The Mission Statement - Believing in what you're doing

One of the major differences between business in America and Scandinavia is the mission statement. How business men relate to this concept can determine the success of a partnership. Understanding how your partner relates to the mission statement, how he or she thinks, can be the most valuable tool in cooperation. It can help you determine what props will need to be on the stage, what everyone needs to do their job. In these props, you find a representation for our motives, the goal and the activities to reach those goals. Understanding what motives a person has will help you have some idea what a partner will do with a prop, and how.

Of course the goal of any business is to make money, but this is unstated, understood with a nod between colleagues. When it comes down to what you and your company talks about at meetings and what you do, it will center around your mission statement. A basketball team is motivated by competition, by the fun in being the best in their region. That is the motive behind their activities. But a basketball team will become a professional team for the money it can make through ticket sales. If there was no money in playing basketball, the team would meet up for a weekend game and have a little fun before returning to their daily lives. In this example, the team's motivation for turning professional was monetary gain. With this goal comes activities, such as daily training, team management, marketing and ticket sales. Understanding the motives represented in each prop will help a partner to the team understand what part of these activities are motivated by the players having fun and what part is motivated by money and necessity. Like wise, understanding the differences in motivation between an executive at IBM and LG can help you understand what each will be willing to do for a partnership.

In the US, money is king. It is not to knock the US or the business culture there. People want to live the good life and are willing to work together to achieve great things in exchange for a bit of luxury. It can help settle differences between two rivals or two bitter combatants. People will believe in a mission statement if it brings them prosperity. An engineer at Boeing loves what he does, but he studied hard and took on professional manners for the prosperity it brings him. The same principle applies at all levels of employment in the US. You are a factory floor worker at Ford for the prosperity, not the love of what you are doing. You are an executive at Disney because you have a large paycheck, not because you love animation. The love either has for what they do is found in the activities that drove them to pursue these careers, but if they can do what they love on their time off with a paycheck, the larger the paycheck the better. In the end, money talks more than the profession and either would work in any other career if it gives them the financial and qualitative freedom to do what they want.

In Scandinavia, the motivations can be in broad strokes the same, but because very few are very rich and very few are very poor, the incentive in money in dampened. What drives people to follow a mission statement is more often the mission itself. If an engineer or designer can make the same amount of money as an artist, people will choose to take what would be a hobby in the US and turn it into a career. People want to see their own visions fulfilled more than earning a little bit more money, since the difference in prosperity is often too small to make a difference to one's motivation. This pronunciation of the mission statement's significance doesn't change the bottom line, but how you sell something should take this difference into consideration and focus on what you want to create and how you want to do it. If you understand the motivation of your audience, you can save yourself time on pitches that will fall on deaf ears.

- Servus

How to: Create a political relation between your host country and the US

This is a how to of sorts, detailing how I help create connections between Illinois and Scandinavia. It will take you through the important steps you must take to prepare you for acting as a liaison and conduit for information and knowledge. The goal of this how to is to give you the competence to contact political groups and politicians in America, declare yourself a liaison, aid or consultant and correspond with your contacts to facilitate the exchange of information and knowledge.

