Terrific multinational, multicultural session at the ISPI annual meeting

By William Seidman

More on the International  Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI)’s annual meeting earlier this month in Orlando, Florida: discussion in the multinational, multicultural session was particularly interesting because of the presenters’ culturally varied experiences. Paul Nieminen is responsible for United Parcel Service’s change programs in Europe and Asia, Al Pacheco is a consultant for IBM doing a cultural diversity program for the major accounts teams, and Karen Waterlander works in Finland for Kone,  the fourth-largest manufacturer of – and service provider for –  elevators in the world. There were many others — too many to mention. What a great group!

What was amazing was how many things we had in common. Everyone had encountered resistance from each country because of their perceived uniqueness and everyone struggled with having to engage people and sustain change over great distances. Our program seemed to interest many of them, particularly Cerebyte’s international work with Intel, because it solved these problems.