Nowadays culture has become a thing in business. Companies hire Chief Cultural Officers, engage with issues in cultural diversity, look with interest at their customers’ lives. The risk, however, is to approach culture as a thing: something as clear-cut and defined as an object, a certain nationality, language, skin colour or habit. It is assuming that spaghetti is “Italian culture” while probably we would be better off considering “cultural” a specific way to cook, eat and enjoy spaghetti.
Mr Hiroyuki Anzai is the Japanese founder of De-Tales [link here] , a company promoting education and discussion about culture, creativity and design. A couple of weeks ago Mr Anzai reached out for an interview about a very interesting topic: how do we train our eyes to really capture culture, cutting through the obvious and the apparent?
Mr. Anzai did not want to get my general opinion about it. He wanted me to dig in my own past, mining for the elements and moments that defined my view on culture. During the interview we focussed on two pivotal moments:
- My childhood summer vacations on the road. From 1 to 17 years old, I have travelled with my parents on a camping car across Western Europe and the Middle East. It was a time where tourism was yet to develop and English was definitely not a Lingua Franca. Funny when your camping car breaks, and the local mechanic signals with his hands and facial expressions he has never seen one. There, cultural diversity happens to you, and you just have to be creative about it
- My postgraduate years in Japan, where I realised that “speaking the language” is not just about vocabulary or grammar. I clearly remember my struggle with the Japanese bowing (see also my reflections here ), and the day I spent wrapped in a kimono among Japanese ladies, which taught me more about “the Japanese way of” than the books I had been reading for my Ph.D.
First-hand experience of cultural diversity is irreplaceable. You really get exposure to culture when you feel the desire and the necessity to be part of a different group while feeling your own difference.
It is from these wonderful, at time uncomfortable, in any way humbling moments that embracing culture becomes an attitude and a skill. It is this level of depth and complexity that businesses need to look for right now.
The article has appeared in Japanese on SankeiBiz (a Japanese newspaper covering economic subjects) [link here] .