Pricewaterhouse Coopers - Gulliver Cross-cultural Support System

Submitted by:
Laure Vermeersch
Pricewaterhouse Coopers, MCS, LPD
+44 171 804 2509
laure.vermeersch@uk.pwcglobal.com

Gulliver is a unique program, which provides immediate support and guidance when you need to perform effectively in cross-cultural situations. It combines a short awareness-raising tutorial, The Visitor, with an Electronic Performance Support tool, The Navigator to provide a highly flexible, integrated solution.

You are Spanish. You are about to set off to lead a meeting in Washington with a team of Americans - both clients and consultants. You want to start building a working relationship, establish trust and assess how you can work with them. Do you know how you should dress? How the meeting should start? How you will know whether your objectives are met? Start Gulliver to help you prepare. At the office, on site at the client, wherever you are…

To make the program available to all PwC consultants globally, easily, Gulliver is a web-based program available on a standalone CD-ROM and on-line. The content is easy to update and extend.

Richard Lewis, on whose work Gulliver is based, is a leading expert in the field of cross-cultural relationships. He has helped companies throughout the world to get the best from cross-cultural situations. Richard Lewis Communications is an international training organization with a broad portfolio of services including cross-cultural workshops, testing, language training, leadership and team-building programs. Richard Lewis is also the author of a number of books in this area, including "When Cultures Collide" and "Cross-cultural Communication: A Visual Approach".

Why Gulliver is crucial to PwC

Gulliver will improve PwC consultants’ performance in all business situations across cultures and borders, thus contributing to making PwC a true global firm.

PwC global business requires constantly improving the way we handle intercultural situations, whether internally or with clients, in order to increase value and reduce risk in global assignments and management. Before Gulliver, PwC offered training to a few experienced people, and often relied on natural ability, personal experience and slow on-the-job learning. The proposed programme offers support in a selection of the most common business situations in the context of 17 major cultures.

Gulliver's Audience characteristics

The main audience is our 30,000 existing consultants, directors and partners, plus approximately 1,000 new joiners monthly to the PricewaterhouseCoopers Management Consulting Services practice. These PwC consultants:

• Are recruited globally, with the largest numbers in the US, UK and continental Europe
• Are English speakers, but English is not necessarily their first language
• Are typically intelligent, critical, challenging, and sceptical
• Aspire to the highest standards of professionalism in their work and conduct
• Will be assigned to work in teams, leading and guiding client companies through a systematic process of organisational change, systems integration, process improvement, etc. They will be using the Cross-cultural Performance Support (PS) to better manage cross-cultural situations on client projects, both within teams and with clients.

Project managers and team leaders are most likely to most benefit from using Gulliver. Average age of the consultant population is 27 years old. Project managers are between 28 and 35.

It is anticipated that Gulliver will be made available to the external market.

Performance & Learning Aim

• Understand how to find and use culture-specific information and be able to optimize on-the-job learning relating to cross-cultural issues.
• More clearly understand and express their cross-cultural situations.

• Be able to think through how to solve issues and optimize their own cross-cultural situations.

Gulliver is an EPS

Gulliver supports performance objectives in complex business situations, which require personal judgement, acute awareness and high responsiveness.

Gulliver is built around natural business situations, relatively simple, such as a meeting or a presentation and much more complex, such as taking up the management of a team or working with a client in several countries. Gulliver responds to the diverse needs of a community of consultants with high expectations for quality and in need of effective thinking tools, but under a considerable pressure to deliver under tight deadlines. Gulliver boosts immediate performance by releasing the key to understanding these situations from a new perspective - that of a different culture.

Gulliver helps our consultants to establish rapidly which key areas and goals they should focus on in their particular business situation, offering brief questions to help them think through the realities of cross-cultural management in their particular- say- meeting.

Gulliver makes core knowledge available in a format which is easy to engage with, showing the models and references functioning in specific cultures but challenging and rich enough to entice each consultant into thinking through the particulars of their own case.

 

Meeting in US American culture and Spanish culture.

 

…Gulliver is a learning experience.

Gulliver offers various type of information to suit different needs and different learning styles. Comparisons suit reflectors, action points and testimonials attract pragmatists, theory and diagrams appeal more specifically to theorists and practice engages activists.

 

Gulliver supports each consultant in creating their own set of references and solutions, using the newly acquired knowledge, metaphors and examples. The Poll document (Poll stands for Prepare, Observe, Listen and Learn) allows to select the observations and advice relevant to one's own situation and to note one's own thoughts, observations and plans.

 

(Screenshot Poll.gif)

Gulliver combines the performance-focused approach with a learning experience: practice exercises are woven in for 16 of the 19 situations in each of the 17 cultures. They offer a chance to engage with the content in yet another way progressing through more complex events in a particular situation.

And of course in addition to the performance support part of the program, the Navigator, presenting more than 80 hours of material in an experience that could last for days, The Visitor offers a one hour and a half introduction on why cross-cultural management.

PwC, MCS, LPD

Gulliver was designed and originated by Learning & professional development group in the Management Consultancy Services in PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Executive Producer: Mark Iliff

Project Manager & Design Consultant: Laure Vermeersch

Editorial lead and design consultant: Patrick Dunn

Gulliver is entirely based on the material, knowledge and expertise of Richard D. Lewis.

Gulliver was developed in partnership with Internal & External Communication.

The whole PwC, MCS team would like to give special thanks to Gloria Gery for her inspirational and guiding role at crucial points in the Gulliver project and generally in our thinking on EPS.