Collaboration to drive new ideas

Businesses cannot succeed without vision. But it takes people to deliver concrete results, and understanding different cultures in an important step in building productive and fruitful business relationships.

It’s hard to find formal training to help this happen, so it was heartening to hear of the University of Auckland’s new Maori/Chinese culture management course called ‘‘Wayfinding Leadership’’ this week, which promises to equip Chinese executives to better understand Maori business people.

The University says the course will cover Maori business styles and values, entrepreneurship and interconnections between Maori and Chinese methods. Participants will learn about the ‘‘wayfinding’’ approach to leadership, based on principles of traditional waka ocean navigation.

Associate Professor Chellie Spiller at the University of Auckland Business School, who helped develop the wayfinding model, created the course in collaboration with Jolene Zhou, director of consultancy New Zealand China Business.

The course itself has been born out of collaboration which began five years ago, when the Business School brought Maori and Chinese business leaders together to discuss growth and partnership opportunities.

Dr Spiller says several large Chinese companies with investments in New Zealand have already expressed an interest in the programme, and says the course would encourage a dialogue about similarities and differences in Maori and Chinese ways of doing business. ‘‘We’ll be asking, what can Chinese bring for Maori, and what can Maori bring for Chinese? How can we strengthen and learn from each other?’’ That theme of strength through collaboration and better understanding not only works in a cross-cultural sense, but it should be an aim of workplaces too. According to business solutions service Avanade, collaboration improves innovation. The more training firms can get, the better.