January 2021 - Expatriate Consultancy - Poland, Russia, Eastern Europe and Brazil

Why Did Nokia Fail

Starting Your Own Business Cover — This is a chapter from the book Starting Your Own Business Far From Home: What (Not) to Do When Opening a Company

In 2009, Nokia was the 5th most valuable brand in the world. Their phones were an object of desire everywhere. One year before I bought a used N80, and even with few scratches, it looked so much better than the competing phones. Fast-forward to 2014 and Nokia dropped to 98th place in the ranking. Two other phone makers dominated the market: Apple and Samsung, the first and seventh-most valuable brands of the planet respectively. Why did Nokia fail?

More than half of all profits from the mobile-phone industry went to Nokia in 2007. In 2013, they were in such a critical situation that Microsoft came to the rescue.

Nokia had a hardware-centered business model and underestimated the software revolution caused by the birth of smartphones. Apple came with the iPhone in 2007, to which Samsung quickly responded with their Galaxy series powered by the open-source Android. Meanwhile, Nokia rowed against the tide, betting on the superiority of its hardware to compensate for software deficiencies.

Nokia was a prisoner of its past success, and with the dawn of a new era, they hesitated too long to adapt.

Why Did Nokia Fail? The myth of Innovation and Adaptation as mutually exclusive

The legendary CEO from Intel, Andy Grove, instructed that entrepreneurs should be aware of the knowledge vanguard in their areas. By being aware of the industry innovations, it is possible to resort to them if needed. Few industries may disappear in the coming decades, and both innovation and adaptation can save you from a demise. The demise that comes to mind when we think of why did Nokia fail.

While innovationawareness is desirable, it should not exclude the prospect for adaptation. Business graduates may think that the two terms are mutually exclusive. Others, on the opposite side, might think they mean the same thing. Both are wrong, because while they are different, both can be part of the ethos of the same enterprise.

Innovation is often disruptive, sparked by creativity, and validated by frequent testing with a high failure rate. Adaptation, on the other side, is evidence-based, sparked by experience and knowledge of different scenarios and has a lower failure rate.

With those two definitions in mind, it is easier for an entrepreneur far from home to be innovative instead of adaptive. When I moved to Poland to open my business, I had plenty of ideas I wanted to test, but very limited knowledge of the terrain to design different scenarios. There is a way to overturn this disadvantage.

Commit not with an idea only, but with a profitable business that pays for itself.

Especially in the technology world, the widespread promotion of innovation shadows adaptation. Often people incorrectly attribute the success from previous business models to pure innovation instead of adaptation. Few examples:

Before becoming a leader in internet streaming, Netflix was a DVD-by-mail rental company. Their idea of delivering entertainment with convenience was always the same, but adapted to the progress of internet bandwidth.

With the demise of analogic photography, Kodad almost disappeared after more than a century of activity. It re-emerged later serving her core customers (photographers and film-makers) differently: with hardware and digital tools for image licensing.

During a half-century, UK residents used the Yellow Pages publications to consult local phones and addresses. With the Internet, the publishers went online and turned into Yell.com, the UK’s leading online business directory.

On its way to global expansion, Starbucks did not bet always in the same successful formula used in the USA. They developed taste profile analyses to adapt their products to each region, to the point that in China they adopted ancient tea house practices intrinsic to the local culture.

Reading the above examples, you may think it is all about innovation instead of adaptation. But see how none of the companies mentioned changed their target customers, or how the reason behind their products. It is not a case of completely changing their business, but adapting to new environments (like Starbucks in China) or technological changes (like Netflix, Yellow Pages, and Kodak).

This same adaptation that brought prosperity for the above examples (and to Samsung), lacked at Nokia. The Finnish company insisted that design and hardware superiority—with all the heavy investments to acquire it – could protect them against the mobile app revolution.

The idea of “we invested too much to change our ways now” translates into one of the most dangerous business traps: the sunk cost fallacy.

Forget Sunk Costs. Be Like Water.

Imagine you moved to a new state on the other side of the country. You just took a loan to refurbish an old building, turning it into state-of-the-art rental apartments to host MBA students from the nearby university. It is a campus city, and you are the only prime-accommodation supplier, so profits are near guaranteed.

One day, you receive the news that the state university will move all the executive programs to the capital, leaving only undergraduate courses in your city. Undergrads have less money, so either you lower your rental prices for unprofitable levels, or give back the building and close your rental venture.

While the second decision may sound the most logical, a fair share of the entrepreneurs would still take the first, using two justifications:

1. It might happen that after some time, the university decision is reversed and the MBA courses return, together with the customers.

2. The money and time invested are too high to just give up.

While the first justification, if based on evidence, is acceptable, the second is not logic. It means to keep losing every month just to not “lose” the initial amount invested. Even this phrase that I just wrote makes little sense, because this thought—called the sunk cost fallacy—does not make sense either.

Still, executives and even governments take decisions based on this fallacy, which we also name it The Concorde Fallacy. The name comes from the insistence of the British and French governments to fund the unprofitable operations of the supersonic airplane for years, just because it was expensive to develop it.

