invest the necessary amount of time and energy in understanding the host country to pursue any across-culture business venture.

I had the opportunity to test that knowledge first hand training and consulting within one of the largest multinationals in the world, realizing that even at the highest level of management, people still confuse culture with ill will or an IQ level that would not allow employees from a certain culture to perform within the Western parameters. When I suggested that those non-Western teams were in need of support and coaching to fully grasp the Western meaning of initiative-taking, upfront communication, or articulating concepts such as having a plan A, plan B and Plan C in place, my suggestion was received with a disdained attitude that clearly demonstrated that after two years of working together those foreign teams were either fundamentally challenged or purely incapable of improving. The truth of the matter is quite different and I can attest that many teams in India, for example, where I was last, have embraced the cultural impositions their U.S. employers forced upon them fully. Compared to their fathers, brothers and uncles who are not in the high-tech industry, those Indian employees are already 80 percent Americanized. The problem lies in the fact that very few people in the United States have the capacity to appreciate how much change has been implemented as few North Americans are aware of the Indian culture per se. As such, instead of appreciating the efforts invested, they judge and focus on the distance that remains to be traveled. This comes as a disheartening criticism to the teams located in the host country and is perceived as a lack of appreciation and understanding toward their own culture.

As the world becomes more and more accessible from our keyboard, I feel that the ability to get out of our comfort zone and reach across the cultural aisle resides in the heart of each of us. Realizing that each expectation we voice, each criticism we formulate, each deadline we set, each problem we solve is rooted in the specific set of skills with which our culture provided us. It is also evident that philosophical concepts such as trust and respect are lived, experienced and demonstrated differently from one culture to another. Having had the experience to work for several companies headquartered in different parts of the world, I can attest that each corporate culture duplicates the national culture from which its leaders originate, copying the family unit model that was used to teach fundamental values to children, such as respect, integrity, honesty and trust.

Not realizing that each global employee brings with him his own understanding of the aforementioned core values is setting multinational companies up for failure. Wrong expectations are articulated through the use of flawless processes, forgetting that behind each process is a human being who will apply his own core values to the method.

In my view, the solution lies in the fact that we must recognize that today’s employees are the guinea pigs of the 21st century global economy and that practically none of those employees were adequately trained to instantaneously interact across cultures. Indeed, very few schools across the world prepare students for today’s work environment, transforming most multinationals into challenging revolving doors and frustrated leaders who do not know how to reverse the trend.

Displaying a true global mindset does not reside in forcing people to embrace a Germanic or U.S. mindset. All the opposite. It means welcoming that each culture brings its own set of solutions and that each approach has merit. It also means that employees need support in developing the global voice and heart they were not born with, as it is only through respect and understanding that we will together achieve meaningful and long-lasting results. It is often not through the established channel with which we are so comfortable dealing in the West, but rather through the exploration of other applications that also give us the opportunity to expand our horizon. By honoring cultural differences to achieve effective working relationships, we can be the change we wish to see in the world, as Mahatma Gandhi wisely claimed.

Posted in Cross-Cultural Communication | 1 Comment

Don’t Pull the Plug Too Fast

Posted on 20 December, 2012 by

Readable in the Business Section of the Huffington Post at the following link or below. Happy Holidays to you all and thank you for your readership throughout the year!

As the year draws to an end, I am contemplating the biggest obstacles my clients have had and the root cause of their failures in the international arena. Interestingly, several cases can be linked to the cultural misconception that time must be accounted for in a similar fashion internationally rather than domestically.

As stated several times before, Americans are transaction-oriented; as such, they focus on the product, the price, the warranty to promote and market a product. Internationally, people assume that the price is competitive and that the product holds its own; what they are truly after is the relationship that will save the day once problems occur. As such, they need much more time to decide if partnering with a U.S. company is of interest to them compared to a domestic company. The expectations from the business relation are different, and they require a different time line to yield success.

The cultural dimension related to the way cultures differ with regard to time is a hard one to seize, especially when the executive suite is made of monolingual, mono-cultural people. The best they can do is base their forecast and expectation on the domestic experiences they have had, being oblivious to the difference they will encounter when dealing across cultures.

