Those wishing to promulgate delegation via skill training and via a “culture change” would be best to consider some observations about cultures where delegation runs against the grain.

1) In many cultures, delegation is seen as unfair downloading of responsibility. “If you are a tiger, rule the mountain.”

2) In many cultures which are survival oriented and have a paranoid streak, delegation is seen as setting up a victim to blame.

3) In cultures where there is a healthy and real work-life balance (and not merely lip service to work life balance), delegation may be seen as negative to the balance.

4) In entrepreneurial cultures where people look beyond their role and see the organization end to end , delegation on “some issues” but not all relevant parameters, is seen as highly manipulative. A customer service agent who is delegated “total responsibility” for the customer, yet cannot provide input on policy is a good example.

Secretaries and admins have almost no ability to “filter” what the boss reads and more.The massive use of email enables direct and indirect escalation via use of cc and bcc.

Furthermore, the pace of business imparts a feeling of constant urgency. Add to this the fear of losing a job and the derivative need to “transfer blame.

The above provides a perfect context for a culture of escalation, where almost everything  “floats to the top.”

Culture also impacts the degree to which one uses escalation.

Bat-Sheva (f, from Beersheba Israel) believes that bosses in general, and her boss in particular, make errors all the time. She also believes that “hierarchy” and “undue process” do not solve urgent problems. Bat-Sheva escalates almost everything via cc and bcc.

Joe (m from Durham NC, USA) is matter of fact, polite and positive. He works the system well, and following process. Joe rarely shows his anger, however he does express emotion “expediently”. Joe however can write very aggressive and flaming emails, which vent horrendous rage. Often Joe can meet someone in the hall, whom he has attacked, and says: “Wow, did you see that email I shot off?”

Nu (f from Bangkok) uses email for transmission on facts and data. Nu never escalates anything by email. To give info to the boss’s boss, she has lunch with his sister, a colleague of hers. Nu expresses emotion by ignoring emails. She has a special filter  that transfers all emails from Joe and Bat-Sheva to the bin.

Ralph (LA, USA) met with his entire 14 man global project team in Toronto for a 2 day “crisis management” session.

Due to a change in customer deadlines, delivery of a key project needs to happen 2 weeks earlier than planned, and the schedule is very “aggressive” even before this recent 2 week change.

To make matters worse, Ralph’s team has many Chinese, Russians, Indians  and Israelis who will now be forced to work weekends for 4 months.

Ralph decided to make his motivational “pitch” based on three elements:

+a fat bonus for success

+painting a gloomy scenario in case of failure

+becoming a winning team

This motivational pitch aggravated almost everyone in the room.

1) The Israelis felt that “waving a bonus under our nose to get hard  work makes the staff  into whores”.

2) The doomsday scenario appeared to the Chinese team as “meaningless propaganda” and Ralph lost their trust.

3)  The winning team flag waving appeared “too American” to the Indian team. Folks expected to hear a firm demand “to put aside your differences” to make this happen. A demand like this would have put the Israelis and Chinese in a more cooperative mode, since they are always trying to cannibalize work given to India. Paresh mumbled: ”Ralph is weak, naive and detached from reality”.

The Russian team saw Ralph’s “winning team flag waving” as weakness, and concluded he was desperate, which made Ralph look pathetic. 

EVP HR manager Gloria Ramsbottom-Lemieux sent Ralph a text after his session: “Gr8 leadership-Glo”.

It is 1430 on a very hot summer day in Tel Aviv. The bank closes at 1500 and Miri (f, Israel) has 25000 USD in cash to deposit in her account . Traffic is horrible, there aren’t even illegal parking spots available and Miri thinks she is going to miss the bank closing.

It is 230 PM in Boston on a rainy summer afternoon. The bank closes at 3 pm and Annie (f, USA )also has 25000 USD in cash to deposit in her account . Traffic is horrible, there aren’t  parking spots available and Annie thinks she is going to miss the bank closing.

Miri keeps the mobile phone number of her banker in her “quick dial”. She calls up her banker and says “Adi, please DO ME A FAVOR, I am going to be late. Please let me in via the back door. I have a lot of cash with me. I’ll text you when I arrive.” Adi agrees.  Adi and Miri both believe that very often, systems do not work, and relationships must be leveraged to work around the system.

