Discovering a new quadrant

But in recent years, I’ve become keenly interested in the changes that have occurred within my own east meets west company.

During the first years of Pronto Marketing, I’d often say “We’re an American start-up in Thailand,” meaning that our business culture was American, as am I. During our initial years that phrase held true. However, an interesting thing has happened along the way; quite unintentionally we’ve developed a unique company culture that’s an American and Thai hybrid. Perhaps it should be considered Western rather than American, as Pronto definitely has a global feel when it comes to our expats, but for the sake of consistency, I will be focusing on my own American/Thai experiences.

Looking back this seems an entirely natural evolution given our location and predominately Thai staff. This interesting intersection of east and west and how our respective national cultures work together is playing out in unexpected ways – sometimes smoothly, occasionally with tension.

Part of the backdrop to this evolution is the desire in many Thais to see work outside of the traditional-style Thai company; a more structured and hierarchical organisational culture. Many of our Thai nationals have worked for other multinationals or foreign-managed companies. Some of our Thai staff have also attended university overseas.

When prospective new hires are interviewed by our team, they frequently comment that our work environment and team structure are exactly what they have been searching for. Naturally, our job posting and candidate selection process is to find candidates where this would be true – so to some extent it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. But despite a strong desire to contribute to our heterogeneous team, a culture that you have been raised in, and essentially shapes how you view the world, isn’t something that one can just simply leave at the door.

We’ve made an implicit decision to keep our organisation very flat by design, where individuals work with peers to manage most of the day to day work, without management dictating what needs to be done. There are, of course, structured work-flows and processes, but within those our staff work together – managing their priorities and responsibilities, and aiding those of their peers.What we’ve learned is that a flat organisation such as ours puts a different sort pressure on the individual to communicate with their peers. If there’s a conflict, a quality issue, too much work – there’s not an inclination from management, as thin as it is, to intervene. The assumption is that people need to figure it out themselves.

In addition, success in a flat peer-to-peer focused organisation demands a high degree of teamwork. It’s not just about discovering how to work productively, but also taking on the personal responsibility to build a creative and happy work environment – not just for yourself, for your peers also.

In a recent team discussion about our work culture, we white-boarded a Boston matrix, with the X-axis running from Individual ? Group and the Y-axis running from Direct ? Indirect communication styles. Speaking in broad generalities, we placed Thai culture in the Indirect/Group quadrant, and American culture in the Direct/Individual quadrant. Then we placed Pronto, and we ended up between the two in the Direct/Group quadrant – our hybrid.

The Thai sense of team, is of a family with a collective responsibility for the harmony of the group, and has much deeper roots than its American counterpart. This really hit home to me some months back when we experienced a small conflict within our team, and a Thai member wrote to me something along the lines of “If you learn and know Protons (our nickname for team members) deeper, you will know what you should do. It's easy if you do everything with Pronto's hearts and ways.” 

For most of us expats it has taken time and and a lot of learning to develop this level of sensitivity towards our team. We know what it’s like to be dedicated team players, but this ethos is something that runs much deeper, something much more than marching the ball down the field as a team.

On the other hand, the direct communication that is vital in order for us to speak openly and honestly with each other, has been a culture shock for some of the Thai members on our team. Take for example, something as simple as sharing a workload. An American may have little reluctance to respond with “I’m too busy, you need to get someone else to do it,” whereas a Thai may find such a retort mightily uncomfortable. 

While reviewing our Boston matrix we realised the commitment required to meet in this new quadrant, and that developing ourselves, our peers and our unique company culture, was a shared responsibility.

It’s a journey for sure, but what a wonderful one to be on. 

 

Derek Brown is managing director of Pronto Marketing (www.prontomarketing.com), and former marketing director of Microsoft (Thailand). Follow his article in Hi! Managers column every first Friday of the month.