Conclusion – Why did Nokia fail

Nokia, the Concorde, or our fictitious rental-apartment business are examples of fallacies and biases blocking the adaptation to new environmental, economic, and technological realities.

There is a quote useful (and thought-provoking) for entrepreneurs facing changes and seeking adaptation in the daily struggle with competitors.

Be like water making its way through cracks. […] If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot; it becomes the teapot.

This quote summarizes why did Nokia fail. It could be from Warren Buffett when he changed his 3-decade long rule and invested in Apple Inc. It could be from Apple themselves when the company explored the still uncertain mobile-software business. Or even from Starbucks, when they invested in tea shops to expand to China.

The author, though, was the martial artist Bruce Lee.

One of the reasons why did Nokia fail was bad competitive analysis. Learn more about it in the video below.

If you have or plan to start a business, check the article we prepared with the best countries to start your business and the list of 5 books every entrepreneur should read.

Levi Borba is CEO of expatriateconsultancy.com and a best-selling author. You can check his books here. This article is based on a chapter of the book Starting Your Own Business Far From Home: What (Not) to Do When Opening a Company in Another State, Country, or Galaxy.

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Business

Types of business risk

A simple but efficient way to assess the types of business risk is the Impact vs Likehood matrix. Often we learn it at business school, but later in our careers and projects, we forget it. Big mistake! This is an exceptional tool for entrepreneurs and managers when assessing uncontrollable risks, so while you cannot suppress a crisis, you can prepare your business to survive (and thrive) on it.

You cannot predict the next crisis, but you can rehearse for it.

The first step to use this matrix is to draw a chart where the X-Axis is measuring impact—be it profit margin at risk or any other suitable measure, and the Y-Axis is measuring likelihood. The determination of the likelihood of catastrophic events must be done with extra care since humans tend to underestimate the chances of calamity (unless they just went through one). One common way to attribute likelihood is to observe how frequently the event happens. This may lead, however, to non-detection of rare-but-not-impossible situations–Black Swans, as Nassim Taleb calls them.

To detect possible Black Swans, the best way is to brainstorm every conceivable and adversity, accident, or disaster. Since you are an entrepreneur far away, bring the knowledge baggage from your land and sum the risks you know to the ones you imagine in your new place. Brainstorm together with other entrepreneurs or neighboring residents, if possible.

Once you have a relevant poll of unpleasant situations, divide them in the matrix below, according to both their likelihood and impact.

The Impact vs Likehood matrix to assess ther types of business risk — The *Impact vs Likehood matrix*

The 4 types of business risk

Fly in the soup: The name of the quadrant with low probability and low impact is self-explanatory. When you have a fly in your soup, you just take another bowl. You do not install expensive security systems or create detailed mitigation protocols for the problems of this quadrant because the investment would far exceed the avoided losses. But be sure that what you place in the fly in the soup quadrant are truly low-probability events, because even though their impact is low, if it happens frequently, it will pile up and turn into a money and time-consuming issue.

Casual accidents: The frequent bumps in your entrepreneurial road have their place in the high-likelihood, low-impact quadrant. Example? When I started my business in Poland, it was difficult to hire. A near-zero unemployment rate can be a risk for employers, even though probably this is better than high unemployment. Each expense from the recruiting effort was not significant when isolated, but summed all the costs of training, job ads, understaffing and uncertainty, it became considerable. Therefore, it was a management challenge, and a chance for improvement, something valid to most problems written in the Casual accidents quadrant.

Disasters: The high-impact, high-probability risks are the ones we actively avoid. Just after university, I moved to Santiago, the Chilean capital. The region is one of the most earthquake-prone in the world, registering a third of all tremors above 8.5 of magnitude. Earthquakes have a high-likelihood in Chile, and their impact can be calamitous. Consequently, Chile is one of the leading countries in anti-seismic technology. When we talk about uncontrollable but frequent disasters, the effort is to mitigate their effects when they happen, because sooner than later they will.

Rare catastrophes:

In this quadrant are situations like global market crashes, pandemics, or Vulcan eruptions causing an airspace lockdown in half-continent (the Eyjafjallajökull did this in 2010).

I left the rare catastrophes quadrant at last because we often neglect it. This because flies in the soup do not have the impact necessary to demand attention, and both casual accidents and likely disasters are easily identifiable because of their frequency. However we, humans, have a problem understanding the likelihood of rare catastrophes.

There is even a name for this cognitive brain flaw: normalcy bias. According to the research from Esther Inglis-Arkell, near 70% of people display such bias. This is one of the two most common biases that we often see causing damage to business. The other is The Survivorship Bias, which I wrote about in this article.

Types of business risk – Conclusion

At the risk of sounding repetitive, I will tell you again: To thrive, first a business must survive. Online commerce behemoths like eBay or Amazon are companies that survived the 2000 e-commerce bubble burst.

