Cultural Adaptation Archives - Page 2 of 2

Neil Miller April 11, 2014 Filed Under: Cultural Adaptation

Can You Try to Fit In Too Much?

There comes a point when you have to decide who you are.

Are you a Frenchman temporarily living in Mumbai? Or are you an Indian who happens to have roots in France?

How far do you let your new culture impact your life? Do you simply wear kurtas around the house? Do you decide only to eat Indian food? How much of their mindset will you adopt? Do you go beyond understanding hierarchy to actually participating in and leveraging it?

How strongly should you hold on to your home culture? When is it appropriate to be your “normal Australian self”, and when are you being culturally insensitive?

Everyone must answer these questions individually, but the answer might be, “it depends.”

In an article I submitted to InterNations Magazine, I examined some times when it is better to adopt the new culture and when it is best to stay the same.

You can read the article here: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3.

For those living abroad, or preparing for a move, InterNations can be a great resource. It is a vibrant, informal network of expats around the world. No matter where you are going, you are likely to find some events where you can meet like-minded people. They also have some really good, quality information on their website for those needing a global perspective.

Photo Credit: Prince Roy on Flickr

Neil Miller April 2, 2014 Filed Under: Cultural Adaptation

Put Your Value Ranking Skills to Work!

Let’s review what we’ve learned about value rankings:

Values are ideals we align ourselves to, not behaviors we practice
All values are good
All values are ranked
Value ranking determines decisions and behaviors

All this is great theory, but how does it actually help you? It’s nice to analyze a situation, but what if you are right in the middle of it?

Let’s walk through a step-by-step process with two examples: one from professional life and one from personal life.
[Read more…]

Neil Miller March 31, 2014 Filed Under: #GreyIsWhite, Cultural Adaptation

Value Rankings, #GreyIsWhite, and Anne Frank

Is this moral dilemma familiar to you?

You are a simple citizen living in Nazi Germany, and you are hiding some Jews in your home. The SS comes to your house, and asks if you are housing any Jews. What do you say?

The dilemma, of course, is that if you say “no”, you are lying, and everyone knows that lying is wrong. However, your hideaways are safe.

If you say “yes”, you can pat yourself on the back for upholding honesty, and then watch the troops escort the Jews out of your house to their fate.

We struggle to find the best way out of this situation. How can you maintain the value of honesty while allowing people to walk to their doom? In my culture, our best response to this dilemma was usually answering honestly, and then hoping the Jewish families would miraculously not be found. Pretty lame, looking back on it.

The interesting thing is that this is only a dilemma for some people. It perplexes universalists and people who don’t accept that value ranking is a natural part of how we behave. Everyone else is trying to figure out where the actual dilemma is. [Read more…]

Neil Miller March 28, 2014 Filed Under: Cultural Adaptation

Why Indians Think Americans Don’t Value Family

Two quick stories to start.

Story #1: An expat in India was having trouble implementing a new sales process. She was trying to get the sales team to input their data into a CRM system that was supposed to greatly scale the ability of the team. The team kept saying they understood the system, but rarely used it and often neglected it entirely.

She said, “Why is it that Indians don’t value processes?”

Story #2: I was explaining certain parts of American culture to a group of young Indians. I talked about how it is (or was) uncommon for young people to live with their parents after they graduate college. Most will move out at least by the time they reach 25. I told them that parents encourage this, and that I even knew some parents who began charging rent to their adult children who stayed in their home.

The group was shocked at this and said, “Why don’t Americans value family?”

Something about these two questions seemed wrong to me. Is it true that Indians don’t value processes? Would any Indian ever stand up and say that? Would any American stand up and say they do not value family?

Not likely. Something else is clearly going on…

What you probably already knew, but never said, about values:

[Read more…]

Neil Miller February 10, 2014 Filed Under: #ChaosBeatsLogic, Be Prepared, Cultural Adaptation

Two Kinds of Culture Shock

There are two kinds of culture shock.

The first is the kind you get when you are riding in your first taxi ride from the airport around India and force yourself to close your eyes as the driver dodges cars, cows, bicycles, and pedestrians in traffic.

The second kind is what happens six weeks later when you find yourself physically pushing someone out of the way who has cut the queue in front of you and yelling “What’s wrong with you?!”

To distinguish between the two, I’ll call the second a culture attack.

Culture shocks are actually a little bit fun. These are the experiences you tell your friends and family about when you go back home. It was like culture shock when everyone jammed into the train all at once! That was crazy! These are simple isolated experiences of cultural differences that leave an impression on us.