Annie, looking at her watch thinks: “I’m late; I will have to come back tomorrow morning. I don’t like keeping all that cash at home, but the closing hour of the bank can’t be negotiated.” Annie’s banker left the bank at 3.01 pm. Both Annie and the banker believe systems are made to work.

The matrix organization assumes that folks have some degree of tolerance for multiple bosses and that the source of authority can be split.

Perhaps the matrix can work well in some cultures; it surely cannot be implemented successfully in all cultures.

Luckily, “make the matrix work” in places like Taiwan, Israel, China and Spain is a great source of revenue for an OD consultant, even in bad times. Here are 3 examples where culture inhibits successful implementation of the matrix.

1-One tiger on the hill

There  is a Chinese expression which says: 2 tigers cannot share a hill. In other words, one leader creates stability, many leaders create chaos. In cultures where this is the cultural belief system, matrix organizations (often imposed by a US or European HQ) are cess pools of manipulation. Many Asian cultures come to mind.

2-I win if you lose

Many cultures which see win win as a manifestation of imperial opulence and a manipulative game of the gentry; in such cultures, organizational life is hard ball, or a boxing match. The matrix brings out the very worst of these cultures. Survivalist cultures (Israel, S’pore) come to mind.

3-Cultures where problems are delegated up, not down

There are cultures where people actually believe that problems need to shifted up, not downloaded. These cultures see the boss as having privileges, and duties as well. These duties include making decisions about conflicting demands, not “tossing them down to the man in the trench”. Many African cultures come to mind.

In all of the above examples, implementing the matrix is, as another Chinese expression goes, playing the piano for the cow.

Esti (f) is Global Training Manager for a Israel based global firm with 8000 people employed worldwide. Well, to be more accurate, Esti had this position. She was “let go” after a two week long global training program (held in Singapore) for two levels of mid level management failed miserably.

5 things happened that caused the session to fail:

1) The folks who came from Asia (34%)  felt totally overpowered by the Dutch, Israelis and Americans who were constantly asking questions and not respecting the lecturer.

Lesson: Not all people learn the same way.

2) Lots of “fun” was factored into the two week session  (like swimming, hiking); the resistance to take part of the 7 folks from more conservative cultures (Iran, Malaysia, Indonesia) was not expected and caused a unspoken row.

Lesson: Going into a pool to have a dip is not shared by all as being fun.

3) Many of the US and Canadian lecturers asked the audience questions directly, and caused a huge loss of face in 3 cases when 2 of the more senior people who were asked did not know the answers.

Lesson: No learning can occur when people lose face.

4) It was “suggested” that cell phones be turned off, not required. The Indians and Israelis were constantly texting and taking calls.

Lesson: No mobile phones is a must. Not on mute-no phones at all.

5) One very important session given by a leading  Israeli scientist had “required reading”. When the lecturer discovered that 4 (out of 30) people had not prepared, he said, “Well you SHOULD have prepared”. And then he gave a 20 minute break for participants to do the reading, which caused many folks to “check out” and not return after the time which had been allotted for reading.

Lesson: Castigating people, and then showing consideration (a very Israeli characteristic) is not a universally shared trait.

1. Type up your main talking points, and ensure that the other party has this in front of him. Start the discussion, and say: “this time we are discussing my issues.” It may also help if the points you wish to discuss are written on the whiteboard, or backed up up with an email.

2. Show zero tolerance for deviation from your agenda. Deviation may be seen as weakness. Over time you can be flexible, but not until respect is established.

3. During the discussion, when the other side goes off on a tangent, tries to dominate or goes on and on, walk out the room or hang up. The other side will reconnect and upon doing so, you can say “this is time for my issues and you are overpowering me”. For YOU this may be rude behaviour but the other side will respect your behaviour.

4. If  the above do not work, insist that a 3rd party be present  in the discussion to facilitate. This is often extremely effective. Choose a party that both of you trust.

Mr. Gwak is on his way to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport to catch a flight back to Seoul after his visit to Ram-Of, an Israeli start-up which develops state of the art software for the security business.Gwak came to Israel to see Ram-Of first hand; Ram-Of’s algorithms could provide a phenomenal technological advantage to Gwak’s multi- million dollar security empire.

