<![CDATA[Achieve Your Global Potential

<![CDATA[Achieve Your Global Potential - Read]]>Mon, 30 Mar 2026 03:30:01 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Culture Traps - Part II: Unconscious Bias and "Disrupting Unemployment"]]>Wed, 18 Nov 2015 04:58:48 GMThttps://www.cosmingheorghe.net/read/culture-traps-part-ii-unconscious-bias-and-disrupting-unemployment

"DIVERSITY & INCLUSION 2" Photo ⓒ Cosmin Gheorghe

Disruption does not translate into destruction. Disruption is change of economics. Disruption is change of scale. Disruption is new products and services that couldn't even exist in the absence of that new disruptive technology.
VINT CERF, co-inventor of the Internet.

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Bias is generally defined as a prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair. In societies and organizations where hierarchy is rigorously respected and expected, people express freely their bias. In democratic societies, as well as in meritocratic organizations, where laws forbid certain types of discrimination, bias is repressed and therefore unconscious, showing up in more subtle ways. Unconscious bias is often used as an excuse, in the same way we excuse ourselves for behaving obnoxiously by saying "I'm sorry, I was drunk, I don't remember anything". It is actually very common for the unconscious bias to reveal itself precisely when we had a glass too much to drink (read here a true story, in which a tipsy lawyer female could simply not comprehend and accept that I am not a limo driver). In fact, Facebook research shows that "individuals and organizations that believe they are meritocratic often have the poorest outcomes."

Bias is essentially an automatic reaction, aimed to help us navigate the world in a faster way. In essence, bias has the purpose of confirming and validating our world view, as it creates a feeling of reassurance, and by that it directs us toward what is familiar and predictable. We all have our comfort zones, even those of us who like to believe we are "out of the box" thinkers. Within our own unconscious box -of different sizes and different shapes- we are all convinced we are just and free. In fact, globalization and technology easily reveal the boxes in which we've been hiding our biases until not long ago. Bias helps us select from the outside world the events, people, and places that match our values and belief-system which -surprise!- are based on exactly the same values and beliefs that we have absorbed, at an unconscious, emotional level, from the culture(s) in which we grew up.

Unconscious bias has profound social and business implications, specifically at the labor market level. John Hagel III is Co-chair of the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation and his research reveals how globalization has made unconscious bias one of the key challenges in matching labor supply and demand, with effects that go way beyond economics, deep into the social relations and politics:

Many workers have the necessary skills, yet aren't able to connect with the work requiring these skills because of powerful biases among potential employers - gender, ethnic and racial biases continue to make it difficult to connect the right workers with the right jobs.
If we go beyond the US to a global level, we see even more significant mismatches between labor supply and demand.There's a powerful generational imbalance, with more developed economies dealing with rapidly aging populations while the younger generations are increasingly concentrated in developing economies where work is in shorter supply. Parts of the world are mired in conflict and corruption, limiting the availability of work for those who need it. The symptoms of this global imbalance are manifest in increasing concern over the influx of refugees and illegal immigration in certain countries.
JOHN HAGEL III, Co-Chair, Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation

In the tech world, startup founders often talk with pride about how the product or service they have created with their buddies in some shabby San Francisco flat is disrupting such and such industry. Although "disruption is not destruction", at least in an initial phase it involves some sort of annihilation, which may create systemic, global challenges. Those are often overlooked by the disruptors, who usually think globally only in terms of their ROI. However, history proves that the biggest problems we have on Earth -poverty, wars, climate changing- are due to decades of complete lack of systemic, global awareness, a sort of cultural individualism that keeps us slaves of our own conscious and unconscious biases.
David Nordfors is a former co-founding executive director of the Center for Innovation and Communication at Stanford University, who also likes the concept of disruption. His idea, however, is to disrupt the disruption itself. Together with Vint Cerf (co-inventor of the Internet, its architecture and the core TCP/IP protocols), Nordfors founded the Innovation for Jobs Ecosystem, with the purpose of disrupting unemployment:

Efficiency is not the same as growth.
Efficiency is task-centered: we perform tasks more efficiently. We can automate everything and fire all the workers. Efficiency goes up. But since workers earn less without jobs, growth can go negative.
Growth on the other hand is people centered: we create more value for one another. We can automate everything and find new, better things for workers to do instead. Efficiency goes up. Growth goes up.
DAVID NORDFORS

Bias is one of the reasons work relationships have not evolved much since the beginning of the industrialized era: organization is seen as a machine, with employees treated as its mere spare parts. Oil them with Carrot & Stick Policies, and the machine will keep going. Well, it turns out that the Real Machine is now replacing all these jobs. Some see this as a fatal disaster. I would argue that in fact this puts everyone -machines and humans- in the place where they belong: by replacing most of our jobs, machines are giving us the chance to regain our humanity and begin a new, 21st Century Enlightenment era.

