Using culture competitively at ICI

Hey !!!!!i want to share this article with all of you,it is about how sometimes we perceive other cultures,and how we can integrate our differences and turn them into a competitive advantage!

ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries), the world’s 38th largest industrial corporation, has been making big strides in its efforts to internationalize. Since the early 1980s, the British concern has reorganized into worldwide business units, a number of which have their headquarters outside the UK. to develop a more global perspective, it changed the composition of the 16-person board of directors from being all British to include several non-British executives(currently a German ,a Canadian ,and two Americans)in addition to integrating different cultural perspectives at the top, ICI is finding ways to use culture competitively at a deeper level in the organization.
One recent cultural initiative at ICI involved a group of Italian and British managers from ICI Pharma Italy and their counterparts from ICI pharmaceuticals headquarters in Cheshire, in the UK. In recent years, the Italian operation has been playing an increasingly important role within the business unit internationally. However, when working on joint projects, the British and Italian managers often found communication difficult and frustrating, even though they all spoke English. The group decided it was important and necessary to understand better each other’s ways of doing things, so they undertook an exercise they called “Project management in a multi-cultural environment”. With the help of consultants, the two teams identified the areas where they were experiencing real difficulties in working together and openly shared the perceptions each had of the other culture. The differences in focus and process to get things done are summarized in general terms below:
Differences between British and Italian working attitudes
UK
-“Doing things the right way”
-Working to protocols and standards
-Establishing procedures to get things done
-Providing essential information
-Diplomacy
ITALY
- “Doing the right things”
-Encouraging flexibility
-Building relationships to get things done
-Providing context
-Directness in communication

The British managers depicted the Italian business culture as:
A fluid, relatively unstructured organization. Seen from a positive perspective, Italian managers are resourceful improvisers who are able to adjust to changes, to circumvent constraints and to adapt to, or create, new rules for the game. More negatively, the image of the Italian manager is one of an excessively flexible, ever –changing, time-unconscious Mediterranean who has to be checked and double-check all the time if you want to be sure the agreed objectives are realized.

British perceptions of Italians:
-excessively flexible
-entrepreneurs
-creative
-rely on people, not structures
-emotional
-undisciplined
-never meet deadlines
-Not very time –conscious
-aversious to planning

The Italian managers characterized the British business culture as:
Having a penchant for tradition, a narrow definition of responsibility, and a high level of concern for form and order. The British are well-organized, analytical thinkers, very much preoccupied with rules and procedures. That something is “simply not done” is a frequently Heard phrase. On the one hand, this could be positive. On the other hand, it means that the British adhere to a management style that Works against innovation and change. The emphasis on protocol and procedures gives them a reputation for being”inelastic”, too process-oriented and sometimes slow and ponderous.

Italian perceptions of the British
-obsessed with rules and procedures
-inflexible
-formal
-avoid confrontation
-inhibited/hide emotions
-disciplined
-good planners
-suspicious
-slow and ponderous

In the process of making explicit their perceptions about each other, the teams recognized that “both culture's “behaviors were perfectly legitimate and professional in their perspective environments. In fact, the perceptions of each other were precisely those things that made each successful in their own environment. The Italian flexibility in business that was often a source of frustration to the British managers was a valued and important quality for success in Italy. The formality and relative structure that frustrated Italian mangers would be inappropriate in the Italian business environment but made sense in the UK.
Both groups of managers recognized that neither culture was right or wrong. They simply used opposite starting points of the same logic. Instead of considering their cultural differences as distinct, incompatible ways of viewing the world, they worked out particular ways of integrating the strengths of each within the context of management. Most importantly, this included valuing what each approach had to offer. Also, they decided that they could identify particular aspects of joint projects in which one or the other approach would be more appropriate. These efforts are continuing because the teams recognize that it is a process that must be worked on over time, but benefits are already been realized. One year after the workshop, participants met again to celebrate the successful completion on time of a key phase in an important Project, both groups believe that they have made real gains in been able to use each other’s strengths more effectively and, over time, using them to build competitive advantage.