reading

658.4 / B821s 2014

Brandwayn, Robert. 10 Successful Colombian Executives Working Abroad: A Business English Book / Robert Brandwayn. Colombia: Colegio de Estudios Superiores de Administración -CESA-.

Dirección de Comunicaciones y Marketing, 2014. 190p.

Descriptores:

– Ejecutivos - Estudio de casos - Entrevistas

– Éxito en los negocios - Estudio de casos - Entrevistas

– Comunicación en la Administración - Estudio de casos

El material para las caricaturas se inspiró en los libros: Mark Simon. Facial Expressions: A Visual Reference for Artists. New York: Watson-Gutpill Publications, 2005 y Peter Evans. The Fantasy Figure Artist’s Reference File. London: Quarto Publishing, 2006.

PREFACE

10 Successful Colombian Executives Working Abroad has been written for people interested in furthering their knowledge of both Business English and business in general. It contains candid conversations with bright executives and entrepreneurs from which we can all learn about their professional and personal experiences. It also contains enough grammar and vocabulary information to be a document used as a stand alone text for a Business English course.

The book is divided into ten chapters, with an interview in each one. The process of selecting the people to be interviewed was a challenging one. The interviewees had to meet a certain set of criteria: They all had to be Colombian; have a career of more than five years in the United States; and use English as their main language at work. Of course, I was very interested in how they learned and developed their use of the language and how it was adapted to meet their needs as executives. An exception to the criteria was made with Manuel Arango from Shell, since he lives and works in Europe. However, his experience in the oil and gas business was too good to be left out. Also, since the title of the book mentions interviews with “successful” executives I feel the need to explain that my definition of successful does not relate to the number of times an executive has appeared in business magazines or newspapers (although some of them have many mentions in this regard). What I was looking for were professionals who had been able to sustain a career in a different country and culture for a number of years.

In terms of business, the book contains an array of interesting subjects such as:

Advertising in Chicago; marketing for a pharmaceutical company; wealth management; budgeting for architectural projects; and quality control for a huge food multinational, to name just a few. The subject of ‘Business English’ is so broad that it is very difficult to include all the possible topics in one volume. So, the way the book was developed followed somewhat a ‘chicken and egg’ dynamic. I had an idea of some aspects of business the book had to include. However, the issues that came forth in the interviews dictated the areas of business that eventually were developed. Did I decide on human resources, corporate banking and soft skills initially? Let me explain more on this matter. The task of finding the executives and coordinating their interviews was not an easy one. It involved networking, a lot of Skype and e-mails back and forth, cold calling, and even a bit of political maneuvering. At a certain point in the process I had three stock brokers ready to talk about their experiences in the NYSE yet, in the end, the book includes none of these. Also, in some of the cases I wanted to talk about a certain business issue but the interview, based on the executive’s experience, went in a completely different direction. Was I to curtail the wisdom coming my way? For example, an interview that was supposed to be about the media business ended up being about communication in the corporate world; another that was supposed to deal with project management focused more on bidding politics and budgeting. Therefore, my choice of subject matter rested more on the outcome of each interview and some of my initial topics were eliminated. If the reader eventually needs a more comprehensive book about business in English there are many valuable sources referenced in the bibliography section.

Finally, I would like to thank all the people without whom this book would never have seen the light of day: José Manuel Restrepo, Juan Santiago Correa, Javier Murillo and Felipe Reyes at CESA for their invaluable support and enthusiasm for this project; to all ten interviewees for their time and priceless information; my wife Alexandra for her constant drive and inspiration; to Brendan Corrigan for his advice and thoroughness while editing and proofreading every draft; to Juliana Monroy, Camila Arango, Diana Correal, Ana Johanna Cubillos, Piedad Casas and all the group of teachers at BSR Idiomas for their wonderful work; and to my clients and students whose demands and needs motivate us to become better teachers and coaches.