Mr. Gwak came for a day.  In the morning, he met with Ram-Of’s President and CEO Ami Amami in the lobby of the luxurious Dan Hotel, and then, they travelled by car to the offices of Ram-Of in Neveh Tsedek, Tel Aviv’s Greenwich Village.

Gwak was very, very impressed with the team, the average engineer “shelf time” of 7 years, the phenomenal  innovation and the “lets do what it takes to get the job done” attitude which so characterise Israeli high tech. Gwak was less impressed by the organization.

Ami’s team “voted” on whether or not to “dress up” for Gwak’s visit and the vote was 50 against dressing up and 5 in favour. Folks wore shorts and sandals; many went barefoot.

Worse, Ami’s team had voted whether or not a CEO office should be built for Gwak’s visit, or whether Gwak should see that Ami sits in a cubicle like everyone else. 55 people opposed any change to “equal conditions for all” layout of the office.

After touring Ram-Of, Gwak said, “where is your office” and Ami said “I have none”

Gwak will not work with Ram-Of. In his email of explanation he said that technical innovation and product maturity must  go hand in hand with organizational maturity.

Footnotes:

Amami is a play on words-it means plebeian.

Thanks to my friend O.R. for the idea

The concept of “face” and “face saving” does exist in Western Cultures, although it is far less prominent, salient and discernible in the business domain than it is in Asia.

When I consult executives who are about to/have just assumed a role in Asia, one of the first things I deal with is the need to understand the concept of face. Unlike many, I start with giving examples of face in the Western world.

For example-

1) Your aging father calls you in the morning and ask you, “how are you feeling, sonny boy?” The “truth” is that you are very worried about an income tax issue, and you have a severe headache. Yet you answer “fine Dad, and how are you”. You want to save your father from feeling uncomfortable.

Preventing people from feeling uncomfortable is a key aspect of face saving; the Thais call this type of face saving “kleng jai” (deferential heart).

2) Your partner asks you “how do I look in this new dress”. The “truth” is that you are very busy with other issues and clothes are not your thing. “Great, darling”, is your answer. You prefer harmony to telling her “I am not the person to ask, and this is not the right moment”.

The preference of harmony to conflict is another component of face saving.

3) You tell a visiting colleague, Igor, from Russia, “Why don’t you come by and visit next time you are in the States?” You have no intention to ever follow through on that, but you want to make Igor feel good.

Imparting a good feeling without any intent to follow through with action is another element of face saving.

4) You compete for a tender and loose. You pick up the phone, call your lost potential client, and “thank” him for giving you and chance and wish him “success”. You avoid telling “truth” because civility, not truth, serves the relationship.

Civility at all costs is another major component of face saving.

All of the above constitute face in the Western world. In Asia, the use of these behaviours is overwhelming, but there is nothing that does exist, mutatis mutandis, in the west.

The perception of what triggers intolerance is highly impacted by culture.

Don from Amsterdam is very intolerant about beating around the bush when there is a problem that is on the table. His Asia colleagues’ face-saving “tricks” drive Don to distraction; he even finds American “politeness” as “forcing me to guess what they mean”.

Steve from Albany is intolerant of deviation from planning methodology, just because of an opportunity which “floats by”. Steve loses it when opportunism subjugates due process.

Pierre from Paris is intolerant of initially looking at new ideas from a positive angle. He believes this positivism blinds the quality of appropriate in-depth analysis. When his US colleagues start “wow wowing”, Pierre loses it.

Manfred from Munich is intolerant of discussion without appropriate facts. Manfred views a “low-fact discussion” as a waste of his time. When his British, Canadian and US colleagues start “what-ifing” and ignore constraints, Manfred loses it.

Adi from Jerusalem is intolerant of too much of a detailed explanation. Since speed is her default survival strategy, Adi gets intolerant when people don’t get right to the point. She wants to hear the conclusion first and then the facts!

Som from Bangkok is intolerant of people who overly emphasis  products’ capabilities with superlatives. Hailing from a soft spoken, toned down and mild culture, Som views North American marketing pitches with huge intolerance.

Understanding what hits your “intolerant” button and that of your colleague is an important global skill.