This is exactly what happened to Daniel, a bilingual, bicultural channel director for Latin America. His company asked him to relocate his family to Chile, hoping to generate some sales for the company in the region. Daniel was excited about the move, as he still had family and friends in Chile and wanted his son to spend time in Latin America.

What Daniel did not realize when he accepted the mandate is that his director’s expectations with regard to return on investment were not at all aligned with the cultural reality he would find in Chile. Without articulating it out loud, his company was under the impression that Daniel should be able to make money for the company within a year. After all, the company offers a product that is in high demand and that has been adopted by the biggest U.S. multinationals, something that in his directors’ minds should open immediate doors, wherever in the world. The directors had also experienced the opening of several offices in different U.S. states and one in Vancouver; they thus felt that the process and the time frame in Chile should be more or less the same.

Alas, for Daniel, he did not fully realize himself either that Chileans would be so much slower in their decision-making process and that one year in Chile, in the context of business, would be the equivalent of three months in the U.S. It was thus a shock and a huge disappointment for Daniel to hear that his directors had decided, six months into his mandate, that they would pull the plug on the Latin American project at 12 months, assessing that the lack of bites they witnessed in Chile was a sign that the product was not of interest to the local companies there.

Purchase orders started trickling in while Daniel canceled the office lease and signed his name to a new job contract with a local Chilean company. His clients were shocked and upset to see the company leave — some feeling insulted by the lack of commitment the company was displaying for the region, creating a bad name for the company and U.S. companies in general. Disaster.

This mentality is, however, not to be found in the private sector only; institutions are not immune to it either. When I met Katherine at a social gathering hosted after a talk I had given, she told me she had been leading a USAID program on Zululand in South Africa for the past eight months and that she was ready to move the after-school care program to Malawi where locals, she thought, would be more receptive to her ideas. When prompted to define what made her think that Zulus were not receptive to working with her, she mentioned the lack of cooperation she was encountering from the elders and the fact that they were delaying every possible decision she needed to move forward. When I asked Katherine about her time frame, she told me she had been under the impression that her work should have been completed within 12 months; eight months into it, she realized she was barely getting started.

While moving to Malawi — a country that has been in the news lately for having elected Joyce Banda, a female president — sounded like the response to Katherine’s plea, I was quick to point out that she would have to start from scratch all over again and would need as much time in Malawi to get the project started as she did in tribal South Africa. Truth be told, 12 months anywhere in countries where time is more circular than linear, such as South America and Africa, is the equivalent of four to twelve weeks at best in the Western world.

Why this information does not permeate to executives and university professors is beyond me. So much energy, so much time and money invested in projects overseas that dead end at 12 months due to unrealistic expectations. When will Westerners finally realize that the world does not beat to the sound of their own drum? Countries have their own tempo, and seldom will they adapt to ours to meet our needs. It is my hope that more people will understand this basic cross-cultural concept in 2013.

Posted in Africa, Cross-Cultural Communication, Cultural Intelligence, Cultural Wisdom, Foreign manager, Global Mindset, International Business Practices, International Sales, Managing People, Time Management | 4 Comments

Seek to Understand Rather than to Be Understood by “Loving Language”

Posted on 12 November, 2012 by

I read this blog written by Richard at Loving Language this morning and felt compelled to share it with you. It’s very much to the point. Enjoy and thank you, Richard!

If language education improved in the US, we would have to undergo a cultural shift.  The Prayer of Saint Francis states this shift clearly as he writes, “O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek . . . to be understood, as to understand.”  Our citizens need to see that those who come from outside the US have something to teach us to become better Americans.  This shift must emphasize hearing others and putting forth the effort so we can understand them.  We need to understand them more than to be understood by them.

At the present, the US speaks its own English.  We listen to those who speak English because as a culture we do not put resources into learning languages.  We put forth few resources into schools to teach foreign languages.  When we work or socialize among people who speak other languages, we do not put time or energy into speaking their languages.  By US law we provide resources for kids to learn English so they can access education.  We provide English language education to adults, as resources permit.  Overseas we look for those who speak English–those who have capitulated to our need to talk to them.  In short we put forth efforts for people to understand us.

