Whether it's communication between Asian and Western business colleagues, or between people as culturally similar as Americans and the British, culture affects business.

Expatriate executives trying to act on company goals away from head office can find it a frustrating, often confusing experience. Management tools and techniques honed in their home countries often fall flat in foreign lands.

 "We know the German management style works," an Asian-based executive with a German automotive company once complained to Noel Miner, a management consultant brought in to bridge cultural divides in the workplace. "All we need now is to have the Chinese follow the German management style."

It's a common complaint among managers of multicultural staff, says Miner, managing director of International Management Consultants LLC, who divides his time between Hong Kong and Denver.

Management and communication styles vary greatly between Western and Asian countries. Communication in the West is "content-based," emphasising shared decision-making and straightforward discussion, says Miner.

In many Asian countries, however, the focus is on "context-based" communications, where the emphasis is on relationships, hierarchy and careful consultation. This is especially true in countries such as Indonesia and Japan, where consensus building is key, he says.

The advice of local staff is essential if expatriate managers want to understand regional ways. The problem is, locals often won't volunteer advice.

Indonesian staff, for example, are unlikely to interject in discussions for fear of losing face, says Miner. Expatriates must "find a way to gather views and opinions of people who are uncomfortable giving their views in such a public setting when so much `face' is at stake."

A Texas-based oil company discovered such a problem when it brought executives from around the world to the US for a conference. Miner was brought in to facilitate a two-day executive workshop in which a strategy for a new petroleum product in Indonesia was discussed. The executives quickly finalised their objectives and put together a business strategy for the local staff.

"They accomplished in only two hours what they had planned to last for two days," Miner says.

Then, an executive from Indonesia who had been silent through the meeting raised her hand. "What you have developed here will never work in Indonesia," she said.

The strategy had focused on the product and marketing from a North American perspective. "But there was no talk of building relationships with government officials, identifying important contacts and who would be the important users," Miner says. "They had to start over."

It's the small things

Often, it's not the big cultural differences that are most troubling, but small ones. "Do you know where the highest rate of assignment failure is for American expatriates," asks Miner. The answer? London. "When you go to a country with a wide cultural gap, you know it's going to be different, and you're better prepared."

It's the smaller nuances like humor that can take newcomers by surprise. Direct, biting British wit can be off-putting for foreigners, as is the frequent use of British understatement to make a point, says Miner. "Americans don't always understand the point being made since the understatement is too indirect."

Prior to any move — be it to Memphis or Melbourne — executives should be seeking the advice of other expats who have relocated to the same place. "Very often it's the narrow differences that are the hardest to get over," Miner says. "It's the same for Singaporeans who go to Shanghai."

Think locally

"With global companies, there's a feeling that sooner or later, we'll all be doing the same things the same way," says Miner. "I think that's a very dangerous attitude." While a company's global goals may be the same, how each branch approaches the strategy needs to be different.

Three years ago, engineers from a US steel company spent six weeks in Taiwan training locals in a new steel-forging process. Two weeks after they left, operations went awry and the engineers were called back.

When Miner was brought in, he asked the US engineers to describe their average day. After working through the morning with the Taiwanese staff, the engineers ate their lunches in their office, turning down offers to eat with the other staff. "It was the one time we can catch up with e-mail and catch up with work back in the home office," the US staff told Miner.

The Americans, used to US trainees peppering them with questions during the seminars, didn't adapt their training programme for local ways. Taiwanese employees use time spent socialising outside the workforce to tactfully ask questions — interrupting the engineer's lecture with their questions would suggest they weren't good teachers, Miner says.

"There was no relationship formed, so they probably didn't feel comfortable to ask questions," says Miner.

"The Westerners blame it on the [Taiwanese] for not speaking up, but really it's their problem for not taking that cultural difference into account."

February 2003

Kevin Voigt is a staff reporter of The Wall Street Journal.