The last post took a look at the high stakes involved in effective cross-border communication. Most surprising is companies' lack of willingness to invest in this key area, even when the risks are well-known and avoidable.

Why do organizations act this way? Because people act this way.

For the past few decades psychologists have been gathering evidence that has changed how we view almost everything about human beings. The standard view used to be that humans are basically rational creatures who make decisions based on our own best interests. Since we mostly feel in control of ourselves, we must actually be in control of ourselves. The entire field of economics is based on this assumption, as are major threads of political science and other disciplines.

The problem is, it's wrong. Humans are completely dominated by parts of the mind beyond our conscious control — even beyond our ability to see, no matter how hard we try.

The technical terms for the two systems of the mind are "System 1" and "System 2". System 1 is our automatic system, which does the vast majority of our cognitive work, out of our awareness. System 2 is our reflective system, what we tend to think of as “consciousness”: the part of us that is capable of questioning, of planning, of accomplishing.

System 1 is fast and efficient; System 2 is slow and lazy, and most of the time is happy to let System 1 run the show. (For a deep dive into System 1 and System 2, see Daniel Kahneman's brilliant book Thinking, Fast and Slow: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.)With System 1 in charge, what's amazing is how — for lack of a better term — stupid human beings can be. Just a few examples:

• A person's name can influence where the person chooses to live: People named Louis, Paul, Helen and Mary are more likely than others to live, respectively, in St. Louis, St. Paul, St. Helen and St. Mary. (Source: Pelham, Brett W., Mirenberg, Matthew C. and Jones, John T. 2002. Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: Implicit egotism and major life decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82. 469-487.)

• Birth date can have a similar effect: People born, for instance, on March 3 (3/3) are more likely to live in Three Rivers, Michigan, or Three Forks, Montana. (Same source)

• Despite being told explicitly that the men and women shown to them in photographs were on average exactly the same height, and despite being offered a $50 cash incentive to judge accurately, subjects in an experiment overwhelmingly still judged men (shown individually) in photographs to be taller than women of the same height. (Source: Manis, Melvin, Biernat, Monica and Nelson, Thomas F. 1991. Comparison and expectancy processes in human judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61. 203-211.)

Examples like this in the psychology literature go on and on.

The bottom line is that we humans have very little control over what we think, and therefore very little control over what we do.

In the case of companies not investing in cross-border training for their employees, my guess is that this is just another case of letting System 1 pull the strings: there are simply too many more obvious and urgent bottom-line issues to deal with during the crush of any given day. System 2, lazy and slow as it is, is in no big hurry to take over.

The problem, of course, is that any good plan needs System 2 to be involved. There are two ways things could improve. First, System 2 could take over more of the moment-to-moment thinking load. This probably won't happen, given how lazy System 2 is.

Better would be for System 2 to train System 1 to see things differently. An accountant doesn't need to use System 2 to see a negative number on the bottom line; his System 1 has been trained to see that and to respond in certain ways.

Right now business leaders haven't yet been trained to see the risks of a work force not versed in the ways of cross-border communication, in the same way they have been trained to read strategy documents, office memos, stock charts and balance sheets. As business continues to go global, the most successful companies will be the ones who take cross-border communication seriously enough to treat it as a mission-critical, do-or-die business issue.