If we shifted our vision of education, we would emphasize how we understand others over how others understand us.  We would inject more resources into language education in schools, devoting more time in the school day for it, perhaps taking time away from other subjects.  In the workplace we would put time and energy into learning the languages of the people we work with.  In our schools, all kids would have to spend hours learning a new language, not just new immigrants; even adults who already finished school would learn the languages of immigrants.  Before we travelled overseas we would take time to learn and understand the language, and we would continue learning during our trip. Resources would go towards learning other ways of speaking.

The benefits of learning a language ultimately outweigh the costs.  It takes resources to learn languages: a little money and a ton of time.  You have to sound dumb sometimes; you have to ask “what?” a lot.  But once you learn how to speak a language, you learn how to hear others.  Rather than expect others to understand you, you take responsibility to understand them.  We benefit as a new world of knowledge and wisdom open up to learn from.

Once we can speak the language of others, we can hear them; once we can hear them we can learn from them.  The immigrants that come to this country make the US great.  They have sacrificed for the sake of their family’s interest, leaving behind the comfort of the familiar.  Some of them come as refugees, leaving behind horrible conditions, travelling an impossible path.  All of our citizens stand to learn from these people, from the wisdom they acquired from their difficult experiences.  They are resourceful and savvy, entrepreneurial and wise.  And they teach best in their own words, in their own language.

If we turn the focus off of how others can understand us and how we can understand them, we can learn.  If our people sacrifice resources so that we can learn languages, we will gain wisdom.  We learn how to speak another language, and we learn to hear a new way of life to add to our own experiences.

Posted in Cross-Cultural Communication, Cross-Cultural Friendship, Cultural Intelligence, Cultural Wisdom, Global Mindset, International Education | Tagged | 2 Comments

Are we on the right track?

Posted on 6 November, 2012 by

Can be read in its original version in the Huffington Post “World Section” here or below:

The debate on foreign policy in the final presidential debate left me numb; the world is in full ebullition, but pertinent topics were unfortunately left off the table. President Obama, however, alluded at the fact that the United States is leading a coalition effort to provide economic stability to the Middle East and North African region (MENA), a subject that was presented by Jean-Pierre Chauffour from the World Bank during the World Conference of the World Customs Organization in Marrakech, Morocco, last month. Being offered a front seat to the conference was without a doubt the highlight of my month, and I enjoyed learning more about the “Deauville Partnership.”

The study Chauffour expertly presented is rooted in the Deauville G-8 Declaration where, on May 26 and 27, 2011, the G-8 nations met in Deauville, France, to “renew their commitment for freedom and democracy.” The Deauville Partnership is made of Germany, Saudi Arabia, Canada, United Arab Emirates, United States, France, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Qatar, Russia, U.K., Turkey, as well as nine international and regional financial institutions. Together, those partners have pledged to support the economic and political development of the nations considered part of the Arab Spring: Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia.

According to Chauffour’s report, titled and available in French only, “Rapport sur le Développement de la Région MENA: De l’éveil politique à l’éveil économique dans le monde arabe: la voie de l’intégration économique,” the rate of unemployment in the MENA region is between 35-40%. In Jordan the unemployment rate for people under the age of 29 is 70%. In short, the 400 million people who form the MENA region export the same amount of goods and services as Switzerland does-a country of 7.5 million!

The presentation also noted that the recent political uproars the world witnessed in the MENA region through the Arab Spring highlights the fact that its citizens are indeed requesting fundamental changes. The poverty and lack of economic opportunities people experience in that region, according to Chauffour, must be turned into jobs that are created through the assistance of democratic governments where the institutions work for the people and not the other way around. To attract foreign investments, the region must develop some type of competitive edge rooted in specific skills or technology, just like other regions did (read: China, India, Brazil).

As I understand it, the Deauville Partnership’s function is to offer a clear and ambitious strategic orientation for the region while analyzing and coming up with different scenarios that could profit the MENA region and thus provide economic advantages to its impoverished citizens. One forward concept Chauffour’s team articulated was to progressively re-create a geo-economical structure for the region where the commercial goods would circulate freely, as well as services, capital, and (in time) people within the Mediterranean Basin.

