Aperian: Helping Companies Bridge Cultures

Such online services as Aperian Global's GlobeSmart make it easy for managers to train employees in cultural differences among customers

By Steve Hamm

Dan Ryan, the 46-year-old head of real estate management at EMC (EMC), has lived his whole life in Massachusetts. But as his company has become increasingly global, he has had to widen his horizons.

So before he undertook a major expansion of EMC's operations in India, he turned to an online training tool called GlobeSmart, designed to help companies overcome cultural and other barriers that can hinder success abroad. Produced by San Francisco's Aperian Global, GlobeSmart helped Ryan prepare to deal with EMC employees and potential landlords in India—and avoid the faux pas that might have derailed plans to move from a 165,000-square-foot office in Bangalore into a building three times as large.

Multinational companies have long had to prepare themselves to operate in different cultures. Corporations give executives crash foreign language training; Indian call-center kids Americanize their names and accents and read up on U.S. sports teams to improve their interaction with customers. These days, many large companies ask their widely scattered employees to bridge far wider chasms—learning to collaborate with co-workers in different cultures, for instance, or communicate with partners or make sales pitches to customers, no matter where they are in the world.

Eco-Friendly Offices

Technology plays a key role. Like a digital-era equivalent of Dale Carnegie's perennial bestseller, How to Win Friends and Influence People, online tools such as GlobeSmart are starting to show up on PCs, alongside Microsoft (MSFT) Office and Google's (GOOG) Web search tool.

For Ryan, GlobeSmart underscored the importance of relationships in Indian businesses. Armed with that information, he spent a lot of time with potential landlords so they would get to know him and understand his priorities. Once he had their trust, he explained to them the importance at EMC of occupying an environmentally friendly workplace. He plans to sign a lease this week that not only achieves his financial goals but also puts EMC in a building that meets some of the highest environmental standards in the world. "Building our relationship with the landlord first allowed us to get him to consider meeting those standards," Ryan says. "Now he's talking about doing all of his projects that way."

Aperian Global consultants have been training a select few EMC employees on cross-border interactions for more than a year. EMC also has 200 executive coaches stationed around the world to improve managers' intercountry dealings. But right now the company is taking a giant step and rolling out Aperian Global's online tools to its workforce of 40,500, which includes 17,000 people outside the U.S. EMC says it wants everyone on staff to have a global mindset. The belief is that all of EMC's employees need to be able to function well with people around the world on a day-to-day basis, and they need to be able to do it with a high degree of cultural awareness and flexibility. "This is about ensuring that we're a truly global company," says Louise Korver-Swanson, EMC's global head of executive development. "We need everybody in the organization to be tuned in."

In the old days, EMC used to do nearly all its research and development in the U.S. and sell its products directly to large multinational customers. But now its research labs are widely scattered—from India and China to Israel. At the same time, it increasingly sells products through local partners. So cross-cultural interactions are constant, and mastering them is paramount.