• Since childhood, I have been claustrophobic.
I escaped my birthplace of Nagoya, Japan, for Tokyo, then to Canada, then
to the USA. There was a strong urge to make an 'Exodus" to a more spacious
world where I could pursue and create, together with other people, a totally
new belief system. I wanted to engage in a conversation with my friends on
how to go beyond different religions. I felt that there must be a common
platform for everybody on earth to agree.
I was ecstatic when I finally encountered 'globalization" in business
and as a way of life. I also realized that the 'justice" and 'fairness"
for which I had so desperately searched in my native country were the same
values that we need to identify and create in this global arena.
• When I had an opportunity, in the early 80’s, to provide cultural
tips for executives in the Greater Boston high tech zone, I realized that
they believed their way of doing business was universal. In reality, they
were wearing a US cultural lens and were therefore unable to consider the
perspective of any other nationality. I quickly learned that people from
all different countries tend to see the world through their own native cultural
lens. Since then, the goal of discovering the components of different cultural
lenses became the center of my attention.
• Globalization began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end
of the Cold War in 1991. It accelerated with the advent of the digital revolution
and a borderless economy that required unified rules in the world. But most
amazing is the fact that globalization is evolving into a large-scale belief
system that requires us to experience a complete paradigm change. We need
to set up a global perspective in our mind’s eye and wear a multicultural
lens to really see this enormous transformation.
Some of the fascinating changes are from hard power to soft power, from vertical
control to horizontal sharing, from 'Principle of Exclusion" to 'Principle
of Inclusion". When Confucianism was compiled in ancient China during
an era in which war was waged in an effort to unify the country, the new concept
of harmony synchronizing in the universe and in human society must have been
an eye-opening paradigm shift. This time, the core is 'Principle of Inclusion".
This is love. It is a common platform beyond all different religions. Therefore,
globalization should be extremely humane…for our survival and for
that of our offspring.
• Everybody in the world uses the same geographical world map. That’s
why we can physically meet people in a different country and do business internationally.
But through my work and travels, it occurred to me that there is no analogous
<Cultural World Map> to reflect the "Software of the mind"*
of diverse people around the world. The lack of a cultural map has caused
corporations astronomical financial damage and inter-ethnic mistrust. So
I worked with IBC’s team of native instructors from over 50 countries
to create a <Cultural World Map>. It consists of:
As the next generation of internet technology
will connect the entire world like a 'global quilt"**, the <Cultural
World Map> will be all the more necessary as a navigation tool. One
of my dreams is to make this map a world standard like the geographical world
map that everyone shares.
• "Cultural Motivators(sm)" and "deMotivators(sm)"
are multi-purpose cultural tools. When selling our custom-designed seminars
in the early 90’s, I frequently met with VP’s in charge of worldwide
operations at multinational corporations. I quickly learned that I had only
about 20 minutes to persuade these executives, so I came up with the idea
of this set of persuasion tools. "Cultural Motivators(sm)" are cultural
traits that can be used to motivate and even persuade local people. "deMotivators(sm)"
are cultural traits that will discourage and de-motivate local people.
Eventually, the "Motivators(sm)" that we had created for all major
nationalities became a replacement for Hofstede’s cultural indices, which
had become outdated. We have been fascinated to observe that to internationally
inexperienced people, "Motivators(sm)" looks like a mere list, but
for globally experienced professionals, it functions as a magical "flying
carpet".
• As globalization advances and cultural relativism becomes our daily
experience, we need to change our currently prevailing <Theory of Evaluation
& Judgment>. At present, the results of evaluation or judgment
have been tremendously overvalued. If we could wear a multicultural lens,
it would become immediately clear that evaluation is a product of a different
cultural lens and also reflects…at least 50%…the evaluator’s
ability or lack of ability.
*"Software of the Mind" is a definition
of culture by Dr. Geert Hofstede
**A "Global Quilt" concept is from the President of NTT Communications,
SFC Paper Forum in the Nikkei, 2004.
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© Ikuko Atsumi 2005. All
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