In a way, the Mediterranean Basin trading zone that would be created would rehabilitate some traditional and ancestral trading partners in the region today known as Turkey, the Balkans, the Maghreb, the Machrek, and certain countries now part of the European Union. As such, each Deauville partnering country would agree to remove some of the commercial restrictions presently in place with MENA. For example, the United States could be asked to extend the current agreements it has with Jordan and Morocco to Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya and draft with those three countries some similar types of free-trade agreements.

Similarly, the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) would also be asked to invite Egypt and Tunisia to join the Council. This would allow nationals from the member countries to circulate, work and establish themselves throughout the region freely and thus benefit from a common system for health, education, and retirement. The list goes on to ask each Deauville partner to take the lead and facilitate the economic emancipation of the region.

While I applaud the concept and cherish the idea of a unified region that would promote economic growth and stability to millions of people in need, it is once again an effort from the West to push a region to emulate a trading pattern that has, it is true, made North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia successful. Those countries were, however, not in the same turmoil as the MENA region.

Also, looking back, as the report even states, we see that countless treaties have been written among Arab countries in the past, and practically none had any success in being implemented. Are they really waiting for the Deauville Partners to show them how it’s done, or should we take their lack of interest as a sign that this may not be the right solution to the economic growth the region needs? Time will tell, but for now your guess is as good as mine…

Posted in Africa, Arab Spring, B.R.I.C. Countries, Cultural Intelligence, Global Mindset, MENA, Middle East, World Bank, World Customs Organization | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The World Ain’t Flat

Posted on 7 September, 2012 by

Never ever, not even in my wildest dreams, had I imagined myself becoming a professional public speaker. After all, English is my third language and I was never trained to address the public.

The truth of the matter is that I started speaking in public because I could see something that I felt had to be shared with others. Having been in international business all my life, having lived all over the world, and being fluent in a multitude of languages, I could see when interacting with many of my clients that they could not see what was obvious to me. And what they could not see was the invisible wall that prevented them from reaching their goals.

In an effort to help them understand what they could not see – to make the invisible tangible – I put together a training program that dissected cultural dimensions. I presented that program to my clients (explaining the differences between cultural competency and cultural intelligence, providing them with the manual on how to read a new type of compass), who suggested I present them to the different business groups to which they belonged. Those business groups showed great interest in what I was saying, and they invited me to present at the local conferences their industries organized. Local conferences became national conferences, then international.

The results of my public speaking efforts, which were always peripheral to my consulting work and there only to facilitate the international business success of my clients, have led me to a level that took me entirely by surprise: the World Customs Organization (WCO)! Indeed, in two weeks I will be traveling to Marrakech, Morocco, to present the relevance of including cultural intelligence training to the forming of Customs officials the world over.

English: This is WCO logo with white background

Members of 178 countries are scheduled to attend the conference, and my program on cultural intelligence may have an impact on the way Customs officials deal with travelers all over the world. It’s a big coup, one I never anticipated. I never wanted to be a public speaker, and I had my eyes on the business world only.

Going to Marrakech is important for several reasons:

  • First, it shows that my vision of cultural intelligence is needed beyond the business world to include world government officials.
  • Second, it shows that what I have to say applies to all cultures, not just the United States.
  • Third, it shows that individuals, all the way to an agency of the United Nations, perceive my message to be valuable.

So what is that message that resonates so strongly with such a diverse group of people and associations, and why is it so timely? Cultural intelligence is timely because it provides a map on how to work with people who come from different cultures. Talks on globalization by people who do not fully understood how it works comforted us for a few years, making us wrongly believe that the world is flat and that everybody in the world longed to become Americanized.

In reality, the world is round and bumpy, and every culture is attached to its own communication and business style: its own social hierarchy and view of independence. To succeed and capture the market shares that this new world dynamics offers, we have to learn to adapt our own style to mirror the ones of our potential clients. It sounds easy, logical, evident. It is not.

The challenge lies behind the fact that one must admit that our way of proceeding is not universal and not exclusively better. It forces us to proceed with an open mind and a mental flexibility that we tend to have lost through childhood. Forcing ourselves to go back and re-evaluate the way we talk, the way we question, and the way we expect others to perform takes a great amount of efforts and willingness.

Until recently, few people engaged in it willingly and found it rewarding. Nowadays, everybody has to learn how to do it. The survival of corporations depend on how quickly and well its employees develop cultural intelligence, lead with the global mindset.

Looking back in time, we realize that having the West on top is a pretty recent phenomenon that started with the industrial revolution. Until then Asian nations were on top, such as China and India. They had to learn to deal with us; it’s now our turn to deal with them. And even if the change-resistant are right and the West will retrieve the upper hand quickly, learning how to positively interact with people from different cultures will remain a sharp arrow in one’s quiver.

Posted in China, Cross-Cultural Communication, Cultural Intelligence, Cultural Wisdom, Foreign manager, Global Mindset, India, International Business Practices, International business travel, Managing People, World Customs Organization | 6 Comments

Searching for a Happy Medium

Posted on 1 August, 2012 by

Readable in its original version in the Huffington Post, or below:

For most entrepreneurs business is all about ebb and flow. As I look back and consider my consulting clients for the past six months, I realize that among the companies that seek out my expertise, social entrepreneurs are becoming more and more numerous. The differences between my corporate and my social entrepreneur clients are large and refreshing. Indeed, social entrepreneurs tend to instinctively know and apply what is so difficult for my corporate clients to assimilate.

Social entrepreneurs are normally young people who aren’t bogged down by rules and business acumen. They operate from the heart and follow their intuition. They’re passionate about what they do. Most of them have spent several years in the country that interests them either as backpack travelers, Peace Corps volunteers, or missionaries. Most of them speak the language of the region that interests them and have a network of people they can rely on in-country to start their venture.

What is refreshing is that they’re not afraid of their market; in fact, they’re in love with it. Their biggest problem lies in the fact that they have no business background and that their passion often obscures their vision with regard to timing, funding, managing finances, and making a profit.

Their youth, as well as the pathetic state of our world economy, is making them believe that profit is at the root of all evil and that learning business management is the slippery slope that will transform them into greedy and despicable people.

So let’s make things clear: there is nothing wrong with profit. Profit is what happens when a business is well-managed. Profit is the equivalent of earning a salary and benefits if a corporation employed the entrepreneurs instead. Profit is the reason that should motivate all entrepreneurs to get out of bed in the morning. Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas in Wall Street) is not who he is because of the profit he generates but because of his greed and the methods he uses to accumulate wealth.

And while on the subject, I would like corporations to know that to succeed in the international arena, passionate, invested employees who are not afraid of their market, who understand the cultural subtleties, and who speak the language are a must as well.

Stop looking for people who know numbers and nothing else to lead your international operations. Start looking for people who are not afraid of spending three years in a mosquito-infested village in a remote area of the world, learning from the locals and getting energized by a culture that is so different from their own. Start relying on the passion of those former backpackers and volunteers; trust their instincts. They have learned more about the world through their trips than you ever will by reading The Economist from cover to cover every week.

People the world over respond to kindness and genuine interest. Those young, passionate people who respect and understand the culture your corporation wishes to penetrate are the ticket to those markets. Let them lead the way and don’t try to change the way they interact with your potential clients.

As to the social entrepreneurs out there, learning accounting will not transform you into a frog. Learning how to put together a business plan, setting up an efficient supply chain, conducting market research, putting in place rules and regulations for your employees, and setting goals for your enterprise will empower you. It will take your company to the next level and allow you to generate higher profit.

What you do with that profit is up to you. You can turn around and give 100% back to the community of your choice if you wish, but putting in place a true business structure will ensure that you will have a long-lasting impact in the world instead of being a disappointing flash in the pan.

The objective as I see it is for corporations and social entrepreneurs to learn from one another and to work together. Tap into each other’s strengths. Your skills and interest complement each other’s business model and represent the future of our global community.

Posted in cartesian mind, Cultural Intelligence, Global Mindset, International Business Practices, International business travel, International Marketing, International Sales, Managing People, Social Entrepreneurship | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Social Entrepreneurship IS Good Business

Posted on 13 July, 2012 by

Readable in its original version in the Huffington Post by clicking here.

By now we’ve all heard of global social entrepreneurship and how important it is for companies to do their shares to contribute to building a better world. By now we have also realized that too many companies have joined the social entrepreneurship platform to redeem a damaged image and prove to the world that there’s more to them than a greedy, toxic personality.

