I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon as I’ve worked in Chile more deeply over the past two years building companies. Many, if not most, Chileans believe they don’t have much influence on events in their lives and in their country.
I see it all the time in multiple contexts: business, politics, customer service and corporate bureaucracy. I’m very familiar with this feeling in politics, as I feel the same way about non-local US politics, but at first I didn’t understand it in the other contexts.
For example, in business, if Chileans get screwed over, they are less likely to take to social media or write a blog post detailing their experience than people in the US are. When there was an issue with a Chilean business incubator, it festered for months before a foreign entrepreneur shared his experience and only then did nearly a dozen Chileans corroborate their experiences. I asked some of the Chilean entrepreneurs why they hand’t said anything before, and they all said that they didn’t think they could do anything to fix the situation and that they didn’t want to rock the boat. (more…)