“Digital Valley” Book Tuning VII: Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Culture Wisdom ~ Future of CIO

Friday, May 13, 2016

“Digital Valley” Book Tuning VII: Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Culture Wisdom

11:22 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

True culture wisdom springs from personality, curiosity, education, and appreciation of the diversity of thought and characters.

The definition of culture is “the mindsets, attitudes, feelings, values and behaviors that characterize and inform a group and its member.” There are organizational culture, community culture, societal culture, etc. From a business perspective, culture is the way how we think and do things around here. Culture wisdom is the type of intelligence for tolerance of ambiguity, and a set of capabilities such as learning agility, cultural flexibility, empathetic communication, complexity handling. Etc. Which questions should you ask to assess a person’s culture wisdom?

Do you have a global mindset? Being global is about crossing not just borders but also cultural divides between business, nations or social sectors. A global mindset is a worldview that looks at problems or issues in such a way that a solution emerges through a collaborative multicultural approach involving global psychological capital, intellectual and global social capital. Culture is much deeper than customs or languages. Cultural behavior is the end product of collected wisdom, filtered and passed down through many generations as shared core beliefs, values, assumptions, notions, and persistent action patterns. True culture empathy springs from personality, curiosity, education, and appreciation of the diversity of thought and characters. A global mind with deep cultural empathy means that you have to not just see through the eyes of someone who is different, but you have to think through that person’s brain.

Do you have high "CI"- Cultural Intelligence? People are gregarious by nature, they tend to organize themselves and it gives rise to a collective set of attitudes, beliefs, educational systems, notions of time and space, society structures, ways of doing business, running the world., etc. These items are roughly speaking the elements of a culture (regional, national, continental, generational, ethnic, religious beliefs, the list goes on and on). Hence, global leadership certainly has to take into account cultural intelligence and how that affects things and leadership effectiveness: how you interact with one another, how you manage, and what’s your thinking process and how you make a decision; from cognitive intelligence about others - as well as themselves! Hence, culture management is an integral component of people management including all talent management aspects, the sophistication of talent practices, how people work and manage other people, workforce demographics, and composition, etc.

How to build a successful culture change that helps people become who they are? Culture is the way how we think and do things around here: but HOW you do what you do is a result of your culture - WHO you are. By encouraging people to focus on who they are, and pursue the purpose discovery, autonomy, and mastery, the great culture catalyzes positive mind, attitude, and behaviors; but discourage the negativity and unprofessionalism. The definition of culture is 'the mindsets, attitudes, feelings, values and behaviors that characterize and inform a group and its members' - but ultimately it is WHO you are and not “What you do” or “HOW you do it.” Culture is the artifacts - what people can see and feel in the organization, and rituals - how business marks events, such as wins and how to celebrate, what is censured if deemed unacceptable under vision, mission, and strategy. One of the most effective ways is to empower the people to define their own meaning and actions to contribute towards culture changes, the evidence of needing change has to come from within the organization and that evidence needs to be visible to all to ensure the tipping point is reached.

At today’s global organization with multi-generational and multicultural workforce, culture wisdom becomes a more critical quality for digital leaders and professionals, to communicate effectively, collaborate cohesively and adapt to change effortlessly. It is the wisdom to bring understanding and workforce harmony.