Black swans like enormous Vulcan eruptions or virus mutations are impossible to predict. Therefore, the best counter-measure is to get rid of the fragilities and catalysts of negative impacts. In this article, we listed 4 types of business risk. We can classify nearly everything that threatens your business as one of them and handle it accordingly

A proper risk assessment will give you a better outlook on your project or company. It will help you to be ready for crises and obstacles. Learn how to write a good business plan with a proper risk analysis. It will make it easier to raise capital among investors or impress local authorities.

Build diversified income streams, create redundancies, and avoid risks that can wipe out your company. These are some ways to build an antifragile enterprise. If you want your business to survive one hundred years, events that happen once in a century should alarm you.

If you have or plan to start a business, check the article we prepared with the best business channels on Youtube and the list of 5 books every entrepreneur should read.

To learn more about types of business risk, this video is a good step.

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Business

Business failure risk- Avoid these assessment mistakes

An essential part of any business plan is the risk assessment. While I believe you know most of the components of a good risk analysis, there are logical fallacies that we often see even on the best plans. Things that scrupulous regulators and prudent investors hate. In this article, I will tell you how to avoid these mistakes in your business failure risk assessment.

Via Negativa and the Pseudo-Areopagite

Dionysius was a neo-platonic theologian from the VI century. He built the concept of Via Negativa (Latin term meaning Path of Negation).

According to this idea, if we admit the existence of a supreme being above the reason of all humans, it is impossible for anyone to define him. Definitions are, after all, imposing limits to the reality. Since we cannot tell what God is because it is out of our power, the only possibility to describe this supreme being is to say what he is not.

While Dionysius was the first to describe the notion of Via Negativa, the Old Testament and ancient thinkers like Saint Augustine of Hippo used the core notion[1]. Wisdom aside, Dionysius was not very original, since his name (The Aeropagite) is actually a pseudonym taken from a man that lived centuries before. That is why he also known as Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. Not a flattering way to refer to the man who compiled a notion used not only in theology but in heuristic.

The Survivorship Bias in Business failure risk evaluations

During university, I worked part time at an investment brokerage firm. An efficient tool to sell quotas of riskier funds were a dozen slides with time spams ranging from ten to twenty years.

Virtually every share or hedge fund in this time span had positive (and above inflation) returns. This sequence of slides was enough to convince potential customers that in the “long-term”, risky investments pay off.

It was flawed reasoning. Almost deceitful, to be honest, even though I do not plead guilty, but just ignorant—I had little knowledge of selection biases.

In a market where either you have positive returns or your investors withdraw and liquidate your fund, it is clear how misleading were those slides. By choosing a 10-year period, with only the current investment options, it filtered out bankrupt funds, and the investors had no idea about the failures they could face.

This is what we call survivorship bias. Every time you see solid investments with positive returns over decades, you are biasing observation by accidentally filtering out failures.

This treacherous bias turns you into a fool, making poor decisions in financial, personal, and business dimensions.

To discover the righteous path, first eliminate the paths leading to failure.

I first illustrated the concepts of Via Negativa and the Survivorship Bias because together they are the foundation for the argument I will show in the next pages.

A broad competitive analysis is a big step to build a business. To do this analysis, the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) matrix is a great tool. However, when you analyze existing competitors, the observed weaknesses and threats often are far from the worst scenarios. Otherwise, those competitors would already be out of the market.

A similar bias happened during World War II. American military specialists thought they should reinforce planes in the wings and tails because that is where fighters had bullet holes – while engines of returning aircraft were mostly intact. They did not realize that airplanes shot in the engine never came back[2]. When you analyze the weaknesses of your current competitors, you are just observing bullet holes in the wings.

In his book Antifragile, Taleb – whose books were very helpful to me – points out that the best way for a person or company to not only survive but prosper in a crisis is to first decrease his disadvantages. A disadvantage (we can also call them fragilities) comprises everything, increasing your vulnerability to risk and volatility.

Know the shortcomings of failed businesses, so the past does not repeat itself.

The reason which I started this article introducing a heuristic concept (Via Negativa), and a logical bias (Survivorship Bias) is because knowing what kills a business is equally (or even more) important than understanding what makes it succeed. In this article, you can check other logical fallacies that investors and entrepreneurs should be aware.

The first step to success is to survive. Had I never learned about the weaknesses of similar companies to mine, I would not be writing those pages about entrepreneurship abroad, because my own business would be dead.

I understand that researching bankrupt businesses and their Causa Mortis is not a motivating task. Every entrepreneur wants to keep a fair dose of optimism to keep going forward. But do not let optimism plays against you.

To discover the route for triumph, the first step is to eliminate the paths leading to failure. Assess business failure risk assessment Work with multiple scenarios, and seek to get rid of your weaknesses in each of them. By eliminating the dangerous routes, your chances of choosing the correct door are much higher.

If you have or plan to start a business, check the article we prepared with the best business channels on Youtube and the list of 5 books every entrepreneur should read.

To learn more about business failure risk, watch the video below.

