A few days ago I interviewed an old friend of mine, Baldwin Berges, for The White Rabbit podcast. Baldwin and I did a short-lived podcast on investment fund management about 10 years ago, and then Alper and I called on him for some key “behind the scenes” advice we used in some investment-related projects we were working on.

These days, Baldwin advises the European Commission and the Islamic Development Bank on their work in Africa and South America.

Baldwin mentioned a framework he uses a lot, what he calls the Executive vs Collective framework. It is that in some parts of the world organizations tend to operate in individualistic ways, and in other parts of the world they tend to operate more on group consensus.

There’s another framework I’d like to mention. I don’t have a cool name for it, but if the framework Baldwin mentions provides a vertical view of the world of your counter-party (audience, in presentation-speak), this one provides a horizontal view. It is that people with similar professional backgrounds in different countries tend to have things in common that people with different professional backgrounds in the same country won’t.

In other words, in many ways, a Turkish CFO will have way more in common with a German CFO than with a Turkish CMO.

The vertical view will throw the two Turks into the same bucket while pushing the German out, while the horizontal view will throw one Turk and the German into the same bucket, while pushing the other Turk out.

One framework tends to aggregate groups, the other to atomize them. You have to use both of them together. If you just use the first one, you’ll miss opportunities to connect with the two CFOs, and if you just use the second one, you’ll miss opportunities to connect with the two Turks.

A link to the Baldwin Berges podcast is below: