TAPESCRIPT OF “The myth of globalisation | Peter Alfandary | TEDxAix”

I sometimes describe myself as a culturaly conflicted Englishman. I’m first generation born in the
UK, I was educated at the French Lycee in London for 13 years, I spent a lot of my childhood in Italy. And
30 years as an international lawyer. And I’ve always been fascinated by cultural difference. But I think it
was arriving in New York as a 21 year old student that I got my first taste of the oxymoron I’d like to share
with you today, “Global village”.

Not global village in the way brilliantly described by Marshal McLuhan when he predicted the internet in
the 1960’s, but more as a word that we use, as an expression that we use a lot now. My New York
experience was not momentous but it left a huge affect on me. I spent my first day walking the streets in
……. The word “awesome” had not yet become fashionable. And at the end of the day I decided to take a
cab to have dinner with some family friends. I knew about cabs. I’d taken cabs in London. And so I got
into the cab and in my very English polite, maybe apologetic way, I said to the cab driver:

“Good afternoon! Do you think you could possibly take me to …… “ and I read him the address on the
piece of paper.

He looked around, his eyes had gone funny at this stage, his brain was clearly working over time, his
answer was unforgettable:

“Sonny, do you wanna go, or don’t you wanna go?”

Well, of course, at this stage I was confused because I did want to go because I was expected for dinner,
but I thought for many days and many hours about that encounter. Rude, confused, was it me? Was it
him? And it made me realize for the first time how very different we all are and how differently we
communicate. That “Sonny, do you want go or don’t you want go? “ was followed by many other
examples during my carrier as a young and not so young lawyer. I remember as very young lawyer,
negotiating with the Japanese and I went back to the office very proud: “They agreed to everything I said
and my boss looked at me and said: Peter, are you sure? Oh, yes, they kept on saying “yes” and he
explained to me , of course, that “yes” meant that they have heard me not that they’ve agreed. I
realized that with my Dutch and my German, and some of my American clients, that directness doesn’t
necessarily mean rudeness. A bit like my cab driver in New York and I’ve also, of course, learned that the
English really do talk in a code that nobody understands.

I could find many examples if we’d have time but one of them always reminds me of the Italian who,
when he was told by an Englishman, that the Englishman was slightly disappointed by something that
the Italian said, the Italian said: Why did he even mention it?, I explained that “slightly disappointed” in
English meant “extremely angry” and probably you will never be forgiven. I learned about negotiation an
d the fact the displays of emotion, anger, don’t necessarily mean that the deal is off, even walking out of
a room.