TO THE STUDENT

This book is first and foremost an instruction book aimed at students of Business English, levels Pre-Intermediate (A2/B1) and up (C1/C2). Regarding language instruction, the book uses the interviews as the starting point to discuss a particular grammar topic, introduce a set of new vocabulary, and offer other language issues for elementary to advanced students of English alike, such as phrasal verbs and idioms. Needless to say, all grammar issues are discussed in a Business English context and are relevant to furthering the command and understanding of Business English and English in general.

10 Successful Colombian Executives Working Abroad can be used individually or under the guidance of a Business English teacher or coach. (I have provided answers to all the exercises, which you can find at the back of the book.) Each Chapter also contains a list of links and books to explore if you want to expand your knowledge of a particular subject. At the end of each chapter you should be able to make sense of the specific grammar topic discussed and incorporate the new vocabulary, phrasal verbs, and idioms to your Business English lexicon. The book can also be used as a reference for the particular issues examined in each chapter. The following is an outline of the grammar points to be reviewed and, in time, assimilated. They are designed in such a way as to increase in level of difficulty (Chapter One dealing with easier subjects and Chapter Ten with more difficult ones). Some grammar issues are introduced in earlier chapters to build up the structures for grammar material further into the book.

This chapter features an interview with Luis Silberwasser from the Discovery Channel. In terms of grammar it focuses on the Past Simple (events that happened in the past and do not continue in the present) along with idioms and vocabulary related to communication: get to the point, beat about the bush, put someone in the picture, argue, repeat, and influence among others.

This deals with the Present Perfect (the unfinished past: events that started in the past and have relevance in the present) and how we can always use the present perfect when writing a cover letter to apply for a job. It also includes phrasal verbs that have to do with human resources and job searches (take part, look for, turn up, apply for, call back, etc.) as well as vocabulary (prospect, employer, assessment, etc.) that helps a student speak about recruitment with confidence. The interviewee for this chapter is Clemencia Macías from Language Line Solutions in California.

José Vicente Puerto from CVRx helps us discover the importance of marketing online, regardless of the product. In terms of grammar, this chapter focuses on the slight variations of the future tense. You will learn what these variations imply and how, if used in a business context, they can change the meaning of the message.

The ability to talk about probable situations in the present is vital to any entrepreneur and executive. The Zero and First Conditionals help us transmit this. Through the explanations and exercises in this chapter we expect you to grasp the intricacies of this difficult subject matter. Jaime Beckman from Krauss Morgan will tell us about the subtle skills needed in Corporate Banking.

It makes sense to follow the discussion of the First Conditional with the ability to discuss hypothetical situations in the future, something that the Second Conditional does. This topic assumes knowledge of difficult subjects such as the Present Perfect (covered in Chapter 2) and the participles. The chapter also demonstrates the use of Internet phrasal verbs such as plug in, scroll down, and log in as well as Internet vocabulary like bandwidth, attachment, and browser. Luis Becerra from Batanga.com is the interviewee for this chapter in which he discusses the many challenges an Internet startup faces.

The ability to discuss hypothetical situations in the past is the focus of this chapter, which deals with the Third Conditional. It requires knowledge of the both the Present Perfect (Ch. 2) and the Past Perfect (a brief reminder is included in this section to aid in the understanding of the subject). Miguel Pardo from LA Architecture gives us his insight on the intricacies of bidding and budgeting for architectural projects in California.

Roberto Silva from Medtronic in Minneapolis gives us an account of the importance of soft skills for any executive working in a corporation nowadays. The grammar focus will be on Modal Verbs, their differences, structure, and relevance in business communication (both written and oral).

The grammar spotlight comes down on trend verbs and adverbs in this chapter. Manuel Arango, who works for the gas and oil multinational Shell, helps us explain how there is nothing more practical for today’s executive than being able to explain trends and variations that change over time. At the end of this chapter you should be able to use the introduced vocabulary in a successful way during your presentations.

