Sometimes cross-cultural understandings misfire and trust can take a big hit.
I was asked to advise a newly established bank training institution in a part of the world that I had not yet visited. Having designed and managed a residential banker training center in Turkey and had also consulted on similar ventures in other developing economies, this was right up my alley.
The new Institute, wanting to partner with a prestigious US business school, had approached a finance professor at one such university who had previously been a Minister and Central Bank Governor in his home country. He invited me onto the project.
The professor’s discussions with their representatives prior to our first meeting at the business school had led him to believe this would be a detailed planning session, followed by agreement of final contract terms, so implementation could proceed as quickly as possible.
Over dinner we made small talk with the two representatives (the Institute’s director was accompanied by an advisor from another developing economy’s banking sector), touching only lightly on the project itself. The next day we met in a classroom and spent an intensive day filling up white boards and flip charts, outlining details of a curriculum and explaining the resources that would be seconded to the project from the business school along with other banking experts. At day’s end we were prepared to take our guests to dinner joined by the Dean of the business school to celebrate the new partnership.
That’s when the atmosphere changed - big time. They thanked us for the work done that day and then said, “We will take all of this into consideration as we collect information from the two other business schools we will be visiting during the next few days. We will get back to you as soon as we have decided.”
There followed a long silence. We were totally blindsided. Before that day and during our discussions they had never suggested we were participating in a competition. We would certainly have taken a considerably different approach if we had known.
More significantly, we both had a sense of betrayal at their lack of transparency and clarity in their communications. Conferring outside the room, the professor and I decided to cancel the dinner. In the end, they gave the business to another business school. Neither the professor nor I had any regrets about not getting the business.
Looking back, we were four different nationalities with different backgrounds and mindsets in the room. Given that, we should have made all communications clearer and developed an understanding of our purpose and the processes that would guide our work together. It was also great lesson supporting the statement that to ‘assume’ can make an 'ass of u and me'.
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