BulletProofBlog the blog on crisis communications

A new National Intelligence Counsel (NIC) report released last month, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, says that the post-World War II international system is changing dramatically. The report states that Brazil, Russia, India, and China will have powerful seats at a new international table - and in assuming those roles, they will alter the rules that govern the global marketplace.

Why does this matter to professional communicators? Because it means that U.S. private and public sector protocols aren' t likely to remain the norm for international dialogue moving forward.

Some of what the NIC portends has been on futurists' radar screens for years. But the future is now - and as such, American business professionals need to recognize that in international business, culture is king.

Author and successful international entrepreneur Ron Cruse underscores in his book, Lies, Bribes, & Peril: Lessons for the Real Challenges of International Business that culture affects perceptions, actions, thinking, legal frameworks, and communications. Cruse says that "cultural chasms can make the most ordinary events turn bizarre."

Almost everybody who travels internationally knows we have to act differently in other countries. But heretofore, many American business people haven' t really had to learn the culture in the country they are visiting because they have an office there, or they use an agent of some type to help out in good and bad times.

If the NIC is correct, however, American business people face a virtual inevitability that we will be working more overseas. Communications professionals will have to adapt to intercultural business - and, in fact, should be leaders in doing so. Cruse writes that "without being able to overcome the cultural-based challenges of global business, success is virtually impossible to attain."

That can be a high hurdle for many Americans, but it' s one that we will all soon have to clear - for if we do not actually know the other cultures in which we hope to succeed, then hope is really all we will bring to the table.