Khun Chumsai has resigned!

Khun is an honorific placed before a Thai name.

Chumsai was the Thailand-based “key account manager” for a German multinational that supplies software for urban traffic control safety.

Reggie Pennington, a Brit who heads the Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore region, called me in Tel Aviv and asked me to get to Bangkok as soon as possible to help do damage control and bring Chumsai back from the brink. Reggie was entirely dependent on Chumsai to close the sales cycle for a new product across major Thai municipalities—a process that had been running for two years.

Reggie told me Chumsai had accepted a job at the very client where he’d served as key account manager. Reggie said he was completely blindsided. Chumsai had seemed to be working as usual, with no complaints whatsoever. “He was always smiling.”

I booked a week-long trip to Bangkok and held a series of meetings that surfaced the issues behind Chumsai’s decision to leave. These are exact quotes.

1. “Khun Reggie has no time for small talk. So he must really care only about the business, not about the people.”
2. “When we work late, Reggie never asks us out for a drink afterward—he tells us to go home and spend time with our families. Some of us don’t have families here in the city.”
3. “Khun Reggie invited Tom, the product expert from corporate HQ, to meet with the client. We planned the meeting in the taxi on the way there, so I understood I was being marginalized.”
4. “At the client meeting, Khun Tom spoke too loudly when the client raised concerns, saying he was ‘convinced’ the rollout of the new product would be ‘seamless.’ That embarrassed me deeply—it came across as arrogant, and I worried I’d look bad in the local market.”
5. “After the meeting, we debriefed—again in a taxi. They talked so fast I couldn’t contribute. My role as their ‘yellow face’ is over.” He smiled with anger.

I didn’t think it was possible to stop Chumsai from leaving. Reggie asked if “a large stay bonus might solve the problem.”

Reggie was not an easy client. After two more resignations of locals, Reggie was fired.

Lessons

1. If you use a local employee only as your “face” to the client—nothing more—you’re setting yourself up for failure.
2. Learn to read the subtle ways your local staff signal discontent; it rarely arrives as a direct complaint.
3. The local manager stays behind with the client after the meeting; the HQ visitor goes home. It’s the local who’s left to lose face.
4. Understand the value locals place on planning ahead. In many cultures—though not all—it signals dedication and respect, and skipping it can read as a slight.

Paul is a customer service agent at a credit card company. He got a call from a client whose wallet had been stolen.

Paul followed the protocol-directed questions to identify the client. The client was clearly confused — he had no wallet, no passport, and was in another country.

The client answered 2 out of 3 questions correctly, which was not enough to cancel the card and issue a new one. So Paul asked a different set of questions. This time, the client answered only 1 out of 3 correctly — but it was the very question he had gotten wrong the first time.

Paul was convinced that the client was who he claimed to be, but protocol (the system) did not allow him to use his discretion.

So Paul answered: “Sorry sir, I cannot proceed to process your request; please call again in another 24 hours.”

Paul cannot use his discretion.

Sarah sells travel insurance on the phone to supplement her income while finishing her nursing studies. A 71-year-old caller asked for travel insurance for a two-week trip to India.

Sarah noticed that, in the caller’s “Medical Status Report,” the caller has an inhaler. Protocol (controlled by the software) insists that her respirologist provide a letter stating she is fit for travel.

The caller explained that she had childhood asthma until age 14, and she has no respirologist.

As per protocol — which limits all calls to 8 minutes and demands a letter from her respirologist — the caller did not get insurance.

Sarah thought to herself: “What a shitty job; I have no discretion at all.”

So, as software-limited decision-making has eliminated the use of discretion, the use of common sense is lost, and the employee is denied the right to think.

Now, as AI comes knocking at our door to replace other capabilities — all of this made much worse by the digital moat between service providers and the public — we are indeed in dire straits.

פול הוא נציג שירות לקוחות בחברת כרטיסי אשראי. הוא קיבל שיחה מלקוח שהארנק שלו נגנב. פול עקב אחר השאלות שהפרוטוקול הכתיב כדי לזהות את הלקוח. הלקוח היה נבוך בעליל — לא היה לו ארנק, לא היה לו דרכון, והוא היה במדינה זרה. הלקוח ענה נכון על 2 מתוך 3 שאלות, מה שלא הספיק כדי לבטל את הכרטיס ולהנפיק חדש. אז פול שאל סדרת שאלות אחרת. הפעם, הלקוח ענה נכון רק על שאלה אחת מתוך שלוש — אבל זו הייתה בדיוק השאלה שטעה בה בפעם הראשונה. פול היה משוכנע שהלקוח הוא אכן מי שהוא טוען שהוא, אבל הפרוטוקול (המערכת) לא איפשר לו להפעיל שיקול דעת. אז פול ענה: “מצטער, אדוני, אינני יכול להמשיך בטיפול בבקשתך; אנא התקשר שוב בעוד 24 שעות.” לפול אין אפשרות להפעיל שיקול דעת.