]]><![CDATA[Culture Traps - Part I: Unconscious Bias, Braggarts & Losers]]>Wed, 18 Nov 2015 04:44:12 GMThttps://www.cosmingheorghe.net/read/culture-traps-part-i-unconscious-bias-braggarts-losers

"DIVERSITY & INCLUSION", Photo ⓒ Cosmin Gheorghe

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We all like to believe -or at least those of us who live in democratic countries- that we are free individuals, able to make the choices and decisions we "want" and "need". As it turns out, however, our wants and needs -and therefore our choices and decisions- are heavily influenced, and often determined, by a specific set of values and beliefs, which we absorb unconsciously from the culture that surrounds us. Those beliefs translate into specific behaviors, most of which were acquired so early in life that we are not even aware of them. It is this lack of awareness that prevents individuals and organizations from achieving their global potential in an increasingly globalized economy.

It is this lack of awareness that prevents individuals and organizations from achieving their global potential in an increasingly globalized economy. As an example, highly qualified Scandinavian job applicants interviewed by US American companies may have fewer chances to be hired when compared to their fellow Americans. That is because their cultural values direct them to be modest and definitely not brag about themselves. Doing otherwise is a considered throughout Scandinavia an impolite, and even ridiculous behavior. By contrast, American candidates have no problems being loud about their past and future success and ambitions, and they frequently use a long array of superlatives to describe their skills and accomplishments. In other words, Americans oversell, while Scandinavians undersell and downplay their abilities. As a result, interviewers and recruiters who are not familiar with the culture metrics in the U.S. and Sweden or Norway, have a big chance to misinterpret the candidate's behavior: Americans would consider the modest Scandinavians losers, while Scandinavians would perceive the Americans as braggarts. Obviously, not every American or Swedish are the same, so a short cultural intelligence assessment always brings clarification.

In her keynote speech for the Diversity, Inclusion and Global Leadership Summit -part of the Oracle OpenWorld 2015- CEO Safra Catz said:

Economies are more and more global and so are our customers, employees and opportunities. But that means that our challenges have also gone global. A common mistake is that people want to do [business] exactly the same way they did before [globalization]. We cannot afford to apply the same local solutions to very different, global, problems.
SAFRA CATZ, CEO, Oracle

Technology and social networks have exponentially accelerated globalization, which has in turn increased tremendously the interaction between employees, executives and customers who belong to one or more different cultures. In order to survive and thrive in a global economy, we cannot ignore anymore the fact that our own cultural values and belief system influence our thinking, feeling and behavior, often leading to biased choices and decisions.

As I was explaining in the interview I gave Forbes at the beginning of this year, culture includes everything around us: the values promoted by our families, communities and nations; the products and services we choose; the jobs and role models we accept or reject, and much more. Whether we like it or not, consciously or not, we include ourselves into a number of specific cultures, which further shape our individual identity.
The key words here are consciously or not, as the "not" refers to a brilliant concept, popularized by two medical doctors, the founders of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung: the unconscious. Briefly, the unconscious is defined as the sum of our mind's processes that occur automatically and of which we are not aware, yet they influence our behavior and perception. These processes include thoughts, memories, emotions, and motivations, and they play a role in who we choose as friends or significant others, what kind of products we buy, who we want to hire, fire or promote. All these decisions and choices are influenced, and often determined, by a collection of unconscious beliefs, and when that is reflected in our response toward others, we call it bias.

Together doesn't mean the same. And let's all agree: 30 years ago I would not be up here, talking to you [as a foreign born national and woman].
SAFRA CATZ, CEO, Oracle

Bias is essentially an automatic reaction, aimed to help each of us navigate the world in a faster way. And since the pace of the world has been increasing constantly, we tend to rely more on more on our biases to decide and choose. That worked well until about 10 years ago, when globalization began creating more complicated scenarios of cultural diversity and intercultural business interaction. Facebook has done comprehensive research on unconscious bias showing that:

When it comes to decision-making, unconscious biases cause some people to be perceived as "naturally talented," whereas others are presumed to have "gotten lucky." People on the receiving end of these biases are less likely to receive credit for their ideas, are interrupted more often during team interactions and have less influence on teams.

