SOUTH WEST LONDON -- On Friday night I stood on a chair in our sitting room watching Jay-Z on Friday night with Jonathan Ross.  I was on the chair because we have mice passing through.  But the image is not unconnected. 

I was surprised to see Mr Z in person and hear him talk and laugh.  He did well on a show that makes many people uncomfortable.  Like other Americans before him, he asked quietly "Can we curse on this show?" before letting out a string of mild expletives.  He was big and awkward and funny looking.  But modest, self-assured and funny.

Not what I expected.

He then went on to be one of the biggest hits of this weekend's annual Glastonbury mud-festival on a pig farm in south-west England.  He crossed a divide that is larger than just the Atlantic Ocean I suspect.  His audience in the USA is big.  Far, far bigger than in the UK.  But it's also young and urban.

Glastonbury is anything but young and urban.  It's a festival for well-to-do, aging hippies.  It has done a lot to try to change that image, but that's essentially what it is.  Witness, for example, how the festival closed this year: 71-year old Neil Diamond, followed by 73-year-old Leonard Cohen were both staying up late for their age.  And they were followed by The Verve.  Relative newcomers by comparison, but who started almost 20 years ago in 1989.

What does this have to do with Change & Internal Communications? 

A lot.

I recently returned from a tour around the globe for a great client who is going through a big change.  We visited four continents and five English-speaking countries.  All of these places are countries that work with each other daily and share many cultural touchstones.  In fact, the English-speaking world assumes a certain amount of homogeneity in business -- "You speak English, you'll get this..."

But that's not the case.

In fact, Jay-Z came up on that trip too.  At a workshop in South Africa with a group of 25, predominantly black participants a successful and beautiful company executive announced that only Jay-Z could take her attention off her job.

Really?

What do we really know about our own English-language culture and the people who inhabit it?

Very little.

"I'm not a 'Business-Man'! I'm a Business... man! Let me handle my business, damn!" - Jay Z.

Can't really hear that coming out of the mouth of a Member of the House of Lords, can you? 

We pretend we're all the same, but we're not.  There are pockets of diversity and commonality in communities and cultures around the world.  What is common currency in one place is far from understood in another.  And we gloss over it, without trying to understand it, at our own peril.

/df