In many cultures which favour discretion and ambiguity to save face and maintain harmony, it is often important to hear what people are not telling you explicitly, and get them to open up nevertheless.

Here are 5 tips on how to do this.

1) Listen closely for key words like “may” or “could”. If Jules asks Som if the marketing plan is good and Som says, “it could succeed”, Som has severe reservations. If Fred asks Miyazaki if the client is excited about the feature and Miyazaki says that the feature “may” interest the client, Fred should best ask Miyazaki, “what else needs to be done to improve our chances”.

2) When you encounter an evasive answer, or when you are getting an answer that has nothing to do with the question you have asked, that is the answer. There is no need to push anymore.

3) Learn about local body language. There are smiling “no”s in Thailand, “yes”s which are “no”s in Japan as well as  long answers which MEAN “no” in many parts of India. Watch for loss of eye connection and other culture-unique body language.

4) Ask the same questions in many ways. “Is Bill a good product manager”? If you had to chose between Bill and Marc, would you choose Bill to be product manager ? Would you choose Marc to be product manager ? Who would be best product manager in the clients’s view? You may get many different answers which are non consistent. And this in itself is a finding, indicating that “there is a problem I do not feel safe discussing with you.”There is no need to push anymore.

5) Use “future” scenarios. So, if you have asked how is Chuck as account manager and not yet received  a good answer, try asking “if Chuck were to leave, who would you chose as account manager”?  Then say, “in the future, would you choose between Chuck or X”. People will feel more free to discuss what has not yet happened.

Many managers who come from a western based HQ focus on clarity of vision, clear roles and responsibilities, a functional structure and good people skills to get things done in “offshore” sites. Often, they rely on an expat or local who has spent time and/or was educated in the country where HQ is located.

In an acutely diverse global organization, this is not often not enough. A huge level of trust must be established in order to get useful information, which otherwise would not find its way to HQ.

Let’s look at Simon, a product manager for a cutting edge software product which will enable very  complex insurance and banking transactions via a Smartphone in traffic via noise cancellation and accent-elimination.

This software has huge value in the developing world, where there are many dialects and where financial institutions are hundreds of kilometres away. Simon has noted that there are no Sales and no leads whatsoever in South East Asia. For 6 quarters, not one lead has been produced that was worth anything. The only news Simon got was that “it is too early in the game”.

So, Simon went to South East Asia for 2 weeks.

• He learnt that the local sales force believed that the product was being presented as more mature than it really is.
• Simon also learned that the 6% churn rate of engineering staff in R&D was seen as very frightening and as a sign that the product may not be released at all.
• Simon learnt that the pre sales material was too flashy, not detailed enough, and “tailored to a market where marketing people make the calls.”
• Simon learned that engineers from HQ had visited clients and treated the clients rudely.
• Simon learned that if a certain client was wined and dined  treated appropriately, there was business to be done….now.
• Simon’s final piece of learning was that several visitors from HQ joked about the local sex trade and their escapades, which caused huge shame and anger.

Here is how Simon learned all this:

• He came for a long visit.
• His meetings were often unscheduled. He established contact informally, joined people for lunch, invited them into his cubicle to yak, and had no time constraints.
• Simon asked for help and promised no harm would be done from any information which would be shared. Simon acted un assumingly.
• Simon did his homework, and made it clear he could not fooled. He did this ever so discretely, saving peoples’ face at all times.
• Simon spoke to people whose English was very poor, even if took hours and hours to get a grasp of what they were saying.
• Simon wrote nothing down when he talked.
• Simon listened for hours on end, and also heard what was not said.
• Simon approached delicate issues in a round about matter, avoiding direct questions.
• Simon read a local paper in English every day and knew what was going on. On hearing that the King was ill, he wore a pink shirt, which is the colour of healing.
• He never criticized the traffic or the crumbling infrastructure that he encountered at times. He came to work from the hotel on the subway, often with people from the office whom he met on the train.Simon showed by actions that the loved the location, the language, the culture and being with the people.

If you behave with Cultural Humility, this probably means that upon entering a diverse or acutely diverse organizational situation, you have the following knowledge and skills:

1) Awareness about your own cultures’ assumptions and limitations.

2) Awareness about the way that your culture may be perceived by other people with whom you are interacting.

3) A mindset that says ” My way of looking at things and/or doing things may not be appropriate.”

4) A willingness to see reality though other peoples’ lenses to as not to impose your own way of interacting.

5) A willingness to try out different ways of interacting.

Two examples of people without and with Cultural Humility

Product Manager John came to Thailand for 3 days to promote the product for which he was responsible. John came in at 0900 am and convened a meeting to get “right down to business”. He talked quickly for 45 minutes heaping lavish praise on his product, and asked “if there were any questions”. No one answered him, so he said, “I am going to go one by one and I would ask for your honest assessment how we can “make this fly here in Thailand.” .

