cultural strategy and insights

Market Playbooks for Business Communications

Cultural awareness boosts better written and verbal communication, builds strong relationships, and creates more effective ways of working. By educating yourself and your team on cultural differences within your staff or customer base, you can build and deliver better programmes, create happier workplaces, and meet your goals more quickly.

Why is cultural awareness critical to a successful organisation?

Whether you work in customer service, global account management, business development, L&D, or HR or are a senior leader in a multinational organisation, it’s vital to understand the role culture plays in creating a well-adjusted, high-functioning team.

Here are just a few examples of how high cultural competence can boost performance within an organisation:
1. Effective communication

Language and nuances:

Understanding language differences and cultural nuances ensures that messages are clear, appropriate, and well-received.

Avoiding misunderstandings:

Awareness of cultural norms helps avoid misinterpretations and communication breakdowns.
2. Building relationships:

Trust and rapport:

Respecting cultural differences fosters trust and strengthens client, partner, and employee relationships.

Remote working:

Cultural awareness helps you get the most out of remote work, as you’ll better understand what a particular group might be missing from face-to-face interactions.
3. Improved customer service:

Comfort around giving feedback:

Knowing how different cultures express happy or negative emotions leads to quicker, more productive interactions, higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Conflict resolution:

Understanding cultural perspectives aids in resolving conflicts more effectively and quickly.
4. More engaging HR practices:

Onboarding:

Being aware of all the cultural nuances within an organisation, particularly where the central HQ is in a different country to many of your staff, can help create awareness from the start, leading to smoother working practices down the line.

Attracting and retaining global talent:

Culturally aware companies are more attractive to a diverse talent pool, enhancing innovation and creativity.
5. More impactful L&D programmes:

Training outcomes:

Adapting a training programme for a culturally diverse audience means the content is more relevant and engaging to each learner, producing better learning outcomes.

Inclusivity:

Being aware of the nuances of culture and how they affect learning styles will give you the information you need to design genuinely inclusive programmes.
6. International sales and partnerships:

Successful negotiations:

Cultural awareness improves negotiation strategies, leading to more successful and mutually beneficial agreements.

More effective sales strategies:

Being aware of your audience through the lens of culture and national customs means you “catch” a lot more non-explicit information, and less is lost in translation.

What do I get in the Market Playbook?

After an initial discovery call to learn more about your specific needs and goals, we’ll prepare an in-depth (minimum 20-page) guide on any country of your choice. We’ll tailor the content to suit your particular brand, tone of voice, channels of interest, and target demographics, highlighting all the cultural considerations we think are worth being aware of.

Once you purchase a report, we will refresh the content every year for free, so you’re always up-to-date on any changes or developments we think you might want to be aware of.

The report is delivered as a shareable PDF, so you only need to buy one report to share with your team.

What’s more, discounted pricing is available when purchasing multiple reports.

Who should be culturally competent in my organisation?

Cultural competence is always beneficial. A global mindset improves communication, collaboration, and innovation across the board, and the savviest companies invest heavily in the “way” things are done as much as the “what,” as they understand that getting the best from each member of the team is how to create and sustain a competitive advantage.

With that being said, we see this information as highly beneficial to a few key user groups within an organisation:

  • Customer-facing teams
    You may have a UK-based call centre that interacts with customers or users from around the globe. Or maybe you’re based outside the UK and want to expand your services. Understanding cultural norms, how complaints are made or resolved, how appropriate the use of humour is, and how formality or informality is perceived can all help create a sense of deeper engagement with your customer base.This leads to quicker resolutions, better service, increased retention, and word-of-mouth referrals.
  • Business development or sales teams
    People buy from people, and that adage rings true no matter what language you’re doing business in. Equipping your sales team with the knowledge to help them better understand their clients gives them an edge over your competitors.Understanding body language or how power distances are perceived to the national comfort level with things like risk, status, or time-keeping — these pearls of knowledge help your team read their clients and better meet their expectations.
  • People teams and senior leadership
    We all know that 80% of communication is indirect. So, to get the best from your organisation, whether designing an onboarding programme, adapting your internal communications, or choosing a framework to manage performance, you need to know what makes your foreign staff tick. The most competent leaders understand that a company’s success depends on its team’s performance. Arming your team and employees with the knowledge they need to thrive in their roles means greater cohesion, more effective work processes, and better overall performance.
  • L&D teams
    When designing training programmes that engage learners, it’s crucial to understand cultural norms around imagery, use of humour, gender stereotypes and many other things. Training yourself and your team on the cultural differences among your international learners is the first step to being in a position to know what to adapt and how to adapt. From how used people are to receiving or giving feedback to national preferences to learning preferences – almost every aspect of L&D has a cultural nuance.

Need some training? We can help with that.

In addition to our Market Playbooks, we offer Workshops and Training to help you, your team, or your whole organisation become more proficient in incorporating a cultural lens into your work.

Learn more about our workshops.

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