From the course: Leadership Stories: 5-Minute Lessons in Leading People

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The cost of not understanding culture

The cost of not understanding culture

From the course: Leadership Stories: 5-Minute Lessons in Leading People

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The cost of not understanding culture

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- Shortly before six o'clock in the morning, on January 17, 1995, a massive earthquake hit the city of Kobe, Japan. And at a 6.9 on the Richter scale, it was the worst earthquake in Japan in over 70 years. And one of the hardest hit parts of the city was Rokko Island. It's a man-made island, about two miles square, that sits 500 yards off the southern coastline, in the port of Kobe. Now it's connected to the mainland by only two bridges, and both were heavily damaged by the quake and completely impassable. So for several days, people were literally stranded on the island. Now the Northeast Asia headquarters of one particular American company was located on Rokko Island, as were the homes of most of the people who worked there. Well, in the days after the quake, some of the only food and drinks they could get were in vending machines. And when someone found a machine that was still working, a line of people would quickly form in front of it. Well, at one of those machines at this…

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