Welcome to SK Enterprises Cross-Cultural Training

What is "culture"?

If you point your browser to dictionary.com, you will find this definition:

  1. The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.
  2. These patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population: Edwardian culture; Japanese culture; the culture of poverty.
  3. These patterns, traits, and products considered with respect to a particular category, such as a field, subject, or mode of expression: religious culture in the Middle Ages; musical culture; oral culture.
  4. The predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the functioning of a group or organization.

Has your company ever sent an employee to work in another country? Or, perhaps hired an employee who came from another country? How did it work out? If your experiences are like those of most other companies, some of those assignments worked, but many (according to research most) others failed.

Why do bright, energetic and well-qualified employees fail when presented with a job assignment outside of their native country?

A clue to answering that question can be found at dictionary.com -culture. Seems simple, "People from different countries have different cultures." You don't really need SK Enterprises to tell you that much. But, you probably do need our help with a couple of other things.

What things?

  • How to be sensitive to cultural differences while still being able to do your job. Think of it like gender, or racial awareness with a twist. Your culturally insensitive behavior is perfectly legal. That's right, you won't have a judge or jury looking over your shoulder, but what's just as bad - it costs your company money, lots of money.
  • How to identify the most important cultural differences. Pick any two countries and start to compare them. Pretty quickly you will realize that the list gets very long, but what's really important? To be cost effective, any program that focuses on cultural differences has to be able to do a couple of things: be succinct, and be adaptable.
  • How to identify employees who are more likely to succeed in an overseas assignment.
  • What you can do to maximize your employee's chances of success.

Successfully addressing these issues can start a sequence of events that will dramatically reduce your business' international transactions costs.

SK Enterprises has over ten years experience working with international companies. From our modest start as an Enlgish language school in Japan, to our current status as a premier business services consulting firm, we have assembled a rich pool of talent that can help your company reduce your international operating costs by increasing the efficiency of your international workers.

To learn more about SK Enterprises' Cross-Cultural evaluation and training programs, contact us at info.net. Better yet, contact Susan Yuthas, our Director of Business Services, by e-mail at Susan.Yuthas.net, or by telephone at 303.919.3094, to discuss how SK Enterprises can best help your international business become more effective.

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