He pointed to the youngest lady at the left and said-you go first.”

John has no cultural humility.

Fred, another Product Manager, came to Thailand two weeks later. Fred is aware that the Thai market is cost sensitive. Fred came to gather input on what features can be compromised to drive costs down. Fred knows that bragging about his product makes the Thais feel extremely uncomfortable. Fred also knows that he needs lots of face to face time with people to find out what they suggest. Fred knows that asking people to speak out in meetings is not the way to gather input, especially if they do not trust you. Fred knows that it is not acceptable for a local office to tell HQ folks what to do.

Fred came for two weeks. The first few days he had easy going, face to face meetings and got to know the people. He made them feel comfortable.  He told them “I am in no hurry”. That built trust. Fred joined the folks at lunch supper and even on weekends. Fred built trust.

Fred got high quality input from the sophisticated local team. Fred showed cultural humility all the way.

In the next few posts, I shall relate to what are some of the critical success factors in “working across” acutely diverse cultural borders in global organizing.

1) Cultural Humility:  This means that “my way may not be the “right” way, or even “the only way” to get things done.

A mindset of humility enables stepping back and observing one’s own behaviour as part of the obstacle course which needs to be hurdled in order to be effective in acute diversity.

2) Superb trust-creation skills : “Work gets done by building trustworthy relationships at every possible juncture and in all directions;  leveraging these relationships gets things done.”

People with superb trust building skills view relationships as organizational “net worth”. Folks with this skill set assume that relationships (not only organizational design and  role clarity) are the key enabler of effectiveness in acute diversity.

3) Patience: “Haste gets you no where in acute diversity” is a good rule of thumb.

Acute diversity is a tough nut to crack and “apparent” resolution” of issues is easy; the “real McCoy” takes longer. A quarterly 5 day tour of “remote locations” to “get things moving” is severe self deception.

Bill is US based SVP for Integration of  Acquired Companies for a large enterprise which acquires 30 start ups a year that his company buys, mainly from Taiwan, Hong Kong, FSU and Tel Aviv.

Bill now needs to integrate an Israeli/Russian start up and over the next 3 years, merge them into corporate R&D.

Bill has assigned Fred as Integration Project Manager.

Three months into the integration, there are crises everywhere. Fred has locked horns with the founders of the start up, and ever small issue entails long email threads with mutual finger pointing.

• The Russian co founder claims that Fred is “clueless” technically, and has never been to Russia so he “makes cultural faux pas every step he takes.”
• The Israeli founder claims the Fred is a process freak and “manages by email and process, like many HQ US based managers”. The Israeli founder claimed that Fred had no understanding of the “cultural differences” between Americans and Israelis.

Fred claims that the founders are “cowboys-in-cahoots”, who wanted to sell the company, yet maintain control. Furthermore, Fred claims that the founders have no discipline whatsoever and act “like Mafia”.

Bill spent half a day with the founders and half a day with with Fred.

Bill concluded that the founders were just like any other founders he had worked with: ambivalent about the sale of their firm and cocky; they nonetheless have huge added technological value that must be harnessed.

Bill  concluded that Fred‘s lack cultural skills were merely a symptom. Fred was simply incompetent; he was over his head with the 2 brilliant founders. Fred was not technically astute; he was slow; he lacked common sense and flexibility. Fred hated to travel.

And faced with his incompetence, Fred retreated into over dosing on process and management by email, which made it easier for him to try to build a case against the founders.

Bill replaced Fred with Paul, who was very technical, and who had far better trust building skills; quickly, the integration went much more smoothly.

Fred’s incompetence had manifested itself as a cultural “symptom”, yet it was not the root cause. At most, it was a mild contributing factor.

Before playing the culture card, look deeply at root causes such as personal competence, corporate culture, and dysfunctional system politics. Then, culture can be factored in more realistically.

Far too early ” in the game”, myopic or poorly staffed/unprofessional  Training Departments prepare employees about the cultures and sensibilities of client locations.

Sometimes, this training focuses on a very superficial level, such as “when they say yes, they may mean no”, or, how to hold a business card. Other times the training may go into some depth.

However, it makes no sense at all to do any cultural training unless people understand their own  culture. This is the foundation upon which all learning about other cultures must take place. Without this understanding, the employee has no “learning platform” to make sense of what he learns.

Often, Training Departments view teaching people about their own culture as “a waste of time”, or worse, a waste of money, and very hard to “justify”. So they “jump” straight “to the point”.