שרה מוכרת ביטוח נסיעות בטלפון כדי להשלים את הכנסתה בזמן שהיא מסיימת את לימודי הסיעוד שלה. מתקשרת בת 71 ביקשה ביטוח נסיעות לטיול של שבועיים בהודו. שרה שמה לב שב”דוח המצב הרפואי” של המתקשרת מופיע שיש לה משאף. הפרוטוקול (הנשלט על ידי התוכנה) מתעקש שהרופאה הריאתית שלה תספק מכתב המאשר שהיא כשירה לטיסה. המתקשרת הסבירה שהייתה לה אסתמה בילדותה עד גיל 14, ושאין לה רופאה ריאתית. בהתאם לפרוטוקול — המגביל כל שיחה ל-8 דקות ודורש מכתב מרופאה ריאתית — המתקשרת לא קיבלה ביטוח. שרה חשבה לעצמה: “איזו עבודה מחורבנת; אין לי שום שיקול דעת.”

וכך, כאשר קבלת החלטות המוגבלת על ידי תוכנה מבטלת את השימוש בשיקול דעת, השימוש בשכל ישר הולך לאיבוד, והעובד נשלל ממנו הזכות לחשוב. כעת, כשהבינה המלאכותית דופקת על דלתנו כדי להחליף יכולות נוספות — וכל זה מחמיר עוד יותר בשל התעלה הדיגיטלית שבין נותני השירות לציבור — אנו נמצאים אכן במצוקה קשה.

Knowledge may be power some of the time, but it sure ain’t useful knowledge all of the time.

In terms of OD practitioners, I am considered quite knowledgeable about cultural differences; I have developed several modes of OD interventions in organizations with acute diversity. That is, I am good at helping others deal with their issues whilst working in a multicultural environment. But what about me?

Truth be told, when I need to cope with cultural differences that I encounter, this is what happens: I know what is about to happen & I understand what is going on or what I am getting myself into — and I get very annoyed anyway. And perhaps my coping strategy is wrong. But wait: first I will give a few examples.

Almost in all the tech companies I have ever worked with, it is common to hear “let’s take it offline.” That means, 99% of the time, let’s kick the can down the road instead of picking it up, i.e., dealing with the issue at hand. In the “culture” of high tech where taking risks is what it’s all about, that strategy often works. What annoys me is that it is not labelled as a risk, and not managed as a risk. The point is, I KNOW that — but I get angry anyway.

In Uganda and Thailand, everything is slow. Checking out of a hotel in Thailand can take 2 hours till they check your room. In Uganda, if you estimate that doing something takes an hour, it takes a month. Thais have some sense of time; in Uganda, time is not a limited resource. I know this, I understand why, and I even admire the benefits that they accrue. Yet I can be so very impatient that I lose it. I remember ordering a meal in Namibia at 6pm and getting the food at 8:30pm — and I was fit to be tied.

Recently I visited Quebec province and the French-speaking sections of New Brunswick. I know that the French are very proud of their language and culture. I also believe that all the laws they have enacted to protect their unique civilization are admirable. My French is pretty good; I have used it over the years to lecture, seduce, explain ideas, and banter. But it is not perfect. I mix up masculine and feminine; I have not mastered the billion tenses, and I often throw in Hebrew or English by mistake. I had a conversation with a lady and I was struggling to find a word. She did not help me. After ten minutes, she slipped into English — which was perfect. Yet out of pride, she made me stumble until I found the word I was looking for: canard. Duck.

So, I think I need to ask myself — I have all that knowledge: does it actually help me? The jury is out. Or maybe, I may be a smart guy, but I only got half a portion of patience.

One more thought. In what way am I more equipped that someone who knows nothing at all about a different culture? One possible answer, sad as it may be, is that I may be more flustered and disappointed.

The use of “dear” has all but disappeared. Emails start with a “Hi” or just a name and get right to the point. In and of itself, I could live with that, yet far more than that has disappeared.

We used to have conductors on buses who punched a hole in your paper ticket. They disappeared. Conductors knew exactly where you could get off, and if you had dropped your ticket by mistake, he would shrug his shoulders or ask you to pay again, not send you a fine by registered mail.

Norman and I used to go to Monkland Theatre on Sunday morning and buy tickets for two movies for the price of one. That involved standing outside in a line in the cold. I didn’t mind that at all; it was a time to chat and joke around. It was much more enjoyable than reading about a movie online on a small phone screen, and then buying a ticket that arrived as an SMS. Sometimes the ticket vendor spoke French, which was a chance for two Anglos to use the French that was drilled into our dumb skulls daily, year after year.

But let’s return to the “dear” issue. Language had several forms — how we spoke and how we wrote. The written language demanded respect. Dotting i’s and crossing t’s and proper spelling. It is not easy to spell in English, and that demanded real discipline. Whatever happened to discipline toward a language? Today, spell checkers and AI polish up our language the way chemicals can make a rotten apple look red — even though it’s still rotten underneath.