On the brighter side of things, as mentioned in my last blog, I had the privilege to stumble on a pure gem: a company created on the other side of the spectrum with only the idea that contributing to a better world would create a richer humanity for us all to enjoy. And out of this generous concept came a viable business model.

Please meet Sseko Designs, a company headquartered in Portland, Oreg., that manufactures BEAUTIFUL sandals in Kampala, Uganda. What makes Sseko Designs unique is its story: a story of sheer generosity, cultural respect, and empowerment all around.

The story started four years ago when Liz Forkin-Bohannon, a 22-year-old blond girl from Missouri, decided to experience the world first hand. Born and reared in an upper-middle class family, Liz had never experienced poverty beyond what she saw between the airport and the Mexican resort where her family vacationed.

In her eyes, it was time to experience the world at large–which took her to Uganda for a year to visit a college friend working in a local orphanage. While there, Liz put her communication skills to work to create a newsletter for the orphanage.

Her daily contact with the locals made her aware of the cultural differences at play. She would overhear mothers talking about their daughters who would soon graduate from high school, speaking of it as the end of the line. College was off limits., not only because they were girls in a society that doesn’t promote female emancipation but because there was a nine-month gap wherein most girls lost their aim for school due to the lack of hope of ever finding a job to fund their college educations.

To Liz (who, thanks to the assistance of her family, never had to doubt that she would go to college), this bottleneck had to be resolved. A solution had to be found so girls who had already fought their way all the way to high school and were outstanding students eager to learn more, would not get lost during those nine challenging months.

A productive solution had to be provided so the girls could earn a living and remain focused. In Uganda, where industries are rare and opportunities for women are even rarer, Liz had to think out of the box. Work opportunities had to be conceptualized from scratch.

While in college, Liz had entered a phase where she would avoid buying new items of clothing. Everything she wore had been recycled from somewhere else—an exercise that had engaged her imagination and provided her with some skills.  That’s where she came up with the idea of transforming broken flip-flops into strappy sandals, using scarves she would purchase at Goodwill to create a design that generated a positive reaction among many of her friends and even total strangers on the streets.

Armed with that idea, Liz went to see the superintendent of the local high school in Kampala and asked for the names of the most distinguished and deserving female students he would recommend to be sent to college, were the funds available. Rebecca, Mercy, and Mary were thus selected.

Liz met with them and explained that they would together learn to make strappy sandals out of pieces of leather they would turn into real shoes that she would then sell in the U.S. to fund their college education. That would be her farewell gift.  They thus downloaded YouTube videos on how to sew leather and started building their first pairs together.

A month later, Liz returned to Missouri with two large suitcases full of sandals. She contacted all her friends and family members, begging them to help her fulfill her promise to those three girls. To her surprise, people loved the designs and didn’t seem to buy the sandals out of compassion, but rather out of genuine respect for a well-built product with a great story. It thus took no time for Liz to sell all the sandals from the back of her car and gather the money needed for the three girls from Uganda to attend college in the fall.

Happy and proud, she could now move on to her next adventure. But could she really? There were a slew of young girls who needed help to go to college in Uganda, and there were people in the United States who really liked the product. She had a sustainable business model in her hands and a little voice in the back of her head telling her she needed to pursue this.

And she did. As of today, Liz and her husband, Ben, manage a team of 40 employees in Kampala and six employees in Portland. For nine months the plant provides a safe environment for girls where they can earn money to fund their college educations. As of today, their sandals are sold in 27 U.S. states, as well as Canada and Australia.

What makes Liz’s story unique is that she doesn’t have any business background. She had zero money to start her venture. She just had a beating heart and the clear understanding that Ugandans did not want to qualify for another world aid program; Uganda did not need another school, church or orphanage from well-intentioned foreigners. That community in Uganda needed a way to make money so an entire generation of girls could lift themselves out of poverty.

Liz’ story is not only an inspiration, it is also the definition of globalization by doing business that benefits all sides of the transaction. The time where companies would exploit workers on foreign land is over. The time to work together and build a better future for all of us is now! That’s being global!

 [lb1]Not all components of the sandals are recycled.

Posted in Africa, Cross-Cultural Friendship, Cultural Intelligence, Global Mindset, International Education, International Sales, Social Entrepreneurship | 1 Comment