If you work in cross-cultural communications, what you want to avoid at all cost is the cookie cutter. 

Koushik Chatterjee, CFO of Tata Steel, gave a great definition of it in a recent interview with McKinsey: “We do these five things, and therefore these five things must be done by everyone.”

His approach to international M&A is different: “we quite genuinely tend to look at an acquisition as a partnership rather than an acquisition”.

“We don’t send planeloads of people into a new company. Instead, we only send a few integrators. That’s been the key interface.”

I particularly like his way of engaging employees from the acquired company, a process he calls “shared change”: “we share and adopt good practices across the organisation through performance-improvement teams…This gives employees in the acquired organisation a sense of confidence that they too have good things that the parent company is absorbing”.

Chatterjee admits that “it takes time to positively influence a large organisation”. But the secret is to build “trust in the sincerity of the shared vision”.

Trust might take longer to establish but once you are there, “things move faster; you don’t have to go around reassuring people”.

(in the photo with me from left to right, Sung-Joo Kim, CEO of MCM Holdings and PAWA Founder & President, Betty Yao MBE, PAWA Co-Founder & Chair of the Management Committee, Mei Sim Lai OBE, Diane Morris, TIAW President and Yang-May) 

Did you know that 2/3 of the world population live in Asia and half of them are women?

Yang-May and I attended the launch of the Pan Asian Women’s Association (PAWA) last night at Asia House.

PAWA is creating a platform for women from across Asia – from Japan to Iran – to share ideas, talk about common concerns and mentor the next generation.

A number of highly accomplished female business leaders these days come from Asia. Thirty five per cent of the 50 top women in world business featured on Saturday in the Financial Times come from the region.

At the launch, I enjoyed listening to Sonia Lo. Sonia was born in Korea and has worked in international finance for Google and United News and Media. She is the founder of London-based Chalsys Capital Partners.

Her advice to professional women is that “pushing a closed door sometimes is not the answer”. Sonia uses self-esteem as her strongest motivator.

Diversity is no longer a pet project on the sidelines of corporate life.

A number of trends indicate that companies with a diverse workforce are likely to perform better in the years to come.

According to official data, the amount of mutual fund assets under management (AuM) is shifting from the Global North to emerging markets. AuM decreased by 10% in Europe in the past three years, while it increased by 37.6% in Brazil and Chile and by 19.2% in Asia including China, India  and Korea.

Multinationals from emerging economies are engaging more and more with businesses in Europe and the US. Companies with a diverse staff will find it easier to understand these new business partners. A diverse  workforce brings a mixture of experiences and resources that employers will be able to turn into a powerful competitive advantage when dealing with other parts of the world.

And let’s not forget that Generation Y is coming into the workforce and is looking for jobs that resonate with their values. Inclusion ranks high among them. Gen Y is used to being in contact with people from other cultures. Social networking and online games have turned their world into a digital orange.

Annette Verschuren, President and CEO of The Home Depot for Canada and Asia, believes that the business secret of the future will be about including and inspiring people who in the past we thought did not belong.

Bieneosa Ebite and I will be talking about Cross Cultural PR and Diversity at the CIPR in October. Bienosa is the managing director of Bright Star Public Relations and a founding member of the UK Black and Asian PR Networking Group, which aims to encourage diversity in the PR industry.

Click here to join us on 12 October.

I used to find index charts soothing.  

You might think I’m strange. But when I worked as a financial journalist, they would stimulate my thinking….

Like a mandala, I would look at them and they would give me a sense of clarity…. After a while, sentences would start flowing in my mind.

I haven’t found financial charts soothing lately.

But yesterday, I was glad to hear at a seminar that markets are showing signs of normalisation. Which doesn’t mean that the recession is over. But markets have at least stopped to be out of control and are experiencing some sort of stabilisation.

 However, analysts believe that the UK and Europe will not be able to attract significant investment for a while.  

The spotlight has moved to the East.

Most Asian countries already had their financial crisis in 1998.  It enabled them to clean house and left their banks with strong balance sheets. On top of this, they were able to create high levels of self-generating demand.

China and India are continuing to grow, and most importantly, their middle-classes are growing. International capital is being lured by the prospect of huge sales volumes.

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Communications  and marketing are right at the core of this trend.

With little growth to be expected in the West, many of the companies we are working for are increasingly looking at China and India.

One of the first tasks they will have to master is reaching out to audiences and engaging with consumers in these markets.

I am intrigued by the concept of fusion leadership.

I heard Jagdish Sheth speak at my livery last night. He is the author of the much publicised Chindia Rising.

Jag believes that what the world is currently experiencing is not a clash but rather a fusion of civilisations.

Asia is becoming Westernised and the West is being strongly influenced by Asia (there are 6 million practicing Buddhists in the US today…).

All this is having an impact on international management practices. The result is fusion leadership, a mixture of Western and Asian styles. What Jag calls “a balance of orchestration and improvisation.”

He uses weddings as an example.

“A Christian wedding is orchestrated, while an Indian wedding is all about improvisation.”

When Jag’s grandniece got married in India four years ago, the priest got a phone call on his cell during the ceremony. Jag was horrified to see him take the call while nobody in the audience seemed to be upset. “You have forgotten India“, a relative teased him.

Budgeting in the West is sacrosanct. However corporate leaders will have to learn to combine strategic planning with flexibility, if they want to succeed in a globalised market place.

Jag believes that leadership is all “about shaping the expectations of others”. This is what the leader of the future will need to have in order to succeed:

1. Passion
2. Empathy
3. Competence

I was thrilled to see empathy high on the list. Finally! Let the post-modern era begin!