1. Educate yourself
• Learn the language of the country or region you seek to serve in. If you are unable to speak the local languages, you will find interviewing experts or authorities difficult and the knowledge you send back State side lacking. Sources of information will often be in the language native to your host country. Your research will be hampered if you are unable to quickly assimilate information.
• Take a few courses in the local culture. It will reveal cultural effects on the conclusions you reach in your research. For example, does religion play a part in the decisions politicians make and how religious is the community?
• Before you go off the deep end about how your ideal model must be implemented because it bears some resemblance to what is found in your host country, take a year or two to research the subject you are most interested in so you know what you are talking about.
2. Compare
• Compare what you have learned about your host country to others in the region. Can you formulate a benchmark? What are the key differences? Knowing how models and systems compare in the region can provide some contrast to the picture you are painting.
• Compare your host country to the States. In what ways are the two alike? How are they different?
• Compare the attitude your hosts have towards other countries and the States. It may not be a bad thing if French men hate Americans if they despise the rest of Europe even more. 
3.  Find representatives relevant to what you know
• Go to Google and search using the key words Senator or Congress and the state you are most interested in. Alternatively, you can search for a State House, such as the Illinois General Assembly and locate a senator you like.
• Find the official website for the political body you wish to aid and search for the committee relevant to your expertise.
4.  Write a letter
• Be formal and concise. Say you wish to be of assistance by making yourself available for consultation or witnessing. Be clear on what you can speak about and give an example of your knowledge.
• Write letters to several, if not many, politicians and bodies. You shouldn't expect more than a few to be interested in contacting you. Throwing a wide net is the only way you will find a politician who will use you to facilitate any exchange of knowledge.
• Do your research on who you are writing to. If you write to a Democrat while espousing the Republican ideology, you will have the door shut on you.
5. Be responsive
• If you do receive a reply, do not wait with responding. Reply imediatly, acknowledge the email and get to work.
• Start researching the material related to what ever question you were asked or steps required to fulfill a request right away. If you are not timely, then you will not be of use in a dynamic political landscape.
• Keeping your correspondent informed on your progress by planning your work will show you are serious about rendering aid. Tell your correspondent when you expect to submit a final report.
6. Speak with the locals
• Most information requested can be fulfilled by speaking with local people. Experts in their field or situated better than most. What cannot be fulfilled by speaking with local can still require a friendly local relationship to gain access to the information or resources needed.
• Sometimes, the request is only to act as a liaison between local officials and your correspondent back home.

That was it in a nut shell. What is left out you must play by ear, because every situation is different and cannot be covered in a single how to.

- Servus

IPC wasn't all bad if you had that impression from an earlier post. While I may have been push out to the corners, it is a highly social school and you do end up making a lot of good friends and connections. The school is about the informal exchange of culture and learning through communication between the students in equal parts to communication from teacher to student. It is there students challenge their assumptions about other societies, start a professional career in NGOs or an in depth political analysis to bring back home. While it may sound like classes would have titles such as 'Cross Cultural Communication', 'African-European Political Relations', 'Political Organization Theory' along with the actual classes 'NGO Work I and II', 'Communication' and 'Media and the Middle East', there were equal parts Yoga, Drama and Arts. These were forums for communication between students. Classes where we expressed thoughts outside of the formal academic subjects we studied and listened, carefully, to the thoughts of others.

If you ever have the chance, please stop by www.IPC.dk and think about attending for a semester or two.

The first year in Denmark

In my first year in Denmark, I started at a school for a spring course in Globalization and Communication. I studied at IPC and got my first taste of college.
The day I arrived I felt a bit like a fish out of water. I met people from places I have never been to before. Personalities I would not consider adopting myself. Characters that would in my eyes at the time come from books.
My most vivid memory of my first few hours there is one some might call me a racist for bringing up and rant I am fabricating. It is a memory none the less.
I sat at a coffee table in the commons and was speaking with a student from the Eastern Bloc, when a very bold and outgoing student from South Africa came by and introduced himself and promptly stood behind the girl at fondled her breast. This took me aback and I expected a very strong reaction from her, but to my surprise, she smiled, laughed and, well, that is where the memory tappers off for me. I suppose they arrived a day or two before me and became acquainted.

Over the next few weeks, I was introduced to people from around the globe and both rubbed some people the wrong way the got along, kinda, with others. I was far from popular; I overheard some talk poorly of me and I can tell you, to hear that kind of candid speech hurts deeply. I wonder if diplomacy has been affected by such episodes at high level talks. Perhaps even a little war or two.

While I did come out of my shell over those 20 weeks and looked back fondly on that school and my time there, truth is, while I did improve greatly, I wasn't truly welcomed or well received. If anything, I felt like I was pushed out to the corners and found it hard to be part of the group. My time at the school was more about learning that being especially social, except for one girl who I had three kids with over the years. What I got out of those 20 weeks is a certain awareness of what is happening around the world from the school's perspective and a weight loss of 15kg.

Maybe I'll go back and have a better experience the next time around.