Ready, Aim, Fire!
You must have all heard or read about it by now: The Coca-Cola company has announced it will "reduce" its payroll by 7,000 employees. Profits were not as good as expected, and it is time to tighten the...
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Let's Get Physical
A key tool for understanding cultures is examining how people communicate with one another. The kind of topics people bring up in conversations often reflects the themes considered important by their c...
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Risky Business
As many of you know, there are a number of ways to approach risk analysis, but the dominant model in most MBA programs falls under the category of “rational” models. In these models, risk analysis ...
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Marketing A La Mexicana
I recently spent ten days in California working with one of my clients to develop marketing strategies that would reach the increasingly important Mexican (and overall Hispanic) market of this importan...
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Weirdos Welcome
I have argued before that discrimination in the workplace is not only ethically wrong, but inefficient for the organization, since great candidates are often not considered for hiring. More specificall...
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When In Rome ...
It is surprising how different norms on the proper greeting method in the business world affect people so strongly. This is especially true when we contrast U.S. and Mexican preferences. Some people wi...
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Power Play
Empowering employees in Mexico presents a different series of challenges than in the United States. Mexico’s hierarchical and authoritarian tradition makes it extremely difficult for managers to dele...
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Mexotic Products
To many outside Mexico, the country often seems "exotic." Described as "surreal," endless description about the inner soul of Mexico (the "
Mexico Profundo," or the "Deep Mexico"), complex, tradition...
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Increasing Equity
Discrimination is an important moral concern for all of us.
In the business world, the issue of discrimination goes beyond moral grounds. Although businesses’ main concern is profits, discrimin...
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Internet And Business In Mexico
Cultural specialists, such as myself, often will tell you that Mexicans (and Latinos in general) do not respond well to impersonal technologically-oriented means of communication or of selling. Latinos...
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Elections And Business In Mexico
Every time there are presidential elections in Mexico, there is a panic that the country is about to enter a new crisis. This is to a large extent based on past experience, so much so, that it is part ...
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About Number One
A common saying among professionals in the United States goes something like, "I've got to take care of number one, you know," usually when discussing a situation in which the speaker had clearly behav...
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Feeling Nuts In Mexico
In Mexico, when you go to a traditional marketplace, or a store around the corner, it is not unusual that a number of things will be packaged in small plastic bags with a close-knit knot, and not a sho...
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Sensitive Mexicans
It has been said by many non-Mexicans such as Americans, Germans, French, among many others, that Mexicans are much too touchy: They don't seem to handle criticism very well, and are too easily hurt. S...
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Questions on hiring in Mexico
Why do so many of my employees have the same names?
This is a question that I hear a lot. It can be a little confusing at first when it seems as if a lot of your employees share the same surname. It d...
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