"Common sense is not that common" : krysskulturelle kommunikasjonskollisjoner : utfordringer i internasjonal krisehåndtering

This report focuses on civil-military cooperation in international, multiagency crisis management. It describes and analyses challenges in cross-cultural communication and coordination. The report builds empirical on two field works done during the Multinational Experiment 5 (MNE5), spring 2008. The experiment in Paris focused on testing a strategic planning guide, and in Enköping the focus was planning the implementation on an operational level. Theories from social sciences and social anthropology give the analytical framework. Cases, patterns of communication and cooperation and social phenomena will be described and analyzed through anthropological concepts. The concepts will be defined and discusses as they appear in the text. Problems and challenges in today’s international crises are so complex, that they can hardly be solved unilateral. That is why it is crucial for both actors and leaders to ask the following questions; what kind of competence do we need to solve this task, why is diversity needed and how do we deal with it? You need teams with complementary competence in order to meet the challenges and achieve the goals. What kind of knowledge or competence you need to solve the tasks, are always context sensitive. All actors working in international multiagency ad hoc team needs knowledge and awareness of the other’s competence and methods – and their own limitations. For leaders it is vital to have a capability in translating and a role as a mediator between different knowledgementalities. They must have enough knowledge to let different actors contribute in their own terms. Leading diverse teams is challenging and must therefore be trained as any other skills, in complex scenarios. Leaders must learn to listen, even listen to answers to questions they themselves never asked. Trust, respect and acknowledgement are interpersonal processes that can not be ordered, decided or controlled. Changing human behaviour, way of thinking, acting and communication takes time, and changing of power structures is demanding. When new concepts are developed, it is hardly ever suitable to use old contextualized models on new challenges. Military serial planning processes are very systematic and thorough, but they are time consuming and do not give much room for dialog between levels and actors. The technology today gives new possibilities, and the old way of communication and cooperation does not utilize this potential. In civil-military cooperation this method might even expel civilian actors, not been trained in a hierarchical system. You can not test concepts, without testing the people. Not testing the persons as such, but concepts are meant to be operationalized and implemented by human beings, with all their human strengths and weaknesses. Knowledgementalities give actors cognitive maps, patterns for cooperation and communications. In order to be useful and effective tools in international crises management, human as a factor and cultural knowledge and awareness must be an integrated part of the concepts.