My mind is always spinning with stuff. I’ll share it as it happens. When you get bored I suggest you just read the blogs. I guess everyone is the same, but you think you are unique and you are alone in what you think about daily. I flip constantly, especially at the moment just prior to travel, between what shall I do when I get to these countries, what shall I photograph, what will I eat that’s different. But in my next thought I am trying to balance the future. What route will I take to go back into business, when should I go back, what should be my focus? the interesting feeling is that I have is that I have no regret with leaving my job and taking a break. And the photo…closing firework display at Birmingham Artfest 2012.

My quest for answers is leading me to understand more about everything. As you will have seen in some of my Tweets the basis of knowledge and learning doesn’t start with a book, it starts with the concept of learning and what stops us evolving thought. If we can
grasp the mirror reflection of learning such as belief, prejudice and comprehension, we have a fair chance of achieving a base understanding and thus retaining more. It isn’t so much that I want to learn about the universe, it is more what makes use comprehend?

My early and myopic views of the countries that I have visited so far have given an insight into the way that the masses behave.  There are always better role models in countries and one instance shouldn’t be regarded as a trend, but an experience over a few days can give you a feel for a country and its people.

The east meets west challenge is that one will need to give way somewhat to another.  I hope that we can aspire to the way that Japanese people think.  There respect for order, maturity, doing the right thing and everyone being involved has been a value set that I was absorbed.  China on the other hand has many things to consider as it makes its way in the world.  As I said in my one Post, it could be that China is only interested in China and its effects around the world will be minimal.  There is a level of mistrust in some of these nations which is different to the usual scepticism that we have in Europe and maybe North America.  Show me your money first, try to get the biggest profit possible, ignore safety, but in a growing number of cases this wealthy region is sucking up the worlds branded goods in a frenzy of buying.  It helps that the Yuan buys well around the world, but what money they have (and lots of it) is being spent.  I keep drifting back and forward between events and values.  I believe values are demonstrated in the way that we act as people.  So spending, spitting, queuing, haggling, cheating,  is all effects of the values that we instil.  Culture comes from the set of values and the belief that you have.  But what would be the ideal culture, the ideal values, if we had to pick one set.  You see different values in companies let alone countries, so does it matter.  My thinking is that it does and I would like to get to a set of standard international values that we all aspire to.  How about two to start off, Patience and Trust.

Patience as a value could be positioned as setting an expectation then waiting for that expectation to be borne out.  Living the patience value could be as simple as seeing 5 windows selling tickets and the customer placing themselves logically in a queue that represents where they fit in an order.  The queues could spread but without tactical jostling, and more use of courteous offerings to others who may be in the order before you and you give them the chance to receive before you.  Sounds simple doesn’t it, but the more you think of the cultures and different countries accepted standard.  In the past week the disastrous building collapse on Bangladesh with the loss of over 400 lives points to this value.  Not queuing, but patience to do the right thing.  Patience by the builders, patience by the manufacturers, patience by the Customers of manufacturer and absolute patience by the Consumer of the final product.  I’ve been Tweeting on ‘Pay it forward’ principles for the last 3 months and some of these are I think guidelines to getting this value right.

The next one is Trust.  Wow, what a minefield.  Imagine a world where one person agrees to do something and the second party agrees to the first person doing it to a time, quality and payment.  ‘Payment’ doesn’t have to be in money, but any form of compensation or commendation.  With this sort of Trust value, the second party lets go of the responsibility for a  while.  No checking, no harassment, no doubts, no resetting of the terms, no reneging on the payment.  Now thinking of the my trips so far, China has an issue with this, Japan does not.  From my dealing with South Korean’s, they want a ‘deal’ after the deal.  It is interesting that in business two countries that operate under massive corporation ‘families’ that tie in business partners through your tie or not with the family brand, operate in two distinct ways. Korea has Chaebols and Japan had Trading Houses.  Think of a brand like LG, ‘Lucky Goldstar’ thats a Chaebol with lots of subsidiaries.  Then in Japan, think of Honda, that’s a trading house.  Doing business in both requires you to have relationships with the family before you get very far.  Its a trust thing.  In Korea’s case it is both a trust and a commercial thing.  So what’s this got to do with the values?  If we are becoming one big global community, who sets the values?  Take International Copyright Laws.  Who dictates compliance and who can say that copying is OK and acceptable?  Most of the laws of the world are still based on principles set about by the Magna Carta of 1215.  But 800 years on with a shift in the worlds populations, economies, influence, who and how do values get placed into law and how do we get trust to operate intuitively?

Knowledge barriers