Who Is This Book For?

When in Rome or Rio or Riyadh . . . is designed to be read by open -minded people who are interested in getting the most out of their international business contacts and in learning how to avoid problems before they crop up. I believe potential readers fall into four main groups. Where would you put yourself?

1. The pragmatist. You are observant enough to see that people in other countries do things differently from you, but instead of putting these differences down to stupidity or deliberate wrong-headedness, you want to learn how to deal with them in the interests of the company. You may even adopt another culture s way of doing things ”the When in Rome, do as the Romans method ” if it is the best way of getting the job done. You realize that a certain degree of intercultural awareness is good for the company, and perhaps even good for your own career.

2. The inquiring mind . In your business dealings with another culture you have come across some form of behavior, or a way of doing something, that you find puzzling. You cannot make sense of it within your usual terms of reference and have turned to this book for answers. You are a bit of a Sherlock Holmes and are interested in finding out the reasons why people from certain other cultures behave as they do.

3. The victim of post-traumatic stress. Perhaps you have firsthand experience of the most dramatic form of culture clash , when, for example, during an international project expectations have been dashed, taboos broken, and everyone involved left in a state of baffled resentment. If you have, you will want to understand what went wrong so you can avoid such a situation again.

4. Finger-bowl phobic. Your motive is fear, a pretty good motive for learning. You know you have an international trip in front of you and dread putting your foot in it, whether that involves drinking out of the finger bowl, giving the wrong kind of present, or doing something unsuitable with your chopsticks, and etiquette questions like these are usually the ones people ask most frequently and are often answered quite simply. Also, if you make such a mistake, it is easily excused by the fact that you are from another culture. However, misunderstandings based on, for example, different ideas of what honesty or as soon as possible mean are more difficult to put right.

It is important that we try to continue to search for explanations for unfamiliar behavior, or else we risk attributing it to the peculiarities of a particular culture or the personal failings of an individual. And in difficult situations we might find ourselves drawing conclusions like this:

• They (those foreigners) work like that because they don t know any better.

• They finish things late because they are not sufficiently developed to understand the advantages of our method.

• They are lazy.

• They deliberately slow down to try to annoy us.

That way madness lies!