Cultural Intelligence, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 1

Living and Working in the Global Village

I PROMISE TO TRY

Barbara Barnes, alone in her Minneapolis office, pounds her desk in frustration. She has just read an email from an irate customer, who complains that her department’s technical representative, who has been visiting the customer to correct a fault in software supplied by Barbara’s company, is not only unable to solve the problem but seems to have less knowledge of the software than the customer’s own staff. The customer’s business is being seriously disrupted. Can Barbara please send someone else, who knows what they are doing?

Worse, this is the third such incident reported to Barbara this week. It doesn’t seem to be just a single employee fouling up—the whole technical department ...