Politics, Religion, and Business…
Over the years, I’ve worked in companies founded and run by various ethnic groups, each company having its own culture, sometimes transcending their inherent ethnicity, sometimes not. For instance, one company was founded and run by a group of Pakistanis, and had funding from VCs with Pakistani backgrounds. One of the employees, an Indian, was describing her long trip home to India. Being a naturally curious person, I asked her where her home was in relationship to Pakistan. She put her fingers to her lips, and drew a map of India. Pointing to the northwest corner, she said “That’s what they call Pakistan. We call it Kashmir.” This is just one of many examples of where simple conversation can lead you quickly into very dangerous territory.
As a result, it’s been my longstanding practice to avoid mixing politics, religion, and business. This applies especially in the Bay Area, where so much of what we do is in multi-cultural and multi-ethnic. One startup I was with had Israelis, Egyptians, Syrians, Bangladeshis, Americans, French, Indians, Pakistanis, Taiwanese and Chinese all working closely together.
Tom Peters has the same policy. However, while traveling in Italy recently, he was made aware of a poll that showed that 91% of Egyptians (Egypt being his next destination) favored attacking American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tom expressed surprise at this result, and asked his readership if he should visit Egypt?
My naivety shows here, because I would have assumed that someone as well traveled and experienced as Tom is would be aware by now that American’s are not the world’s most loved people, particularly in the Arab world.
I was also somewhat disappointed to see that Tom’s initial reaction is to implicitly lay blame on the American government and, secondarily, the American people:
In short, in response to very legitimate issues, we have nonetheless exacerbated the most Godawful mess imaginable in the Middle East. And in the process screwed up almost beyond recognition, hopefully not beyond repair, America’s reputation in the world as a beacon of hope and decency. (To want to shoot American soldiers is, at least metaphorically, to want to shoot at me. I am an American, and regardless of how I cast my vote, I am responsible for my government—that’s the way it is in Democracies. Why do they want to shoot me? Because they’re hopeless? Because I’m hopeless? Both?)
The problem is much more complicated than that (which Tom somewhat belatedly admits). And it’s much older than the recent conflicts in the news. A good perspective is the third comment, by Jaber Al Ghanem.
Unfortunately, discourse in politics and religion revolve around our core beliefs, much more so than discourse in business. As a result, discourse degrades to arguments around long-standing issues and beliefs. And the arguments are religious in nature, rather than logical. To a believer, a tautology is overcome by faith, and the arguments can never be won by either side. The result is soured workplace relationships and lack of trust in former comrades, neither of which is conducive to good business practices.
So my rule is Politics, Religion and Business: Just Don’t Go There!