Cultural Waste

While developing the most efficient management and manufacturing methods like Lean, Kaizen or others, the blindness to a different cultural logic of doing things is stunning. Cultural logic underpins everything we do but is not universal. Organisations rooted in decentralised egalitarian principles differ tremendously from centralised meritocratic hierarchies. Efficiency, leadership, promotion, priority, ownership, decision-making mean very different things in different cultural contexts.

‘Cultural Waste’ refers to the losses produced in the collaboration between people with a different cultural logic, in cross-cultural collaboration in general, in academic collaboration and scientific innovation, and in Joint Ventures and Mergers and Acquisitions between companies with different cultures.

Cultural waste is produced in four areas: communication, collaboration, time and planning, and relationships. Detecting cultural waste means opening opportunities for improvement. Cross-cultural collaboration is a process of continuous improvement.

The Cultural Quantum® Five Step Method and the visual thinking tools presented in this book help to understand one’s own cultural logic and that of others and to recognise and eliminate cultural waste in order to develop sustainable, balanced, efficient cross-cultural collaboration.