To be a successful executive you have to be able to write well. If you are of the opinion that English is a tool more than a language (even if Shakespeare turns in his grave) then emphasis on connectors (however, furthermore, nevertheless, etc.) is a must in order to improve your writing. Diana Samper from the Marketing Store in Chicago gets straight to the point explaining the importance of the written word in today’s business and the fine details of working in the advertising world in the United States.

By the end of this chapter you should be able to identify the difference between the Active and the Passive voice and in what context to use them. The Passive voice for example, is helpful in reporting events, describing sequences, and in writing e-mails and memos. Hugo Gutiérrez from General Mills uses it often in his interview about quality control and industrial processes.

CHAPTER 1
COMMUNICATION SKILLS

“I believe the fundamental lesson is that you should develop good communication

Effective communication implies the correct transmission of a message. Whether this message is spoken or written, the consensus is that it should have seven attributes known as “The Seven Cs”. For a message to be effective it must be:

Some people include ‘credible’, ‘creative’, and ‘considerate’ in this list as well.

How good are your communication skills? The interviewee for this lesson is Luis Silberwasser, International Head of Content for Discovery Channel. In the interview Mr. Silberwasser discusses such issues as cross-cultural communication, giving presentations, handling difficult situations, and communicating in writing.

1.1 The Interview: Luis Silberwasser - Discovery Channel

Although born in New York, his family moved to Cali when he was four years old. Luis studied at the Colegio Hebreo Jorge Isaacs in Cali graduating in the early 80s. His undergraduate college experience was in Georgia Tech in Atlanta where he obtained a degree in industrial engineering. He first worked as an engineer in different companies in the United States and Colombia, such as IBM and Sanyo. A turning point occurred in 1989 when Luis was accepted to the Harvard School of Business to pursue an MBA. He has lived and worked in the United States ever since, working for companies such as Procter & Gamble, Sunbeam, and, currently, Discovery Channel where he is Head of International Programming. He lives with his family in Florida.

“It’s been a very profound experience. I’ve lived in the United States for more than 20 years and to be honest with you, the different work experiences have been very transformational. I’ve had to work in three extremely different companies and each of them has taught me many things; however, I believe the fundamental lesson is that you should develop good communication skills to survive in the corporate world.”

“Well, it’s very simple. One of the most defining moments of my career was when I decided to accept an offer at Procter & Gamble (P&G, as it is informally known){1} a very established and professional company based in Cincinnati, Ohio. One of the core principles of the company is ‘effectiveness in communication’ and as a rule all communication has to be succinct. I worked in P&G for almost seven years and very early on I learned that if you were not able to summarize your ideas on one page no one would take them seriously. More so, the overall consensus was that if you weren’t concise you really hadn’t put enough time in to develop your ideas.”

“I started off as Assistant Brand Manager. Gradually, I began climbing the corporate ladder. So, after some time, I became Brand Manager for the ‘Oil of Olay’ brand of shampoos, creams, and soaps. Later on I managed deodorant brands such as ‘Sure’ and ‘Secret’. The idea of course was to increase their market share, so I had to learn a lot about each business line and participate in marketing and advertising as well as promotion. It was a creative job but at the same time it involved a lot of analysis. I had at my disposal tons of data that had to be reviewed in order to give my recommendations.”

“Yes, my proposals for action, my ideas. I had to constantly sustain what I was doing to improve the business and I had to either submit it in a one page brief or in a less than five minute presentation.”

“Yes, there was no ‘beating about the bush’ there. This is a big difference with the Spanish language. Spanish allows for more eloquence.”

“Indeed, the best school for that. Every meeting with my superiors was an exercise in itself. The recommendations and analysis had to be crystal clear or they would send you back to the drawing board. It was one of the greatest transformations of my career. P&G has a very strong corporate culture and one of its principles is employee professional development. Generally people are promoted from within and you can meet people who have worked for many years in P&G. It was definitely a great school and the way it works is very different from other companies.”

“I wanted to move to Florida. My family was living in Cali at that time and I wanted to be nearer to them. Ohio is very far from Colombia.”

