Do as you would in Barnes or Barnesley

Keith whistles nervously as he strides through the lobby of the Beijing hotel towards a make-or-break meeting. He carries a laptop bag, an ornately-parcelled Bond Street clock and a heavy cold. He sees the Chinese delegation, approaches the table and bows as he hands his parcel to the man who greets him with an offer of a drink. Keith, already heavily medicated, refuses and, as if to explain, takes out a clean handkerchief and blows his nose. Even before sitting down he has also blown this, his biggest-ever export deal. Whistling his way to the table didn't do Keith any favours. But blowing his nose was, to Chinese sensibilities, beyond disgusting. Bowing - a Japanese, not a Chinese habit - was not good but refusing a drink with a simple 'no' notched up two faux pas in the one gesture. The clock, when passed to the real head of the Chinese party by the man Keith gave it to, suggested the recipient would meet an early grave. Doing business in China is so littered with pitfalls that it's no wonder many manufacturers prefer not to bother. The example Professor John Adams of Napier University, Edinburgh, offers is Chinese negotiators' use of silence. When a UK delegation reveals a final offer to their Chinese counterparts and local officials, it often meets stony silence. The UK side usually panics and shaves even more off its own margin. If the Chinese are silent, says Adams, who has worked with the Beijing city government on British attitudes to doing business overseas, the Brits should wait for a response, however long it takes. Some cultures won't go outside the party line. No Japanese exec will offer an opinion about something the chief executive hasn't yet pronounced on, says Graham Clark, Cranfield School of Management's executive MBA programme director and senior lecturer in operations management. And American organisations, in Clark's experience, are similar. Old hands make light of the obvious worry: language. Matthew Hill, senior intercultural consultant at the Farnham Castle international training centre in Surrey, says you don't need to take 3,000 hours to perfect your Polish or read for a degree in modern history: "A few words of the new language go a long way - 'hello-goodbye, yes-no, please-thank you, good-bad and taxi, hotel, bill, beer, more beer, OK just ONE more beer'." Some obstacles are not linguistic but cultural and legal, says Adams. "The biggest legal problem is that a lot of the rules and regulations [they encounter] are not at all clear." If they buy property in China, in whatever form, "they can never be sure it's theirs". Another problem is that, if they go into business in China, they have to do so as a partner: "Far too many of these Chinese partners are crooks. Corruption is a major problem," says Adams. That's not necessarily the fault of the Chinese state. It's corruption among local officials and politicians looking for bribes. The same is true in Russia and most of Africa, he says. Though Clark takes MBA students on Far Eastern study tours each year, the experience is a constant surprise. "On the face of it, things don't look that different," he says. "Some of the technology and the way things operate look very similar. But underneath the similarities they are really very different. What looks similar isn't similar." The positional heirarchy - who is the senior figure in the group you're talking to - is less straightforward than in the UK, says Clark, and who's most senior isn't always obvious. In the UK, the one who's doing all the talking is usually the boss. The Middle East is another minefield, says Paul Lambert, now managing director of business process consultancy Mšbius. In a career with Beecham Group, ICI and Huntsman, Lambert spent four years in Indonesia, one year in India, and 10 years in Belgium. You need strong cultural awareness in Islamic countries, says Lambert. It's important not to pass anything with your left hand, or to show anyone the soles of your feet. Knowing the language sometimes doesn't help. Donna Marsh has been teaching formally at Farnham Castle for two years, but her experience of international business techniques goes back to the early 1990s. Her example is the simple word, 'yes'. "If someone says 'yes' does it mean, 'yes I'll do it', 'yes, I understand what you want me to do', or 'yes I heard the question'? If you tell someone in Saudi Arabia you'll have a report for them by the end of the week, do you mean your working week or his?" Lebanon is the only Middle Eastern country to work Monday to Friday. Qatar's working week is Sunday to Thursday. Other countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, work from Saturday to Wednesday. But Marsh dispels many of the myths about the Middle East. It's an area she knows well, though her experience also takes in India, Pakistan and the Far East. Marsh says she has all the handicaps - left handed, a woman, "and, worst of all, an American". But women can and do have active roles in Middle Eastern business, she says: "They are owners, corporate executives, saleswomen and computer engineers." Saudi Arabia is "very distinct," Marsh agrees. But Bahrain, Qatar and the emirates are much more open. "They welcome all skill sets and both sexes," she says. Says Linus Ridge, sales director of Sly Filters (Europe): "So many people 'think about' exporting but never actually do it." Sly Filters was forced into exports by a collapse in the UK industrial dust-collection market. "We had to go abroad to survive and grow," says Ridge. Now the flags of China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Holland, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Spain and Sweden fly at the top of Sly's website. This company learned the hard way. Most of the mistakes Sly made were with the paperwork, says Ridge. "If you think you know it all, you're going to waste a lot of money and time," says Ridge. In Russia, for example, you don't understand the language and you don't understand the economy: "It's totally different from the western business model." There are problems nearer home. It's too easy to assume, says Clark, "that what goes in the UK will go elsewhere". Swedes, for example, use more democratic decision making than we're used to, so it can be "difficult to know why a decision is being made," says Clark. Says Lambert of Mšbius: "I've met even HR professionals who say, 'Belgium's not abroad'. It's not true. It's very, very different," especially for anyone who takes their family to live abroad, away from the usual support structures. "If the washing machine breaks down, how do you get it fixed? If the car breaks down, or you get a visit from the police to see if your ID cards are in order, how do you cope with that?" Marsh cites research which shows that the largest group of failed migrants, those who return early because they can't hack it, are not Brits going to the Middle East or Indians going to China, but Americans coming to the UK. They think it will be easy because they know the language, says Marsh, but from that they leap to unjustified cultural assumptions. Brits at least take holidays in Europe, so they have some experience of 'abroad'. Americans don't. Lambert says a Canadian colleague told him that, despite the common language, the UK had more in common with Belgium or Germany than with the US. "Everyone has the same difficulty in dealing with their American counterparts. I don't think Americans feel they can learn anything from Europe. They are very aware of their economic power and their economic success, the power of the country, and their efficiency in the way they do things." A lot of the time, they can't understand why they're bothering to deal with Europeans at all, says Lambert. What's required to operate abroad, Lambert insists, are "extra skills": "It's not just cultural knowledge. You need more interpersonal awareness, a sense of the impact you're having on other people." What's more, says Clark, you have to learn all this by experience. No book is going to give you the insight. Clark's advice is not to make any assumptions about any culture. There will be many aspects of any culture outside the UK that won't necessarily be the same. But there's no need to flounder: "I always encourage people to be curious, inquisitive," says Clark. "It pays dividends. Why not ask them, 'Why do you do it this way?' And ask why you don't do it their way." The best approach is empathy and patience, says Marsh. Asking questions will encourage overseas partners to 'open up a little bit more' provided you are sincere, honest and polite, not just hoovering up information. That kind of interaction, says Clark, is just part of good selling skills. "Don't be afraid of it. Work with it and enjoy it." Make sure you're aware when you've got to a point where you're acting out of character, says Clark, and it becomes uncomfortable. But the caution can be overdone. "You can be over sensitive," says Clark. "You can try [too hard] to recognise a different culture and tiptoe around." If you are forever trying to work out what you should be saying and doing instead of being yourself, Clark suggests, "you are just game playing. You can't be them. They have been brought up in their culture since birth. They are steeped in it. Just accept that you can't know what they know." Just as you would in Barnsley or, if you're from Barnsley, in Barnes.