[1] 1 Corinthians 2:9 “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,

nor the heart of man conceived,

what God has prepared for those who love him” Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition

[2] Mangel, M & Samaniego, F.J; Abraham Wald’s Work on Aircraft Survivability; Journal of the American Statistical Association

Vol. 79, No. 386 (Jun., 1984)

Cultural Shock

What to Consider When Moving Out

You just received an excellent job offer abroad, or maybe you decide to open a company abroad and have the full plan read. Either way, you concluded that you checked what to consider when moving out. You think that the chosen destination offers a good professional perspective. Now it is time to pack your things and decide the date of the flight, right?

Not yet.

If you are planning to the new place, there are other things to consider. We will call this group the non-professional elements. The reason to consider them is that it is hard to have a successful career or enterprise if you are feeling miserable, living in a place you dislike, or in an environment that goes against your values.

In my first book, Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity, I dedicated one entire chapter to exemplify why understanding your own life project is important to succeed as an expatriate. This applies if you are a big-corporation employee, a foreign student, a person moving with your spouse, or an entrepreneur.

Environmental Dissonance

A phenomenon frequently affecting expatriates is what I call environmental dissonance. It happens when your values conflict with the place surrounding you. In my before-mentioned book (Moving Out) I recounted the story of Breno, a colleague I met while living in the Middle East. Even having a good job and working in his field of specialization, he left months after arriving because the environmental dissonance became overwhelming to him.

Just imagine how more complicated is to suffer this dissonance while you hire and motivate a team, establish goals, write a business plan, pitch for seed capital, and so on. For this reason, becomes essential to assert that your target country, if also attractive to your business and career, also matches your life project and goals.

Just be aware that I am in no point advocating you should “follow your heart” or “listen to your feelings”. In fact, to follow your passion is poor advice. What I propose, instead, is to rationalize what your new country offers and how it matches your personal needs. For this, I recommend analyzing the following non-professional elements.

Cultural Distance

Probably the greatest modern researcher in comparative cultural aspects was Geert Hofstede. Starting in the 80s with his book Culture’s Consequences, he developed an extensive bibliography in the area, culminating with the institute that carries his name.

Present in 60 countries, the Hosfted Insights institute developed a model breaking down the cultural distance into 6 major areas. Below, each one of them, with the definitions from the Hofstede-Insights researchers:

· Power Distance – This dimension […] expresses the attitude of the culture towards inequalities amongst us. Power Distance is the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power distribution is unequal.

· Individualism – The fundamental issue addressed by this dimension is the degree of interdependence a society maintains among its members. It is whether people’s self-image translates to terms of “I”, or “We”. In Individualist societies people look after themselves and their direct family only. In Collectivist societies, people belong to ‘in groups’ that take care of them in exchange for loyalty.

· Masculinity—A high score (Masculine) on this dimension shows competition, achievement, and success will drive the society, with success being defined by the winner / best in field—a value system that starts in school and continues throughout organizational life. A low score (Feminine) on the dimension means that the dominant values in society are caring for others and quality of life. A Feminine society is one where quality of life is the sign of success, and standing out from the crowd is not admirable. The fundamental issue here is what motivates people, wanting to be the best (Masculine) or liking what you do (Feminine).

· Uncertainty Avoidance – It is how a society deals with the fact that we can never know the future: should we try to control the future or just let it happen? This ambiguity brings with it anxiety and different cultures have learned to deal with this anxiety in different ways. The score on Uncertainty Avoidance reflects the extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations and create institutions to avoid risk .

· Long Term Orientation – This dimension describes how every society has to maintain some links with its own past while dealing with the challenges of the present and future. Societies prioritize these two existential goals differently. Normative societies. which score low on this dimension, for example, prefer to maintain time-honored traditions and norms while viewing societal change with suspicion. Societies scoring high here, on the other side, take a more pragmatic approach: they encourage efforts in modern education as a way to prepare for the future.

· Indulgence – The Hofstede-Insights define this dimension as the extent to which people try to control their desires and impulses, based on the way they were raised. Relatively weak control is called “Indulgence” and relatively firm control is analogous to “Restraint”. Cultures therefore are grouped as Indulgent or Restrained.

When I had my first contact with the research of Dr. Hofstede, my immediate action was to check how the countries I lived before (Brazil, Chile, Qatar, and Poland) scored in each ranking. The comparative results from each one – got from a tool available on his institute website – reflected with Swiss-precision the reality I witnessed living in each of them.

For example, according to the results, the Power Distance in Qatar is very high. This matches my observations of a place where the people take as natural the near immutable social differences. Similarly, the higher levels of indulgence and femininity (as per Hofstede’s definition of femininity) in Chile are noticeable in their capital. At the end, the results from Poland fused two of my biggest impressions from living in this country: it is a non-indulgent society, with a considerable level of risk-aversion.

The two characteristics mentioned above – frugality and risk-aversion – of the Polish people contrasted with my cultural baggage.

As a Brazilian, I grow up seeing people spend a fair share of their income in branded shoes, new cars (paid in installments distributed across years), and eating out. Even though nowadays Poland has a similar income to my native São Paulo, someone will rarely buy a new car, and a 10-year-old vehicle is still OK. Personal anecdote: my wife considers it absurd that someone would spend over 5 times his salary in a new automobile. In contrast, in Brazil it is not rare to see people buying cars with the price tag of their annual salary.

