A crash course in changing the world.
"Don't fight culture"
- this one is definitely my favourite one.
Of course every tip is useful and to really change something you surely have to consider every single one of them. Nevertheless this statement stands out for me. I think one reason why a lot of development aid missions fail is because people do not understand what the foreign culture really is about. Altough to me it is one of the basic steps of changing something - getting to know the other culture. After you understood what the culture is about, you will also have a more detailed or even different view of the problem you are trying to solve. It does not matter to the African people that developed countries consider microwaves or mobile phones as essential objects, that to them superstition is a chimera or anything like that.
I think a big problem is, that developed countries have a certain idea of being developed and helping less developed countries that they focus too much on their concept that they fail solving the problem the way it's best for the people. The lack of a deeper understanding of the culture (and so of the people's problems) often comes with failure.
Everyones different, every culture is different, every problem is different - and so are their soultions.
Totally right! And there are countless examples standing proof for this statement of yours. If you take the sector of product marketing for example, there are lots of cases where companies failed completely because they didnt take local culture (and language) into consideration. Here are some hilarious examples: http://marketinghackz.com/10-product-and-campaign-blunders-to-learn...
Jeeez..I also remember that it took IKEA a very long time to step in the Japanese market because of cultural reasons...
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