Save Your Ammo

Book excerpt: Save Your Ammo is a simple, plain-language guide to working across cultures for national security professionals. For more than a decade, cognitive scientists Drs. Rasmussen and Sieck have interviewed hundreds of U.S. military personnel with extensive experience working overseas about their challenging engagements with foreign populations and partners. The goal of their research has been to uncover the skills and strategies these cross-cultural experts use to adapt quickly and work effectively with people who look, think, and act differently from themselves. Rasmussen and Sieck found that seasoned military professionals rely on 12 cultural competencies to connect with foreigners, and deal with surprising and sometimes shocking experiences. These were strategies that often took years and many deployments to develop. Now, they are presented in a form that aids new personnel to acquire and hone the strategies before they're sent abroad for the first time. The study results have been briefed to Congress and have helped shape new Department of Defense policy directing how personnel should be prepared for cultural engagements. Save Your Ammo is a practical book that makes cultural competence accessible and engaging. Save Your Ammo explains each strategy in the simplest terms possible and draws on more than 60 true stories from critical cultural engagements around the world to illustrate their application in national security contexts.