So,

• If you are an American, do you understand how superficial you may be seen due to your expediency? Do you understand how superficiality may harm you in places where relationships are important?
• If you are French, are you aware how your theoretical and critical approach may be seen as “irrelevant” to reality? Do you realize that in many countries, you may be “dead right”?
• If you are a Thai, do you realize that smiling when you are angry may not be seen as effective? Are you aware that in many cultures, expressing anger with words is seen as managerial maturity?
• If you are Israeli, do you realize that discussing things “openly” with a customer in initial meetings is rude? Do you realize that many clients put a negative value on openness in many situations?

Until people learn about their cultures’ limitations and biases, I suggest that learning about other cultures is useless.

Follow the process and I will trust you; when I trust you I will follow your process. Herein lies is a major difference between West and East.

Too often organizations wall paper this issue with dysfunctional ERP process or empty slogans that “we are all one team”,

Belief in the dominance of a “working and self correcting system” enables and feeds the belief in process as the cornerstone of getting things done. On the other hand, belief in the dominance of trusting relationships enables and feeds the belief in “working the network”, exchanging favours, and “off line” arrangements to get things done.

Do not fall into a trap that “we are all becoming similar” just because global business, the web and the English language have increased exposure to one another. The differences have not been diminished. There is lots of  “apparent similarity” that has camouflaged cultural differences, not eliminated them.

If you are interested in my lecture on Camouflaged Cultural Differences, contact me.

Many folks believe that following a process enables and facilitates work flow and effective interaction between people and units. These same folks believe that acceptance of the dominance of process is, or should be, universal in global organizing. Thus, deviance from process is something that needs to be corrected, either via discipline or regulated by software-policing.

Worship of process is by no means universal. In many cultures and within all cultures, there are folks believe that process enslaves, blinds and debilitates human creativity. Many folks believe that process serves a certain order that needs to be smashed in order to create value. These same people perceive that human ingenuity is stifled by process. These same people believe that process is something that people can hide behind to limit commitment to success.

The same can be said of focus. Focus (thrust upon us by structured discussions and well prepared power points), keep folks on the same page, drive things forward and ensure we are on the same page. Indeed? What about the people and cultures who think associatively, use circular logic, ramble and arrive at conclusions when there is less focus.

I suggest we look at process and focus more as preferences and less as a religious doctrine that needs to be force fed. Focus and process should be applied contingent on cultural and situation.

Often a visiting North American manager from corporate will try to “export” their behaviour to  to other parts of world and impose their cultural preference. This may include asking you to go against the opinions of your boss publically or asking you to advocate a controverisal view that you hold in a large meeting.

If you come from a part of the world where you need to show full respect to your boss in public, and you prefer keeping your views to yourself, you may try the following 3 tips.

1) Review meeting agendas in advance and prepare yourself. Sometimes, if given the time, it may be possible to work around the need to be so direct and confrontational.

2) Using an expat stationed in your country, inform the visiting boss what is acceptable and not acceptable, in order to prevent the visiting boss from making the wrong judgement.

3) Ask for a personal meeting with the visiting boss after the meeting and give him the input he desires.

And remember: even though some visitors may try very hard to be “inclusive”, it is often just lip service. The visiting manager often expects you to change your habits and modify your culturally based behaviour; he does not see this expectation as offensive.

In many parts of the world, an automatic positive answer to your boss or colleague is simply a public “face saving yes”, not a factually positive answer or by any means a statement of agreement.This type of yes is basically an affirmation of acceptance of the boss in an inherently unequal relationship.

This phenomenon aggravates and horrifies many Western managers with their Asian or Mid East employees, who wish that their employees were “more transparent”.

Instead of becoming angry, critical and judgmental, here are three things you can do to try to see if the “yes” is real.

Let us imagine that boss Ed want to know if the guest lecturer he plans to invite to next months offiste is appropriate. Ngai, an opinion leader from Thailand. gives a public yes, when asked. If Ed wants to go a layer deeeper:-

• Ed can ask Ngai’s associate, Daw, “if Ngai likes lectures like this, or perhaps she prefers other topics”. Daw can talk to Ed about Ngai’s preference with less face being involved.
• Ed can have lunch with Ngai and tell her “Ngai, I need your help. Can you think about the best lecture we can provide in next month’s session”. (By phrasing this question as futuristic, face issues do not surface, since the event has not happened yet.)
• Ed can ask Ngai, privately: If Mr X cannot lecture, who would you suggest we invite? Ngai may say-Mr Y.  Then, a day or two later, Ed can ask: I am thinking of inviting Y instead of X. Then Ed should wait and see what Ngai says.
• Ed says to Ngai in private, “Ngai, correct me if I am wrong, I believe my choice of lecturer can be improved. Am I wrong”?
• Ed says to Ngai in private, “Ngai there are rumours that the lecturer is not suitable. Is this the case”?

Does this take time? You bet! If you are in a hurry, accept the face and pay the price.