The Latin America vs Europe example

This difference, summarized in the Indulgence factor of Dr. Hofstede research, probably affects not only me but thousands of other expatriates that move between Latin America and Europe. Sean Lana, an expatriate living in Germany, lists how other factors of Hofstede research (Individualism) impact his daily life.

Germany is not a country you want to be if your only major goal in life is to own a Bugatti, Ferrari, Tesla and shows off! Collectivism means the country is trying to redistribute wealth equally, at least in order to mitigate poverty and support low-income earners. Expect high taxes and you will enjoy a high quality of life with infrastructures. So if you are very individualistic, consider the next flight to another country. German organisation system is based on the ideology of Max Weber (bureaucracy), Americans practice Scientific management (Taylorism). If you are not used to obeying rigorous rules, regulations, huge laws, paper works, transparency, slow process, appointments, etc then you shouldn’t stay in Germany.

Cultural differences withing a country

It is essential to remind that cultural discrepancies – of the types studied by Dr. Hofstede and perceived in the two examples above – can exist even inside the same country.

Henry Eshleman, a Park Ranger at Fairbanks North Star Borough in Alaska, USA, explained how he felt closer to foreign students than locals while in Indiana, Midwest of the same country.

In Indiana, being from Alaska made me an exotic curiosity. People would ask me questions I never got in Europe, Canada, or Mexico- “What are you doing here?” “Is it cold there?” “What it’s like when it’s light all the time?” And so forth. As a student, I rapidly realized I had more in common with the foreign exchange students, or with my buddy Angel, from Puerto Rico, than I did with the “regular” kids.

My biggest culture shock was essentially domestic in nature, the result of coming from a state which isn’t directly connected to the rest right into the Midwest Heartland.

Even in a country with the size of a single American state, cultural differences are noticeable. In Poland, the northern region of Gdansk has considerable differences to the Subcarpathian cities in the south. Differences shaped during centuries of partitions between Russia, Austria and Germany. Nowadays, the differences reflect electoral results, practices and consumer behaviors.

Besides cultural characteristics, there are other non-business aspects to consider when doing a professional shift:

· Future family prospects: It is easy to make a decision when it concerns only you. The same is not true when it involves wife and kids. Even if you are single, it is important to reflect on what you want for the next years. If you are planning to build a family, consider this beforehand. This was my case when I decided to move out of Qatar (my previous country). My first thought was to move to Panamá with my then-fiancée, but we had plans to marry and maybe have kids in the next few years. For this reason, we live in Poland, closer to her family.

· The Time zone. I already mentioned how different time zones can create business problems. This also applies to your private life. A person in South Africa, even though is distant from his relatives in Europe, is still inside a similar time zone, but not someone living in the Middle East and with a family in South-America. This was my case years ago. The 5 to 6 hours’ difference restricted the chances I had to keep contact. During my mornings, they were sleeping. During their evenings, I was sleeping.

· How friendly the country is to your lifestyle. For example, if you enjoy practicing outdoor sports, places like Dubai or Doha may not be a good idea, since it is excruciatingly hot for more than half of the year.

To go deeper into this subject, my first book, Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity, has plenty of considerations to reflect on the personal side of expatriation. Still, if there is one positive advice in business and personal life, it is to immerse yourself in the local culture from the beginning. Talk to the grocery store cashier is a good start.

Conclusion of what to consider when moving out:

· Cultural discrepancies: How you will adapt to different degrees of Individualism, Power Distance, Risk-Aversion, indulgence and so on?

· Future personal prospects: Are you planning to marry, build a family, or remain single? How the local offer of schools, nurseries, etc., fit your plans?

· The time zone difference: Is the time difference considerable? How will that affect your relationships back home?

· How friendly the country is to your lifestyle: Of your routine and favorite activities, what you can keep or adapt to your new destination?

If you are planning to live abroad, it is a good time to check the things to buy before moving out, but if you already live abroad, I recommend this simple but life-changing advice for expatriates.

This article on what to consider when moving out is related to the highly recommended book below.

Levi Borba is the CEO of expatriateconsultancy.com and a best-selling author. You can check his books here and his articles here. The inspiration for this article comes from the book Starting Your Own Business Far From Home: What (Not) to Do When Opening a Company in Another State, Country, or Galaxy

Cultural Shock

How to Adapt to a New Culture – The…

Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity Cover — This is a chapter from the book Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity

Step 1 of How to Adapt to a New Culture: Get over the fact that you will never be 100% native. And you don’t need to.

