Crossing Borders to Make Connections

I took some time off earlier this month to travel to Central Europe for vacation. My wife and I were part of a tour that took us to Prague, Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, and Budapest. It was a great trip filled with learning, fun, and making great new friends.

This is a part of the world that I had never been to before, so it offered me an opportunity to observe life, people, urban design, and history from a new (to me) perspective.

We crossed international borders many times during our travel. Thanks to the European Union, aside from our initial arrival in Czechia and our departure from Hungary, we didn't have to go through Customs or Border Control as we crossed from country to country. In some ways, it wasn't much different than when we travel from one state to another in the United States. However, in other ways, it was much different.

Language, currency, customs, laws, and histories varied quite significantly even though we were never on the bus for more than 3 or 4 hours at a time. In working to be as prepared as possible for meaningful interactions in all four countries, I bought the proper power adapter, exchanged US dollars into three different currencies (as Czechia and Hungary still use their own currencies instead of the euro), and spent additional time on Duolingo trying to learn as many words as possible in Czech, German, and Hungarian.

This made me think about what happens when we interact with different parts of our organizations. As we move across departments from Sales, to Customer Support, to Engineering, Marketing, and Product, each group has their own terminology, their own perspective, their own goals, and their own values. Of course, the overt differences are not as drastic as when we cross international borders. However, the impact of these differences is often more impactful than we think. Differences in goals create misalignment across departments. Differences in terminology create misunderstanding. Stereotypes and not assuming positive intent erode trust and collaboration.

So what can we do to make it easier to cross our organizational borders and collaborate effectively with our colleagues in different parts of our organization?

First, as individuals, we can make an effort to learn the language and terminology that are used by our colleagues in other departments. Not only does this help us better understand our colleagues, it builds good will with our colleagues and leads them to assume positive intent on our part. Even a little effort goes a long way here.

Learning Czech and Hungarian was a confounding challenge for me, a native English speaker whose main foreign language experience has been with Romance languages such as Spanish, French, and Latin. The languages are much different than those I have been using my whole life. The reality is that most of the people I interacted with in these countries speak English very well and seemed quite willing to communicate with me in English. Still, at least figuring out how to say hello, goodbye, please, and thank you in both these languages allowed me to express friendliness, politeness, and gratitude in their native language. The smile I got from our Hungarian bus driver the first time I said "köszönöm" to him was heartwarming.

Learning German was easier given some of the shared roots between English and German, but you don't become anywhere near fluent in the span of a couple of months. However, my effort to learn still paid big dividends. Aside from allowing me to discern information from signs in Germany and Austria, I was able to respond to our waiter ("Kellner") asking how our food was with a "sehr lecker" which was received with a big smile and a sense of appreciation. I was also able to ask for "die Rechnung" when we were ready to pay the bill and go on our way.

Clearly, learning some of the key terminology used by our peers in Marketing, Sales, etc., is much easier than learning a new language. The more we can converse with our colleagues in language that is meaningful for them, the more likely we are to be taken sincerely and deeply.

As organizations, we can reduce the costs and friction associated with crossing our organizational borders. Similar to how the European Union has reduced the friction of moving between members countries and the need to exchange currency (with certain exceptions as noted earlier), we can make it easier to form cross-functional teams, share goals across departments, and establish shared values and experiences (such as cross-functional customer interactions). We certainly should be taking a look at how both our corporate and departmental policies, such as corporate budgeting or departmental metrics, make it easier or harder to work together across our organizational boundaries.

One final observation - we often look at differences, whether they be with other countries or other departments, as being a problem. What if we instead celebrate our differences and look at the diversity of skills and perspectives as a huge benefit that allows us to undertake opportunities we could never entertain on our own? Acknowledge the differences, certainly, but approach them with a sense of curiosity and opportunity to expand our joint capabilities.