10/20/2006 - 10/21/2006

Shevchenko - Culture Shock leading to Poor Performance?

Has Chelsea striker Andriy Shevchenko's poor start to the Premiership season have anything to do with culture shock? "Yes" say Kwintessential, a cross cultural communications consultancy.

London, UK 20th October 2006: Andriy Shevchenko, Chelsea’s super summer signing, is far from setting the Premiership alight. Criticism is growing, questions are being asked and the multimillion pound deal seems to be turning sour. Leading experts in relocation training Kwintessential say this appears to be part of a worrying trend. The company states that Premiership clubs are still in the “dark ages� are not taking the challenges of culture shock and cultural integration seriously. As a result, players are underperforming and clubs are losing money and talent due to a lack of support for foreign players.

Intercultural Communication in the Global Workplace

Today’s companies are doing business more and more in a global context. The people that count in any business from the suppliers to clients to employees are increasingly based in remote locations in foreign countries. The need for effective and clear intercultural communication is becoming vital in securing success in today’s global workplace.

Intercultural communication has many definitions. In short intercultural communication looks at how people, from differing cultural backgrounds, endeavour to communicate. It draws on areas such as cultural anthropology and other areas of communication to build an academic framework.  At its foundation is the desire to establish and understand how people from different cultures communicate with each other and help people improve this.

"hoax" email leads to million pound deal in china!

A Derbyshire business has 'struck oil' in the Chinese market, with help from UK Trade & Investment.

Andy Fraser's Chesterfield based company, FA-ST Filtration Analysis Services Technology Limited, is supplying oil filtration systems to the biggest coal mining company in China, has installed trial diesel fuel filtration units on the vehicles of a large road haulage company, has assisted in setting up a new distributorship in Shenzhen and has gained a China mining approval MA certificate for another product line which has the earning potential of £3-£5m a year. All after receiving a five line email inquiry in 2004 that he initially dismissed as a hoax.

the etiquette of business cards

Have you even been in a situation where you handed someone your business card and said, "oh let me give you my new cell number" and then you scratch through the old one and print the new one?

Bad business! How rude! You?re wasting the other person's time as well as your own. When someone does that to me, I don't feel valued by them. If I was, they wouldn?t waste my time! As a speaker, you'd be amazed at how many people give me their cards with stuff scratched through , written on, etc. I just wonder if they ever think of what that says about them.

SHRM to host diversity conference

The CNMI Chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management will have their annual Diversity conference on Nov. 9, 2006. The Annual Diversity Conference will look at the value of a diverse workforce and what managers can do to maximize the positive affect of these differences in our workers. Being from a multinational environment, this conference will cover topics of many diverse issues within the work workplace as well as the community.

Learn the language of diversity to keep dialogue flowing

Q: How do you handle a situation when you have a group of people of one ethnic background conversing in their language and leaving their colleagues out of the dialogue?

A: You extend yourself an invitation by inviting your co-workers to include you in these chats. The next time these water-cooler conversations are held in front of you, put a big smile on your face. Now you are ready to hold this difficult dialogue.

Yahoo! launches local-language chat in India

Hundreds of millions of people this weekend will exchange greetings for Diwali, the Hindu "festival of lights" that is India's biggest holiday.

But for the first time, "Diwali mubarak" - or Diwali greetings - can be exchanged in Hindi and Tamil script over Yahoo's new chat service aimed at the country's growing population of internet users who will rely on non-English languages.

word of the day: ken

ken \KEN\, noun:
1. Perception; understanding; knowledge.
2. The range of vision.
3. View; sight.

He was to make several important discoveries, the most significant being that infantile paralysis was caused not by germs, as cerebrospinal meningitis had been, but by a mysterious agent just then emerging into the ken of science. -- James Thomas Flexner, Maverick's Progress

So we are predisposed -- if not preprogrammed -- to accept tales of animals who display human motives, understanding, reason, and intentions. It takes a far greater imagination to conceive the possibility that a dog's mental life may assume a form that is simply beyond our ken. -- Stephen Budiansky, If a Lion Could Talk