I start this article making a minor excuse: the title you see above is not 100% true. There are exceptions, subordinated to specific contexts, where expats become like a native. For example, in the French south-west, where some long-term Brits living among wineries abandoned their fish and chips and become more French than the locals, as the blog Bordeaux Expats reported:

58-year-old Darren Taylor moved to the Dordogne from Essex 30 years ago because of his love of the novels of Proust and the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, which he used to borrow from Dagenham Library.
He said: “You’ll have to excuse me, it’s such a long time since I spoke English. What’s happening over there now anyway? Is Sven still England manager? Is Minder still on? I wouldn’t know. I spend my days listening to the music of George Brassens and sipping pastis.”
Pensioner Norman Kemp said, “Don’t be deceived by my prominent bulldog tattoos. That was the old me. Nowadays whenever I’m not preparing magret de canard aux pommes sarladaises, I’m practicing the accordion or playing pétanque in the village square in my favourite beret.

It is refreshing to see cases like this above, where immigrants adapt so flawlessly. However, two points make these exceptions.

1st – The United Kingdom and France are neighbors with centuries of cultural, social, and economical entanglement. Therefore, the civilizational difference decreases thanks to mutual influences, and the expat adaptation is quicker.

2nd – Even in the British-in-France context there are plentiful examples of not-so-smooth adaptation, to the point of existing a mutual-help social network. The name of it is “Survive France”.

Therefore, this advice is for anyone moving (or planning to) between countries not that similar. And if you arrived until here in this article, congratulations: you already know how to go through the worst phases of your new life. The German firm Archer Relocation designed the Expat Adjustment Curve, where the first stages remind what I described in a previous article, but with a different end:

Honeymoon Phase
Initial Culture Shock
Superficial Adjustment
Culture Shock
Recovery
Integration

The fundamental difference here is the sixth phase. Whoever reaches the Integration overcame the culture shock (our previous articles help you with it) and recovered to run the show in their new life. As much as achieving this stage of adaptation is a brilliant victory, there are different levels of it. We can break down the concept of integration in 4 different types.

The 4 dimensions of cultural integration

● Economic Integration—It is when foreigners work and generate wealth for themselves via their salaries and profits, and to their new country by paying taxes. They add their contribution both as supply, by their products, and demand, by their consumption. Skilled expats often achieve this type quickly, but for students or non-working spouses it can take longer.

● Social—When people mingle with the locals, adopt social codes of the new country and its etiquette. Although the personal efforts to achieve social integration are important, how fast you will achieve depends also on how friendly is the population. The portal Internations researched about a similar subject and concluded that in places like Mexico, Costa Rica, Ecuador or Colombia, to create a social circle can be much easier than in Nordic countries or Saudi Arabia.

● Cultural—This kind of integration is when people adopt the habits and culture of the new place. To reach a full cultural integration, it is indispensable to have a good understanding of the local language and go across all its components (music, literature, beliefs and celebrations). The cultural integration can be even harder than the social integration if your original country and the new one are from different civilizational foundations, for example, India and Eastern Europe.

● Emotional—This is the last type of integration in the list for a reason: it is the hardest. I may take longer to explain emotional integration because it is essential for understanding this entire article. There is a word in my native language called saudade. This term is almost untranslatable, but fits very well in this description. We may define saudade as the presence of absence, the yearning for something or someone that right now is unreachable, and whose absence creates a void in your inner self. It is not only “missing” and does not have a completely negative meaning because it brings sadness and joy together. It is, as deciphered by older generations, the love that remains. We can translate a partial emotional integration as loving your new country and shaping your personality by its influences. The fully integrated, however, will go beyond this and not feel any saudade from his origins.

If you are already living abroad for some time, you probably are thinking how far you are in those four different dimensions. The good news is that you don’t need to achieve all of them. In Chile, I was very well-integrated economically, socially, and culturally. I didn’t need to do much effort since they are close to Brazil in all those components. This similarity plays a big role. That is why in Poland, to reach the same level of assimilation from Chile, it took much longer. In Qatar, I achieved economic integration, but the social and cultural aspects were distant from my daily life.

What about emotional integration? Even though I had part of my personality changed by every country that I lived in, my core is still the same, and it is Brazilian. Therefore, differently than the British mentioned at the initial paragraphs of this story, I am still not 100% emotionally integrated, and maybe I will never be. Maybe I will always feel saudade of the southeastern plains of Brazil.

And this is ok.

It is almost the rule when you are a first-generation immigrant.

In an article of Humanity in Action Denmark, I read two stories that exemplify it. One from Savas Coskun and the other from Sabeena Din, who moved, respectively, from Turkey and Pakistan to Denmark.

It was the experience of travelling back and living one year in Turkey that convinced Coskun that whatever cultural identity meant; he had to have a mixture of both cultures in his identity. “Until ten years ago I said I was Turkish only,” he says, “because saying to say I was Danish seemed a little false to me. And then I went to Turkey for a year and realized that I cannot be just Turkish. I have to be Turkish-Danish. I have to be both. Like Coskun, Sabeena Din, a 21-year-old born in Denmark, has two identities. When she is in Denmark, she feels more Pakistani. When she goes to visit Pakistan, she feels more Danish. However, Din does not feel that it is a crisis for her. “It is not a bad thing”.

To make the best efforts to integrate into a new country is not only good for you. If you plan or already have children, this will have an enormous positive impact on them. Descendants of first-generation, well-assimilated immigrants growing up in the company of local children will carry the advantage of youth years shaping them when compared to their parents. This will allow them to adjust (economically, culturally, socially and emotionally) to a much greater degree.