And yes, the way we use language now is rotten. Not because language shouldn’t change — it always has — but because we don’t respect it the way we used to. And that lack of respect doesn’t stay contained to grammar. It bleeds into truth itself. When people stop noticing how something is said — stop catching the dodge, the vague verb, the sentence built to mean nothing — they lose the instinct that once caught a lie in the act.

A generation trained to skim past sloppy language is also, without realizing it, trained to skim past dishonesty. The glib have always existed; what’s new is how little resistance they meet. Respect for language was never just about grammar — it was a kind of vigilance. Losing one, we are quietly losing the other.

My neighbours were Auntie and Uncle. Uncle Lou, Auntie Mona, Uncle Sonny, Auntie Rose, Uncle Rupert, Auntie Selma. I remember Uncle Sonny telling me, “Jesus, you are growing like a weed.”

Of course, I know I sound old. But I am young at heart and still in pretty good shape for an old fart. And I keep, cherish, and hold onto many things as they used to be. I have five fountain pens, I do not use my phone to buy railway tickets, I send real greeting cards by mail, and I often chat with vendors, waiters, and waitresses, and never, ever use my phone when speaking to people.
Thank you, dear readers, who have had the patience to get this far.

Imagine four colleagues tasked with building a product roadmap (in order to scale $ devoted to R&D): John from the US, Khun Jun from Thailand, Helmut from Germany, and Yoni from Israel.

Same meeting, same goal — yet they’re essentially operating from four entirely different rulebooks.

John wants to target large customers and make decisions via buy-in and open discussion. Helmut wants rigorous data before anyone commits to anything. Yoni thinks roadmaps are unnecessary constraints and wants to move fast, and adaptive to niche markets. And Khun Jun? She mostly agrees — or at least, that’s what it looks like. Read the subtle signals, though, and she has a sharply different agenda she’s not voicing, because causing friction would violate something far more important to him than winning an argument. Jun wants to make the product cheaper, not more scalable.

Now put a facilitator in the room. Here’s the uncomfortable question: whose cultural assumptions is that facilitator bringing in?

The Western default

Classical Organization Development (OD) — the frameworks, the interventions, the facilitation techniques — were built in the West, largely for Western organizations. Open dialogue. Transparency. “Win-win” conflict resolution. Data-driven consensus and compromise. These are not universal values. They’re cultural preferences that classic OD packages as professional best practices

As organizations have stretch across borders, the mismatch between OD and the needs generated by such situations as described above, can create dysfunctional OD interventions. The Thai team member who nods but never commits. The Israeli who keeps reopening decisions everyone though they were closed. The German who won’t move forward without a complete dataset while the American is already three steps ahead. None of them are being difficult. They’re being themselves — and the OD tools being used were never designed with them in mind.

What actually needs to change

A few things stand out as genuinely actionable:

Know who’s in the room before you design the intervention. Cultural background shapes how people understand concepts as fundamental as “teamwork,” “respect,” and “agreement.” These aren’t just translation problems — they’re meaning problems. What Helmut means by a decision and what Yoni means by a decision are not the same thing.

Not everything should happen in the meeting. Some voices will simply not be heard in open group discussion — not because those people have nothing to say, but because the format doesn’t match how they communicate. Effective multicultural facilitation often means doing the real work before and after the formal session.

The facilitator is probably part of the problem. If you’re facilitating, you carry your own cultural defaults. You’re probably more aligned with one team member’s style than others. In this case, OD folks probably have the same assumptions as John as to how decisions are made. That’s not a flaw to be ashamed of — if it’s a bias to be named and dealt with or modified when planning an OD intervention.

Tailor, don’t template. Off-the-shelf team interventions assume a baseline cultural context that may not exist. Genuine multicultural OD is customized work.

The real ask

This isn’t about becoming an anthropologist or memorizing cultural dimensions frameworks. It’s about intellectual humility — approaching a multicultural team with the assumption that your diagnostic lens may be mis calibrated, and that the “problem” you’re seeing may look entirely different from another seat at the table.

The team with four nationalities isn’t more difficult if you understand the underlying cultural assumptions of each player. As a matter of fact, it’s more honest about what every team actually is: a collection of people whose shared language masks fundamentally different assumptions about how work, decisions, and relationships should function.

That’s not a problem to solve. It’s a reality to design for. Carefully and with humility.

A middle manager (Bill) confides in you he is looking for another job. He asks you to be discrete about this information. The middle manager is under-utilized and kept in line by an older manager “waiting for retirement”. One of your other clients has a senior role available that is suited for Bill.

A board member calls you and invited you for lunch. You have been working for his firm for 8 months but the two of you have never met. He asks you not to mention the upcoming lunch to the CEO.

You work for a French company that has just acquired a US based subsidiary. In conference calls, the French often communicate between themselves in French to the dismay and anger of the Americans. Their comments are derogatory and sadly, unjustified for the most part. The Americans keep texting you “”what are they saying”‘?

By mistake, you were forwarded an internal email that contains sexual comments about another member of the organization.

The CEO with whom you are working constantly tells you what behavioural and systems changes he wants, but is not willing to change anything he himself does. He pays well, and the very fact that you are working for this firm has brought you plenty of business.