Young versus Old

last Friday I attended a conference organized by and for young purchasers. The topic immediately had my interest when I heard it: Cultural alignment in global procurement. I work for an international company with the responsibility for strategic procurement. So this event as almost one-on-one made for me. The oldies who shared their experiences with cultural differences were CPO's from Philips, Nike, Starbucks and AkzoNobel.


Other interesting speakers on the day and who I would recommend to attend a presentation were Wouter Faes and Jitske Kramers. Wouter Faes works as Assistant teaching professor for the University of Hasselt. His speech was amazingly funny with his anecdotes about the negotiation table in different countries. A big surprise was to meet was Jitske Kramer - trainer / coach in the field of communications, international leadership and teamwork. I follow her blog for a while now and to meet her in real life was very nice. To give you an impression of her presentation I enclosed a link to a movie of one of her presentations: Rhythm of Cultures. You just had to move your body as you will see in the film. Jitske Kramer's presentation - Rythm of culture

Some of the Lessons learned during the conference:
- Do not want to take over another culture, but become aware what the differences are;

- West is strict and direct vs India is chaotic not completely honest - they think 'impossible' whilst they say 'may be';

- Be yourself - the color of your skin betrays your different background;

- Working with different cultures is balancing between adaptation and acceptation;

- Try to use cultural differences as an opportunity to be yourself - errors will be accepted if you show that you are aware of your mistakes.