But more about that in the second part of this story, Unconscious Bias and "Disrupting Unemployment".

]]><![CDATA[THE CULTURE OF HATING IN THE NAME OF LOVE]]>Sat, 14 Nov 2015 19:53:05 GMThttps://www.cosmingheorghe.net/read/the-culture-of-hating-in-the-name-of-love

With all the knowledge and ability to understand complex situations that I believed I have, what happened yesterday in Paris is beyond my capacity to anticipate.
What I do anticipate happening though is the same fundamentalist and/or meaningless reactions of politicians and people.

It is possible and recommendable to refuse the company, benefits and services of someone who hates you and want to harm you, even if they are fellow citizens. But how that can be done, this is the key. How do you refuse to associate with those who plan to aggress you? How do you refuse benefits and refuse to foster relationships with them?

I believe it is possible to be firm, to affirm and assert ourselves without becoming mindless, aggressive or violent. I said POSSIBLE, not EASY. And that starts with understanding how fundamentalism, extremism, self-esteem, unhappiness, happiness, love, and hate work. And understanding how social, cultural and ethnic systems work. Understand the POWER of a Culture to forge values, a belief system and ultimately IDENTITIES. Then and only then we will have a chance to make a serious and sustainable change.

There is no better way of describing what is happening than this song of Jose Gonzales, an amazing artist of whom I just found out a few minutes ago:

What's the point if you hate
Die and kill for love, kill for love
What's the point with a love
Makes you hate and kill for

You've got a heart on fire
Bursting with desire
You've got a heart filled with passion
Will you let it burn for hate or compassion?

]]><![CDATA[#DreamForce15: Benioff for President, FINGERTIP.ORG, EVENTPRESENCE.COM & Free Massage]]>Fri, 18 Sep 2015 07:15:28 GMThttps://www.cosmingheorghe.net/read/dreamforce15-benioff-for-president-fingertiporg-eventpresencecom-free-massage

If you were thinking that the current lineup for presidential elections is quite wild, here is a different kind of option: rumor goes that Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is going to run for President in 2020. And to make sure the word gets out, a #DreamForce15 team is walking around giving away $2 for each tweet featuring the tag #Benioff2020.

Not to deviate the discussion to the eternal Trump, but I have to confess that I rehashed several relationships with some friends, who said they would consider voting Donald because "he is a great businessman" and therefore he will do a great job running the country. How about this, "friends": wait four more years and vote in a real great businessman, who is also intelligent, and is not afraid of meaningful charity (for details see Benioff Children's Hospital )

There are plenty other cool stuff happening this year at Dreamforce, including a the One Million Children Books challenge, a Valet Bike Parking, as well as the traditional Dreamfest - starting in just a few hours at Pier 70 and featuring the Foo Fighters, The Killers and Gary Clark Jr.

As about the Cloud Expos 2015, the biggest challenge is, once you enter the floor, to not freak out! There are so many cool stuff, that I personally had to figure out a clear system of selection: I simply chose the first two booths that I though are related to my writing focus: culture, tech, and psychology.

The first one is Fingertip, a startup based in Finland, which deals with one of my favorite topics: social decision-making in organizational cultures. Fingertip app introduces a new approach to organizational culture optimization, a holistic methodology that captures the entire lifecycle of a decision from the triggering question to collaborating for the best solution, execution and evaluation. At Cloud Expo Founder Jaakko Pellosniemi gives away his new book, Social Decision-Making.

The second cool startup I saw at Cloud Expo was Event Presence: can't attend an event live for various reasons -such as if your name is Edward Snowden? Or maybe you have difficulties being in large crowds, or speaking in front of a live audience? No problem, you can now rent a Beam, which you or your assistant can pilot around the event grounds, from anywhere in the world. I had the pleasure to chat with Event Presence CEO, Steve Ernst, who introduced me to Michelle Posey, Certified Class 4-Commercial Beam Pilot. Michelle was beaming from lovely Monterey, California:

Oh, and one more thing: there is free food, free coffee and free ice-cream, provided for all DreamForce15 attendees by Adobe food trucks (Mission St. and New Montgomery). As well as free massage -plus coffee and pastries- at Optimizely co-working space.