“Sunbeam was a world apart from P&G; it felt like a race against time. If I could use a word to describe it, I would say it was impetuous. I was part of a new team hired to manage a restructuring process. The job was less strategic, but that corresponded to a different set of pressures since the company was undergoing a complete turnaround.”

The fact that you were part of the restructuring crew no doubt meant your communication skills changed?

“In terms of communication there was no time to analyze and discuss things, it was more a culture of doing, organizing, and influencing. I guess what I developed most at Sunbeam were my persuasion skills.”

“Since the motivation of the group of directors was to change the company in the fastest way possible, the type of communication used was emotionally charged. You had to get your point across no matter what; so I guess I adapted, changing the way I spoke and wrote depending on the circumstances. You had to be more effective with less information. At Procter & Gamble, for example, we had more information.”

“It was survival of the fittest in a certain sense. But, interestingly, my knowledge of Spanish helped a lot.”

“Yes. The company had plants in Mississippi and Mexico and our mission was to shut the plant in the U.S. and move it to Mexico. Since Spanish is a more empathic language it was easier for me to explain to the people in Mexico about the changes. You see, Spanish uses more verbs and is more generous in terms of words whereas English is a bit colder. Of course it didn’t help much when explaining to the people in the Missouri plant we were going to relocate.”

“Only a couple of years. My next job was at Discovery Channel where I’ve been for the past 12 years.”

“It’s halfway between P&G and Sunbeam. There isn’t sufficient time to do a lot of thinking and analysis, so much of the decision making is gut based. Discovery Channel is an ‘idea and sales’ based company so it requires a completely different set of communication skills. It is much more verbal. I don’t really have to write much. There are a lot of meetings, seriously long meetings with a lot of discussion, convincing, and persuasion going around. So in that sense my verbal English has improved a lot.”

“Well, even though I was born in New York (and I lived the first four years of my life there) I basically grew up in Cali. It was the 1970s and 1980s so I got most of my English from watching movies on the Betamax and traveling to the U.S. When I arrived at Georgia Tech I didn’t really need much language skills since I got my undergraduate degree in engineering. The majority of my coursework was numerical and most of my friends were Latin American, so the need to speak English was very little. However, things changed when I arrived to Harvard because I had to speak in public on a daily basis. At Procter & Gamble my written English was shaped, but it has really been at Discovery Channel where I’ve gotten my complete set of language skills together.”

“Both Spanish and my Colombian background have been very helpful. For example, I have had to deal with the Latin American, European, and African markets simultaneously and every country has its own set of rules and cultural differences. The fact that I’ve experienced life in both developed and developing countries has contributed to doing business in every region with more ease. It gives you more sensitivity and a deeper understanding of the cultural subtleties. At the end I can transmit information to the main office in a more efficient way.

Language reflects a culture. For example, I believe we are more relationship driven in Latin America and the communication tends to be less formal, whereas in the U.S. it is much more impersonal, everything is straight to the point. I guess being able to move between cultures has been a great asset in my professional development. My role in Discovery Channel has involved wearing many hats.”

“I began working in the marketing department for the Latin American region. After that, I moved to corporate sales for four years. Then I was invited to work in the corporate development area, which focused mainly on strategy design. That was a more U.S. market-oriented job and I had to deal constantly in English. After a while, my responsibilities shifted to the U.S. Hispanic market (these are the channels transmitted in Spanish in the United States). That was my job for five years. Right now I’m in charge of worldwide programming.”

“Not really, what I actually do is react to ideas. Production companies pitch their proposals after we give them a brief. For example, we tell them we want a scientific program; but something grounded, not very academic, something like ‘Myth Busters’. After we see what they show us we contribute, we question, we change. The important thing is to be able to say right there and then what one likes or dislikes about the idea and what changes are needed. You have to be very clear.”

