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Manage Wise
Innovative leadership for the digital age
 The
aim of the research on which this book is based was to discover how outstanding
leaders manage knowledge effectively. Our core finding is that great leaders
reconcile seemingly opposing values—that’s what they do, that’s
what makes them effective, and that’s what makes them great. Senior leaders
seem to know how to integrate objectives to deliver results. Successful leaders
rarely give orders; rather, they create a culture of reconciled values. It is
this underlying, encompassing process that is essential for real success; it
delivers benefits and bottomline business results. From extensive evidence gained
through direct data gathering and close partnering with client companies, we
have identified a new, over-arching process that we term transcultural competence.
The Trompenaars-Hampden Turner (THT) framework encompasses
three R’s—recognition, respect and reconciliation.
Recognition
The first step for leaders is to help all players recognise that there are cultural
differences, to recognise their importance and how they have an impact.
Thus, while we instantly recognise explicit cultural differences, we may not
recognise implicit cultural differences. This explains why cultural due diligence
is absent from the management agenda of pre- and post-merger acquisitions. Our
research, especially evidence from practical experience, has led us to develop
diagnostic instruments and validation models to reveal and measure these basic
assumptions. They are grounded in the seven-dimensional model of cultural differences
we have developed over the last 10 years, and are at the core of this new transcultural
competence framework.
Respect
Different cultural orientation and views about “where I am coming from”
are neither right or wrong—they are just different. It is all too easy
to be judgemental and distrust those who give different meaning to their world
from the one you give to yours. Thus, the next step is to respect these differences
and to accept other’s right to interpret the world in the way they have
under historical conditions that have made that right for them.
Because of the different views of the world and the different meanings given
to apparently the same constructs, we find that these differences manifest themselves
as dilemmas. We have seemingly two opposing each other, those of contrasting
cultures and those of the knower and the known—the researchers’ model
and the informants’ model.
Excerpted from 21 Leaders for the 21st century by Fons Trompenaars
and Charles Hampden-Turner. Reproduced with permission. © 2003, Tata McGraw-Hill
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