These days many Japanese companies are trying to adjust to a more international business environment. Rakuten has decided that everybody in the company will have to be able to speak English. In the coming years Asia will become more and more important as Japanese companies open branches in Asian companies and will have to deal with different Asian societies and business cultures.
The question is of course how important is it to be international? If you work with people from different backgrounds and different languages the chance of mistakes grows. Most managers don't think this is a big problem though. The general idea seems to be: What is the worst that could happen??
This is what the Austrian emperor Joseph II thought in 1788.The Austrian Empire was at war with the Turkish Empire. The emperor decided to send a big army south to finish the war. This army was made up from many different nationalities: Austrian German, Romanian, Hungarians, Slovenians and so on. As was the habit they all wore different uniforms and spoke different languages. Just like in a big international company they weren't used to working together as a team. Emperor Joseph II didn't think this was a big problem. At the battle of Karansebes he found out he was wrong.
The Austrian army was waiting for the Turkish army near a town called Karansebes. At one point some Romanian soldiers bought Schnapps (German style vodka) from local people and started getting drunk. A group of Slovenian soldiers wanted some of the wine and a small fight erupted between the two groups. After a little while an officer ordered his German soldiers on horseback to stop the fight between the two groups. They rode towards the fight while screaming them to stop. Unfortunately stop in German is Halt, and halt sounds a lot like Allah. The Romanian soldiers thought the Turkish army had arrived and started shooting. First the Germans were very surprised, but that soon turned to anger. Every European can tell you that making Germans angry is a very very very bad idea. They chased the Romanian soldiers through the camp. An Austrian officer saw the Germans attack. He didn't know what was happening so he ordered his men to shoot them. From there on people panicked and everybody started shooting anybody in a different uniform. Final result was about 10.000 people killed and wounded. The Austrian army went back home. A few days later the Turkish army arrived to find a lot of dead Romanians, Germans and so on. They were of course surprised but decided they had won the battle of Karansebes and went home in a very good mood.
The battle of Karansebes sounds like something you can see in a bad comedy movie, but it really happened. It is an extreme example of what can go wrong when people misunderstand each other. Of course in business lives are not at stake, but you can imagine how one small misunderstanding can cost you a lot of money. There are two important things to learn. First, do not underestimate how many things can go wrong when dealing with different languages. In a later blog post I will tell about some personal mistakes I made. Second, never drink Schnapps. It will end badly for you. I speak from personal experience here.