The powerhouses of the global business economy are no longer solely Western countries. In fact, PwC predicts that the fastest-growing markets with increasing annual GDP until 2050 are India, Vietnam and China. In many ways, these counties have used an important tool to optimize international business, and that key ingredient is cross-cultural core competency. This globalist viewpoint, when dealing with business, takes into account decision-making processes and communication styles that vary from culture to culture.

Cultural competency doesn’t necessarily mean that one must be an expert in all the world’s cultures. Instead, it provides the groundwork for a person to consciously understand business from different cultural perspectives. “The Business Model of Intercultural Analysis (BMIA) uses the following six ‘comprehension lenses’ to examine enterprise-wide cross cultural challenges: cultural themes, communication, group dynamics, ‘globalization,’ process engineering, and time orientation.”

Please read the blog post written by Denise Hummel, CEO of Universal Consensus, to examine these cultural business lenses through examples of American executives interacting with Chinese executives here.