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In companies where everyone is located in the same country, passing messages implicitly is frequently the norm. The closer the space we share and the more similar our cultural backgrounds, the stronger our reliance on unspoken cues. In these settings we communicate in shorthand, often without realizing it — reading our counterparts’ tone of voice, picking up on subtext. A manager once told me, “At our company, managers didn’t finish their sentences. Instead, they would begin to make a point and then say something like ‘OK, you get it?’ And for us, that said it all.”
A lot of work is done in this implicit way without anyone’s taking note. If I walk by your office and see you studying October’s budget with a worried look, I might send you a comprehensive breakdown of my costs for the month. If I see you shrink in your seat when the boss asks if you can meet a deadline, I know that your “yes” really means “I wish I could,” and I might follow you to your office after the meeting to hear the real deal. In such ways we continually adjust to one another’s unspoken cues.
But when companies begin to expand internationally, implicit communication stops working. If you don’t tell me you need a budget breakdown, I won’t send one. If you say yes even though you mean no, I’ll think that you agreed. Because we aren’t in the same place, we can’t read one another’s body language — and because we’re from different cultures, we probably couldn’t read it accurately even if we were within arm’s length. The more we work with people from other cultures in far-flung locations, the less we pick up on subtle meaning and the more we fall victim to misunderstanding and inefficiency.
The obvious solution is to put in place multiple processes that encourage employees to recap key messages and map out in words and pictograms who works for whom, with what responsibilities, and who will take which steps and when. For many organizations, that kind of change is largely positive.
Internet: <https://hbr.org> (adapted).
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