You have been charged with developing global managerial competence in your organization, or enhancing cross-cultural sensitivity in your students, faculty and staff. Your language training firm wants you to supplement your offerings with a cross-cultural skills curriculum. Or, as a publisher, your mission is to sell books that enable others to do the above. Where do you start?

If you're like many people, you tell stories about cultural differences and introduce the major "dimensions of culture." In this opinion piece, a long-time educator and trainer tells us why he feels the intercultural field has gone too far in one direction, and describes the dangers inherent in over-reliance on one tool.

Would you like to improve your ability to learn about a culture by observing? Use of space provides many important clues to underlying values and assumptions.

This article provides you step-by-step instructions to an activity for learning how to interact more effectively with Japanese colleagues by visiting a hypothetical department store. It also shows you how to use Cultural Detective Values Lenses to facilitate learning from nearly any space or activity.