“Sometimes I have to deliver PowerPoint presentations to the upper level management in Washington or London explaining 30 different markets at great length. These are presentations that contain a lot of data and can go on forever.”

“Of course, the British are very analytical and academic; it’s kind of a ‘less is more’ culture. The Americans are more of a ‘let’s get the ball rolling’ culture. Now, if we compare the ‘English language’ culture against the ‘Spanish language’ culture, then we’ll see a more distinct difference. People LOVE to speak in Latin America; we are more about HOW we say things whereas in the States and England it is more about WHAT is being said. Harmonizing those changes in language has been challenging but has proven worthwhile, especially since the company’s language is English.”

“Yes, substance rules. However, it is really the culture of the company that determines what works and what doesn’t in terms of language. So I guess style still matters as long as you are able to sell your ideas to others.”

1.2. Nuts & Bolts of English

1.2.1. Grammar: The Past Simple

What tense does the sentence reflect?

a) Present (presente)

b) Past (pasado)

c) Future (futuro)

d) An action in the past that continues in the present (una acción en el pasado que tiene relevancia en el presente)

This sentence reflects an action (or actions) that took place in the past, we know it happened but we don’t know if it continued happening. It is basically a completed action in the past. In English grammar this tense is known as the Past Simple.

The Past Simple refers to actions that are generally completed or to a period in the past or to habits in the past.

(Don’t worry about fancy names covering grammar phenomena. These
are just ways to classify the place in time the sentence refers to.)

Completed action: ‘I watched a movie.’

A period in the past: ‘I worked at P&G for seven years’

A habit/situation in the past: ‘I lived in Cali when I was a child.’

The Past Simple can be divided into regular and irregular verbs. In the case of Mr Silberwasser’s sentence there are two examples of regular verbs: started and climbed.

The irregular verbs are formed differently. For example, the past of go is went and the past of eat is ate. There is no relation between one or the other and the best way to know the past irregular verbs is to learn them off by heart and incorporate them into your constant use of English.

1.2.2. Idioms

What are idioms? Idioms are expressions that mean something completely different than the words used to express them. In general, there is not a literal translation for idioms, but there is almost always an equivalent in Spanish. The origin of idioms is difficult to trace, sometimes they make a cultural or historical reference but other times they refer to sports, recipes, or traditions that make no sense in another language. In those cases, you have to take the expressions at face value.

Note: Be careful not to say: “He speaks in many idioms - Russian, Spanish, English, and Italian.” This sentence is not correct. You should use ‘languages’ instead. The word “idioms” can be used to express languages, however, it is mostly used when we refer to artistic styles: i.e.

When a person focuses on the message they want to transmit without spending time talking about other things, especially unrelated ones.

The president got straight to the point and told the audience
taxes were going to be raised.

(El presidente fue directo al grano y le dijo al público que iban
a subir los impuestos.)

The opposite of getting straight to the point. When a person doesn’t convey the message directly but spends time talking about other topics.

His friend was beating about the bush, talking nonsense for half
an hour, until he finally told him he needed a favor.

(Su amigo se estaba yendo por las ramas, hablando “carreta”
por media hora, hasta que finalmente le dijo que necesitaba un
favor.)

When things are exaggerated, especially when a story is being told by an individual or the media.

The whole affair was blown out of proportion and people
thought the company had gone bankrupt when in reality it had
only been a production problem.

(La situación fue completamente exagerada y la gente pensó
que la compañía se había quebrado cuando en realidad solo se
trataba de un problema de producción.)

I kept my boss posted about the developments in our African

investments.

(Mantuve a mi jefe informado sobre los progresos en nuestras
inversiones en el África.)

When you’re out of touch with someone you have not been in contact with that person for a while. Also, out of touch means not being up to date with a specific subject.

They were out of touch for years before meeting again at that
sales conference.

(Estuvieron desconectados por años hasta que se vieron nuevamente
en esa conferencia de ventas.)

Information that is passed informally via conversation from one person to another is said to be passed by “word of mouth”.