The upside and opportunities of being peculiar

Even doing your best attempts, still there is a chance you will never be like a native (especially if you are a first-generation newcomer like me). Even after learning the language, you still will speak with an accent that will persist for decades. You will still have your tastes for food, music, and traces in your personality shaped in your fatherland. If you are moving to a homogeneous country like some in Asia or Eastern Europe, you will also be the person looking different.

I have some splendid news for you: all those things can turn into opportunities. Your varied taste for food and music can give way to very interesting conversation topics. Your accent and knowledge of a foreign language can be useful to understand the so common loanwords from a globalized world. Those holidays you celebrated back in your country can double the opportunities for fun. With my wife we celebrate both Valentine’s (14 of February) as her tradition and Dia dos Namorados (12 of June) as mine, so we have twice the amount of romantic dinners than a standard couple!

Sometimes, being the different person opens doors to great opportunities. This is a point that people miss when trying to understand how to adapt to a new culture.

In Poland, it is normal that younger people come to talk to me in English, since I look like a foreigner, and when I answer in their language, I hear nice compliments and salutations for learning their idiom. The same would be if a westerner moved to Thailand and mastered Thai. Inside homogeneous countries, with a quick look people will know you are a foreigner and while this may scary some expatriates, it is a significant chance to surprise and earn the local admiration.

Nobody likes the arrogant expat that prefers to show off his differences at every point while despising the social and cultural features of his new home. On the other side, the complete opposite of him-the expatriate wishing to cut his roots and be like a local in every aspect- also risks entering a road to frustration because of unachievable goals.

You don’t need to lose your roots to be the guy from a snowless country talking about winter sports with his Norwegian workmates, or the American that moved to South-Africa and now invites his neighbors for a braai (South African barbecue). In countries where people expect you to be just another foreigner without interests in common, you will be in high-regard if you go beyond their expectations.

If you live far from your home, check this article I prepared for you about homesickness and this about a very common cultural shock problem.

This article on how to adapt to a new culture is part of the highly recommended book below:

Levi Borba is the CEO of expatriateconsultancy.com and a best-selling author. You can check his books here and some of his articles here. The inspiration for this article comes from the book Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity: 11 secrets to make your expat life better than you imagine.

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Digital Nomads

Moving Abroad Checklist Part 2 – Researching Your New…

This is the second part of the Moving Abroad Checklist (the first you can find here). To give the perfect context to the importance of researching about where you live, I will start with a personal anecdote.

During the time I lived and worked in Doha, most of the company staff were foreigners. It was just a reflection of the country’s demographic, largely made of immigrants. Curiously, however, there were almost no other Brazilians like me, except the boss of the boss of my boss. There were rumors about people from Brazil not resisting much time there because of the vast distance to their country, plus the enormous cultural differences. To my surprise, just a few months after they hire me, they also hired a fellow Brazilian called Breno.

Breno had a respectable curriculum. Graduated is the USA, in one of the top universities in his area, worked for the pride-company of the Brazilian aerospace industry and despite being young (he was just slightly older than I was), had a list of achievements uncommon for his age. He also looked slightly like a frat-boy coming out from a B-class American comedy. Breno was a very easy-going person, making funny jokes about all things.

In one of his first days, I was at my desk calibrating some technical parameters, and Breno comes to me and ask:

Hey Levi! What’s up? What about we go for some drinks?

Qatar was not an easy country to go for drinks. It was illegal to sell alcohol in all stores except one, which was state-owned and demanded a special license to buy their 300% overpriced booze. They also sold alcoholic drinks at bars and restaurants of luxury hotels. There, a round of cocktails could cost as much as a weekend on a Greek beach, hotel included.

Despite being busy, the question of Breno surprised me, since at the beginning you don’t have so much money to spare, at least until receive your first salary. Did he know the alcohol was so expensive there? Maybe he found someone with a license to buy alcoholic drinks and was giving a house party? The guy was so easygoing, it would not be a surprise.

No. It was nothing like that. He had another idea in mind, which I discovered when I asked where he wanted to go.

“Maybe we can go to the party district! Where is it? You know, this street full of bars and clubs that every big city in the world has!”

That is it. He just asked me about a Bangkok style party district in an Islamic society where a woman could face problems if their skirts were above their knees. A place where was often cheaper to buy an airline ticket to another country if you wanted to party.

This guy had no idea where he was.

Do not rely solely on Media

The story of Breno may sound odd, but it is not uncommon. There are plenty of people that don’t make a proper field research before moving. Or when they make, they use only media sources, with information written by journalists. Some of those journalists act almost as public relations from governments, publishing information that is unrealistic or exaggeratedly welcoming.

Maybe Breno imagined Doha as a middle-eastern Barcelona because he saw so many media vehicles praising Qatar for having less strict Islamic rules when compared to Saudi Arabia. Yes, it is less strict, but what the media omitted is that Saudi is the strictest Islamic country in the world. To be less, in this case, is natural. When Qatar earned the right to host the football World Cup, there was plenty of government money going around. Maybe that is why journalists felt compelled to do unrealistic and overoptimistic comparisons, like between Doha and Dubai.

