Cross Cultural Psychology

As a practice grows, it’s common to experience growing pains. Employees come and go, new departments are formed and you’re making decisions all the time about hiring, outsourcing and taking on new clients. While cross training may sound like a time-killer in a busy firm, there’s a case for cross training employees that makes sense for every growing practice.

Cross Training Expands the Knowledge Base

The first reason a growing practice should strategically cross train employees is that this practice expands your firm’s internal knowledge base. In other words, when only one person knows how to do each job, that knowledge can become a closely-guarded secret in the interest of job security.

If, on the other hand, you require each person working in an administrative position to train another staff member in their basic responsibilities, the internal knowledge base expands and “kingdom building” is averted.

Key players in your support staff may try to convince you that what they work with is too confidential to be shared with others. That’s why, with careful planning, you’ll keep knowledge sharing within departments whenever possible. Here’s the question to ponder: if essential payroll, billing, human resource, IT or marketing people walked out today, would someone else have enough knowledge to make a seamless temporary transition?

Cross Training Increases Stability

Speaking of transitions, in a practice where only one person has a grasp of fundamental support duties, vacations, unplanned absences and terminations can be devastating. If that seems extreme, try losing your right-hand person for a month and having to do everything for yourself. That should convince you that allowing your admin to cross train another employee on their basic functions is time well spent.

Another important ingredient in your growing firm’s stability is the prevention of employee burn-out. Someone who can never be gone more than a couple of days will either use that fact as leverage or start looking for a less demanding job. That kind of disruption can be a real deterrent to growing your practice.

Position your firm for both growth and stability by encouraging knowledge-sharing within every department. As you create new departments, require those managers to build regular cross training into their strategic plans.

Cross Training Encourages Collaboration

One more way that cross training is a smart move for a growing practice is that it encourages employees to collaborate. Rather than spending an undue amount of time performing independent research on something readily available from another employee, staff members who have trained with others are more likely to ask for help.

Here’s the scenario:

Your IT department has developed a standard of knowledge sharing and cross training. When a glitch occurs in a system for which one of them is responsible, that person feels comfortable bouncing possible solutions off someone else trained in that process. The other person has the basic knowledge he needs to understand the problem and may bring a new perspective to the issue. Doesn’t that sound like a better way to solve problems than through a single person who holds all the cards?

Even in a small practice, sharing essential information about business processes between staff is good strategy. That isn’t to say that everyone needs to know everything about how your business runs. It does, however, mean identifying managers or support staff capable of performing key job functions in the event of an unforeseen absence. In that way, you avert disruption and encourage an atmosphere of collaboration.

Culture will never be a category on what ever (ezine) directory. It is just too broad a subject. And it doesn’t solve anything. In fact it is only causing problems. YET. it is so interesting…

Culture is difficult to describe, because there are so many elements and details that describe the culture of a group or nation. But if you observe and watch you will learn a lot.

For example look at the international soccer league. This is an international culture that is one of the most open cultures that is available in the world. The main trademark of this soccer culture is the TRANSFER. This “transfer” is in fact the symbol of the openness of the international soccer culture. Transfer is all about going from team A to team B; going to a new contract to Real Madrid and bought from Barcelona.

So a Catalan team can and will (according to the international soccer profession) contract players from Brazil, the Netherlands, Cameroon and of course Spain itself. This is not different for any other Spanish team (like Real Madrid, Sevilla or Valencia).

Then there is the local culture. For example, players in the Barcelona team are obliged to learn and (be able to) speak Catalan, which is the language that is spoken in the Catalan community in Spain. This (local) rule — protects (conserves) the local culture by compelling foreigners to learn the local language — shows very much the difference with the international soccer league culture (and rules).

Another way in which cultural differences become clear is when we observe national soccer teams.

If we compare the international (soccer) culture with local National cultures we can also observe national rules — focused on openness. This is for example apparent if we take the Italian or the Spanish national teams and we compare them to the Dutch or the French and even the German teams (From the World Cup 2006).

The Italian and Spanish teams had only local Spanish players, whereas in the French, Dutch and even the German teams, the influence from other culture was present and visible.

This is only one single element in culture; the way in which a group of people are open and used to cooperate with others, call them “Third parties”.

This is only about awareness. A next step could be about international or global trends.

© 2006 Hans Bool