|
As Chairman of the Arena Know-How
Group which comprises the company Arena Learning, among others, and Managing Director
of Arena Business Development Ltd, Brian Wilson has seen deals jeopardised by
clients who have failed to pay due attention to that most fundamental rule of
doing business in overseas markets.
Brian, a founding
director of the North East-based French Business Council, cut his teeth in overseas
markets through working on inward and outward investment and through being a past
member of IGAF (International Group of Accounting Firms), representing some of
the world's major independent players in accountancy and business consultancy.
"I would say that the big difference between doing
business in Britain and abroad is what is polite and what is right and friendly,"
says Brian. And the most common faux pas? "The business of not using first
names until you are asked; Britain and America are exceptions rather than the
rule. In most other places it just doesn't go down well at all." "Another
thing I have found is a real problem for English people - the need to severely
restrict any swearing. What is inappropriate at home may go down even worse in
other places." Brian has witnessed this at close hand.
"I have seen a big deal scuppered because a client used inappropriate language
in a meeting in the company of two ladies. We were dealing with a very rich and
successful Malaysian, brokering a joint venture in China, and he could afford
to say 'No'. Quite simply, because he didn't like what he had heard and what it
said to him about his prospective business partner." Brian
cites one other occasion when he was working on behalf of a UK-based client looking
to take over a large plant in a small community in Poland.
"Under
Communism this factory had supplied its product to the whole of Russia and the
Eastern Bloc and there was a sense in which costs simply weren't managed. The
'MD' as we would call him, employed 1,800 people and almost every family in that
place would have someone working in the factory." Of
course, this position was compromised when the company's traditional market vanished,
and with it the notion of maintaining employment for such numbers. "He
(the MD) was a bright bloke with a PhD, but he did not really understand the concept
that making a profit is the first priority of a company. And he was far more used
to taking orders than to making decisions. I was sure we could have made good
use of his knowledge, honesty and loyalty and really developed him." However,
the cultural chasm was judged too risky to bridge and the deal was pulled, leaving
Brian to contemplate - as so many companies are doing - a possible lost opportunity
for a UK company which, he suggests, was too wary of facing up to those cultural
differences. - back Source:
RLN North East | 