Culture attacks are hellish. They overtake your body and leave you feeling like the Incredible Hulk. You don’t tell people back home about these times. How do you tell your mother about the time when you got out your car and threatened to kill the motorcyclist who pulled out in front of you? [Read more…]

Neil Miller October 20, 2013 Filed Under: #ChaosBeatsLogic, #GreyIsWhite, #TimeIsEternal, Cultural Adaptation, Daily Living

Survival Skills

I’m going to try to change things around here.

That’s just the way things are, what can I do?

If you are like most people, these two thoughts tug at you constantly while in India. One minute you are inspired to make a difference and change something for the better. The next, you give up because you realize nothing will ever change. Then you start to see things move in a positive direction. Then you are struck at how nothing has moved at all.

Two steps forward, two steps back.

At the office, you try to implement strict processes and timelines and yet they seem to inevitably break down and fizzle out over time.

You feel compelled to give some money to the child who comes up to your car, hoping to make a difference in her life, and then later find out she is a part of a gang which keeps her in poverty her entire life.

History is filled with people who have come to India with big dreams and huge change initiatives. It is also filled with clumps of hair and screams of those who are tasked with implementing them.

Here’s a very brief and over-simplified view of a few key moments in Indian history that might help.

Alexander the Great – At the age of 30, Alexander had already conquered all of Greece, Persia, Babylon, and most of the known world at the time. His last great dream was to extend his kingdom to what the Greeks considered “the end of the known world” which was northwest India. After having defeated incredibly powerful armies, Alexander’s own army mutinied somewhere near Punjab and refused to go any further. Alexander left an officer as a satrap there and soon died without having fully realized his dream of conquering the whole world.

Mughal Empire in India – The Mughals came into India in 1526 through Babur and held large influence in India until the mid 1700s. They were the complete rulers of the day. Along with establishing the first empire that spanned most of modern-day Indian and Pakistan, they brought in a new renaissance of architecture and mathematics that the native Indians accepted and used to their own advantage. However, one of the early aims of the Mughals and other Muslim rulers was to see large conversions to Islam. Try as they might, this was one thing that never happened on a mass scale. Indians held onto their own beliefs while still participating in the kingdom.

British Raj – In 1858, the rule of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown of England and so began about 90 years of British rule in the subcontinent. But the British had been there much earlier, seeking trade and spices and finding a fortune to be made. Within a very short time, the British had conquered the largest parts of India and had subdued an entire subcontinent. The British tried their best to convert India into a true bureaucracy, making “modern men” out of Indians, and converting them to Christianity, but that never happened to a large extent. They remained who they were.

How does this relate to the fact that you are visiting the customs officer for the eighth time and trying to figure out if you have to/should give a bribe to the officer to get your stuff from the shipping container? How does it help you choose between the two thoughts we started with? What does India want from you?

To take a page from history, she wants your talent, your brilliance, your insight. She will take your money, your investments, your ideas, your questions and your doubts and will let them live and breathe and have space here. You can add to the richness of life in India and augment people’s lives in ways you never knew possible.

The only thing she doesn’t want is for you to try to change her. That’s where you will bust your head. In 3,000 years, there have been extremely few cases where an outsider “changed” India as a country, and it is unlikely you are going to be one of those stories. You can make her better and teach her new skills and help grow her understanding, but if a “culture change” is on your agenda, you are likely to live a short life here.

There is a time to give and a time to give in.

When you should give:

When you are dealing with an Indian (individual), not in a crowd
When you have a skill to teach like planning and pacing
When you see a specific need you can address (like taking care of your maid’s cataract surgery)
When you are working under an Indian’s authority and direction
When you are participating in an existing movement stated by Indians like asking for a receipt for your “ticket” instead of paying a bribe

When you should give in:

When you are dealing with India as a country
When a stranger cuts the queue in front of you
When someone cuts you off in traffic
When you are with the masses
When you feel the need to “start something new”, or “teach someone a lesson”.

This balance will be the key to your survival in India. Give and give in. Which one should you do today?

Can You Try to Fit In Too Much?

Put Your Value Ranking Skills to Work!

Value Rankings, #GreyIsWhite, and Anne Frank

Why Indians Think Americans Don’t Value Family

What you probably already knew, but never said, about values:

Two Kinds of Culture Shock

Survival Skills

There is a time to give and a time to give in.

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