Mai Chen: Cultural diversity in cities a challenge to decision-making

London Mayor Boris Johnson addresses the audience at the Duke of Edinburgh's Commonwealth Study Conference.

With three weeks to go until the UK general election, I am in England on the Duke of Edinburgh's Commonwealth Study Conference with 100 senior leaders from 22 countries around the Commonwealth.

Princess Anne is participating in many of our sessions. We are working on solving the global challenge of smart cities, as 54 per cent of the world's population now resides in urban areas.

The CEO of Unilever told us that 1.4 million people are shifting to cities every week and, by 2050, 75 per cent of the world's population will be urbanised.

With such a diverse group of top leaders (half men, half women, of African, Asian and Anglo-Saxon ethnicities from the business, government, the not for profit sector, unions and indigenous organisations), I am also experiencing the need for Cultural Intelligence first-hand.

CQ (as it is defined by Julia Middleton, author of a new book by that name and one of our teachers) is different from IQ, and is the ability to lead people from cultures other than your own.

The key issue is how to move the cultural intelligence lines in institutions and on boards to maximise the benefits of diversity or, as Middleton says, to give leaders crossing borders a competitive edge. It's a skill that will only become more important as increasing numbers of New Zealanders are born overseas, and as intermarriage between partners of different ethnicities continues to increase.

The result is more babies born in New Zealand with more than one ethnicity. In 2014, 74 per cent of births registered in New Zealand belonged to only one ethnic group, 23 per cent belonged to two ethnic groups, and 4 per cent belonged to three or more ethnic groups.

Just over half as many mothers (14 per cent) as babies (26 per cent) identified with more than one ethnic group. New Zealand companies increasingly have to, and can, thanks to technology, do business in the global market and transcend borders and boundaries.

CQ requires an understanding of your own culture and what is core to you and where there is "flex", the capacity to accommodate difference.

It also requires an understanding of the "knots" in your core values which are based not on judgment, but pre-judgment and that make you intolerant and blind. It also requires an understanding of the core and flex of those different from you that you are trying to lead, or work with.

I am also learning that almost every issue has a different answer if you live in the first (developed) or third (developing) world.

In response to a session by a global expert on technology to measure every form of consumption in the city to solve the "gap" between the quickening pace of urban growth and resources like water and power, some of the third world Commonwealth leaders asked about the relevance to their cities, and where the country is at war and they have a military government that is unconstitutional, corrupt and unstable? The first world talks about getting sensors in drains, while the third world needs food, water and basic sanitation. So you have to be smart within each context.

The CEO of the Hope Development Initiative from Uganda explains that it's about smart communities for her and not smart cities, because that is the only context she can control. She has given me permission to write that her country is at war, and several family members have been abducted as sex slaves and taken "into the bush".

They are either dead, she tells me, or alive and infected with HIV. She works with victims now, but does not know the fate of her own family members. She also has a completely different take on our discussion on issues like banning child labour. She explains that both her parents were killed when she was 13, leaving her with eight siblings to care for, and how she worked at any job so they would not starve - understandably, she does not support a ban of child labour.

The literature shows greater diversity around the management and board table gets you better answers, and drives innovation and an organisation's bottom-line profitability and productivity.

But it has been great to see first-hand that the theory also works in practice. I have learned a lot from people with different world views and it has affected my decision-making.

Ultimately, the global experts speaking to us emphasise that attaining smart cities is as much about great leadership and governance as it is about technology and transport and infrastructure.

Boris Johnson's speech to us certainly gave the impression that London's smart city status has to do with his leadership as Mayor and, I suspect, that of his predecessor.

Chen family reunion closes cultural gap

My parents have always wanted the whole family to return to Taiwan together since immigrating to New Zealand in 1970 and becoming citizens in 1977.

We were the first Taiwanese family in the South Island. But first we didn't have the means, and later we didn't have the time as we scattered around the globe with our various jobs and busy commitments.

So after 45 years away, my three sisters and I finally returned at Easter from around the world with our parents. We also bought our spouses and children in a 20-strong "Chen" contingent, just in time for the 'Tomb-Sweeping' public holiday.

We fitted back into our Taiwanese extended family like a piece of a jigsaw. We first spent a day going to the gravesite of my mother's family outside Taipei and then another day venerating my father's parents at their gravesite in Luodong with his extended family.

We all married non-Asian New Zealanders so our Eurasian children experienced their Chinese heritage first-hand.

And I was able to discuss economic and political issues in Taiwan with the businesspeople, government officials and academics who form part of my parents' circle of family and work colleagues. Soaring property and house prices are as much of an issue in Taiwan as in Auckland!

I also saw for the first time my mother and father back in their Taiwanese context - at dinner with old friends, then honoured by students they had taught 50 years ago, consistent with the Chinese culture of venerating elders, especially one's teachers, as if they were one's parents. I heard my dad say that four girls had been as good as four boys (which is a big deal in the Chinese culture) and saw them confidently operating in their own culture and language.

Having organised now for my mother's side of the family to visit New Zealand later this year, it confirms for me the importance of people-to-people links between the New Zealand Asian population and their "home" countries.

Some members of my Taiwanese family are now wealthy and are interested in doing business in New Zealand.

Even after 45 years, the ripple effect of my parents' decision to move to New Zealand continues to generate benefits for this country.

And that will continue as the next generation of grandchildren have a better understanding of the culture and language in their dual heritage, and act as a bridge between New Zealand and Taiwan.