I cannot stress enough how important is to do proper research before moving out, and I am sure most expats do it. However, unfortunately, they just do not do it right. Go to the easiest source of information (newspapers, internet portals or YouTube videos) is not a good idea. Editors, presenters and reporters are not there to help someone to live abroad but to earn a living, so they may just create content to draw attention. Sensationalist talks.

This is something that I saw in Poland. More often than never I witnessed in expat forums questions about how safe is for a dark-skinned person to walk in the polish streets. The answer, from my side, is elementary: as safe as you can imagine. The number of racist assaults in Poland is negligible and even being an olive-skinned guy and knowing plenty of Afro-Brazilians, I still didn’t hear about this kind of problem. So, why people fear those hordes of racist poles which, in over three years here, I did not saw? Because they write about it in the media, they show it on the TV, and it may be one of the first things you see when you type Poland at Google. However, all this repetition does not make it true.

The difference between what the press portrays and street reality can be abysmal. So if I am telling here that the main media vehicles are not the best source to research your new country, where should you seek information? Can you guess?

The Locals

Ask the real people. The ones who went through the same experiences and endured it for years. Thanks to the same web I criticized above, you also can reach them easily.

Social media today is full of groups. They often have names as “Foreigners in [name of the place]”. I don’t recommend these groups as the sole source of information because many of their members are expats still in their honeymoon phase, before the cultural shock, or just tourists. But while they cannot provide you with the most reliable information, it is still better than the traditional media.

The real deal is to look for groups of locals. One simple way I found is to find language learning groups in the country where I am moving too. Not only you will be able to communicate with locals from your new country and learn their idiom, but they will be excited if you offer to teach them your language. It can be fun too!

Another possibility is to look for common interests. Even before moving to Europe, I was already in local groups about entrepreneurship, football and philosophy, three subjects interesting to me. While discussing things I enjoyed, I learned about local views on those subjects and other common topics. If you are already in the country but feeling you don’t know enough about it – since most of your contacts are foreigners – enrolling in a course or volunteering can be useful and pleasant.

A third way is to find people from your new country that now are living where you live. You can do that on social media. For example, if you are a Canadian moving to Argentina, you can just look on Facebook for the group “Argentinians in Canada” (or, most likely, Argentinos en Canadá). The members know how is to be a foreigner and will be glad to help with your doubts about their country.

After I told you where to look for information, comes the next question: Which information should you seek? For these answers, check this article about cultural shock.

Questions to ask yourself:

To make your life easier, I prepared the template below. Seek the information about your new country in the ways I suggested previously *communities in social media and groups related to your interests) and complete it. At the end of the exercise, should be a plethora of information useful in your journey.

1st source of cultural shock: The Rules

How do people deal with regulations? Are they rigid and play strictly by the book or there is space to some negotiation? Are systems and procedures respected daily or used as guidelines, with frequent adaptations to daily circumstances? Are plans rigorously respected, or they are adjusted according to additional requests?

Your previous country:

Your new country:

2nd source of cultural shock: The Time

Do people arrive on time on every occasion, even informal ones? Is there some tolerance for delays? What happens when someone arrives 10 minutes late for a social gathering? How do we inform at work or university that something blocked the road, making it impossible to arrive on time? Is it normal to do over-hours or to extend a meeting beyond the scheduled time?

Your previous country:

Your new country:

3rd source of cultural shock: The Humor

Which level of formality is expected in a conversation at work or public office? Is it ok to do jokes as an icebreaker? Do people laugh at small incidents or remain serious? Is a smile always considered a sign of joy or may be taken as disdain? Are puns and tricks common, or people tend to always behave seriously?

Your previous country:

Your new country:

4th source of cultural shock: The Communication

When it is time to take a decision, how is the communication process: direct and to the point, with no digressions, or it goes around many hypotheses and with space to different discussions? When people need to criticize a co-worker, do they use subtle language and avoid direct conflict, or they just say what they want to say without space for doubt? When people ask for a favor or a task, do they suggest indirectly using expressions like “maybe” or “would be nice if someone did that” or they straightforward tell you what they want? When someone needs to deny an invitation or a request, do they simply say “I can’t do it, sorry” or they use excuses?

Your previous country:

Your new country:

If you have any other important expatriate questions to suggest, send them in the comments, and see you in the next part of our series Moving Abroad Checklist.

This moving abroad checklist is one of the chapters of this book, which we recommend you to check.

Levi Borba is the CEO of expatriateconsultancy.com and a best-selling author. You can check his books here and some of his articles here. This article was inspired by the content of his book, Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity: 11 secrets to make your expat life better than you imagine.

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This article on how to adapt to a new culture is part of the highly recommended book below:

Moving Abroad Checklist Part 2 – Researching Your New…

Do not rely solely on Media

The Locals

Questions to ask yourself:

This moving abroad checklist is one of the chapters of this book, which we recommend you to check.

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