]]><![CDATA[WHY WE SHOULD STOP TALKING ABOUR Cloning Silicon Valley: 7 Points About Doing Business in Latin America]]>Thu, 10 Sep 2015 00:39:15 GMThttps://www.cosmingheorghe.net/read/why-we-should-stop-talking-abour-cloning-silicon-valley-7-points-about-doing-business-in-latin-america

Every other day I bump into an article that proclaims, or at least predicts, where the next Silicon Valley will be. If you ask me, the answer is clear: nowhere. A business environment doesn't develop in a vacuum, but in a specific cultural and social context. Therefore trying to clone a specific business ecosystem within a completely different culture yields often silly results. I believe we all agree that building a Tour Eiffel replica did not suddenly transform a town where people go to drink and gamble into Paris.

That being said, it doesn't mean that Silicon Valley-inspired entrepreneurship is not capturing the passion and imagination of most cultures around the world. The key question here is: what kind of startup ecosystem can be created outside of Silicon Valley? The short answer: one that matches the motivation, values and belief system of the locals.

For that, however, we have to understand what are those values and beliefs. And this is where everybody gets stuck, because they think that reproducing what worked in California will create the same results anywhere else. True, it might work sometimes, like if you are McDonald's, although even they have to adapt their menus to avoid being rejected by cultures like France (where they sell croissants) and Colombia (where they sell arepas).

In other words, what is needed is a mindful -as opposed to one way bullhorn- approach to startup development. It is for this reason that Tappsi is far more popular in Latin America than Uber. Hailing a taxi is a whole different story on the streets of Colombia, Peru or Ecuador, and Tappsi has known how to create a business that speaks to the Latin American cultural/social values and realities.

While visiting Colombia this year I had the chance to meet several local entrepreneurs, gathered at the weekly networking lunch hosted by HubBOG. Renee Rojas is the CEO and Co-Founder of this Campus for Startups, aimed at creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem that suits the Colombian culture. Here are some of the entrepreneurs I met:
- Yesido Redondo, CEO & Co-Founder of LivingCode.camp
- Dimitri Alejo, Co-founder of academical.co
- Mihali Flandorffer, Founder of Yaxa.co
- Luis Enrique Marino, Co-Founder of CloudGym.co
- Francisco Javier Bernal, Professor Emeritus of Political Sciences and founder of Toolfive.com
- Laura Camargo, Marketing Director of the social entrepreneurship platform Innpactia.com
- And finally, visiting all the way from Belgium, Carmelo Zaccone (digitalwallonia.be).

After the meeting I put together 7 key points about doing business in Latin America:

1. In a business or work relationship, the emphasis is on the relationship, rather than the business task that needs to be accomplished. Your business will thrive if you are able to genuinely related to your Latin American partners.

2. "Community" seems to have a completely different meaning in Latin America. This becomes obvious when we take a look at the culture metric called Individualism: U.S.A 91-Colombia 13. What does that mean? Consider the following:

3. "Fast and big" are considered qualities mainly in the United States. Most Latin American entrepreneurs like to also have a life. Which, let's be honest, it's impossible if one adopts the Silicon Valley's startup pace.

4. Communication is indirect and highly contextual, and aimed at maintaining consensus and harmony. This is why you need to keep an eye on the idea of disruption, specifically when it applies to organizations.

5. Loyalty to the in-group is very important, maybe the most important. In organizations that is reflected in an exchange of "protection" for loyalty. Often people believe that their loyalty is, to a certain extent, more important than the ability to perfectly accomplish a task.

6. Failure is a big issue, being directly related to shame in most Latin American cultures. Advising people to "fail fast" is usually counterproductive.

7. Nepotism is accepted and expected. Also, status and age are respected and valued.
Obviously, skills and expertise are important, but don't try to set up a rigid "meritocracy" system, which might actually be the biggest illusion of Silicon Valley (let's be honest here, from a pool of similar candidates, how many times did you get a job without being "recommended" by a relative, friend, or company insider?..)

I would like to hear more from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who do/did business in Colombia or Latin America. What are your ideas and experiences with cloning the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem? Share them below!

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