Liu Liu: Well, I would say it's like, whenever you watch any kind of property program, the catchphrase they use is always "location, location, location." So that really is kind of catches your attention. But if you transfer that kind of phrase into this restructuring of the team- international team, particularly, this means you're carrying out these exercises in multiple locations, so meaning different countries or regions, and having to deal with employees of different cultural backgrounds.
So in a way, you might think it is the same company, how difficult could it be, but the people are not the same, even though they might be wearing the same uniform or speaking the same company jargon words, but inside them, the national cultures, they grew up with will really manifesto in such critical moments in a company life.
Could you share an example from your experience where cultural differences significantly impacted the success or challenges of an international restructuring project?
Liu Liu: Yeah, sure. Recently, there is an international director of the international organization came to me. She is the director in charge of teams expanding to 50 countries, six regions. And then she's tasked to restructuring three teams in order to review their function and efficiency. As some of them are sitting, the members of the team are sitting in the UK and some are sitting globally. Now when the process started, yeah, she just noticed something is quite different.
So the purpose of this exercise is really to look at how to really improve the 100 odd people how they can be more efficient to support a new corporate level priority. So because out of these three teams, they need to create a new team to work on these corporate level priority and streamline the internal technical support teams.
So this means about 18 positions will be established. And then she said to me, I don't understand what's going on. I don't understand why there are such difference when it comes to responses from the team members based in the UK, and then the ones who are not based in the UK, like in Africa and Asia and other regions. She's telling me that the feedback from the UK employee, just so many, and they can't keep up, and the wording and the emotions are so strong, and that the review team had to spend a whole day just to read through all of them.
And yet, the feedback from the non-UK teams is very little. So I suppose in our conversation here, I really would like to unpack some of the cultural reasons behind this, and make some suggestions to our listeners who might be handling the same challenging situation.
Felicia Shakiba: Absolutely. I think that would be extremely valuable coming from your expertise and point of view. And so when aligning disparate strategies within an international workforce.
What are the key strategies or approaches, you have found effective in fostering cohesion?
Liu Liu (06:13): I would say, to align international strategy within an international workforce, I believe there are two factors. One is that you need to have a spreadsheet that's quite obvious. The second is how you communicate this strategy to your global force.
Most companies have a strategy, that is the easy part. But the difficult part is how the head office communicates this strategy to the workforce. For team based in, I call this task-oriented countries, broadly speaking i think in the US, Canada, Northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and most of the European people populated countries, people want to understand the logic behind the strategy. They were really, if we don't understand the logical sense behind it, we won't buy it.
On the other hand, for the teams based in relationship-based countries, like Asia, Africa and South America, and we want to see how an individual connects and relates to this so-called strategy. And the if they don't feel they can't feel part of it, you will have a very difficult time to persuade them to interest them, they will just get on do their job.
So, of course, there is also a different perspective on a strategy. So again, different cultures respond to them differently. So what I call a high context culture, which means countries with a bit of a longer history, relatively in comparison to US, or these new countries about over 200 - 300 years old, they are some of the older countries, and the high context.
So that means they like to view things from a macro to micro angle. While the low context cultures, like those young country of European cultures, particularly, they would like to see it from the micro to macro level, meaning we want to go into the details first.
So this is like a big tree, you know, the strategy is like a big tree. So as some would like to see the whole tree where it is rooted, how are all the branches and leaves fit together, but the others might go straight to their own branch and leaves and so to speak. So it's really to understand how to communicate to both groups. Yeah, to really help them to feel connected, understand what stretch is about and be there for you can create their coherence for your company and for the work.
Felicia Shakiba: And so essentially, you're saying, when a leader communicates their strategy, they should really be communicating in a way where they're covering both the logic and the belonging to the solution piece to all of their employees.
Liu Liu: Absolutely, absolutely. So even with my own organization, which is based in the UK, I always tell them, where you come to communicate are like we have this annual strategy planning, their approach is quite interesting. They will just tell people at different department different teams just say, which page?
And you get your section, which is very a micro level approach, but they will never tell you to read the whole thing understand how it's coming from and where it's coming from work is going to do. So yeah, they just go straight to that and say, your section is on page eight, do it. So well, for me, I really want to understand the worlds big picture.
Felicia Shakiba: Yeah, I'm the same way. I like to see big picture too.
Could you elaborate on a particular complex engagement scenario during international restructuring? And how did you navigate the multiple layers of engagement effectively?
Liu Liu (10:50): I think if we carry on with this case, I mentioned just now, the challenge is about over engagement versus under engagement. So I mentioned that with task orientated, logic-based cultures, when this change proposal is released, we really want to automatically question why, why do you want to do that? Why do you want to do that?
And ask loads of questions left, right and center, and then give their opinions on all the logical flaws they can think off and all the gaps they see in the proposal. And there's no holding back, yeah?
And in this case, the director told me that some of them actually got quite heated. It's quiet, quite aggressive, the feedback. While, on the other hand, that in the countries from the more relational relationship-based culture and high context, they are worried they just say, Oh, well, if this is a change proposal, so I suppose all the bosses have decided what to do. So in their perception, there's not much space for discussion.
And then if they feel that, if they question the reason, that it may affect their relationship with their managers and bosses, or being viewed as black sheep, if you like, so the this explains why there's a quite a lower level of engagement. So we might ask some more, very gentle questions, in terms of redundancy pay, how it can be treated fairly, if they got redundancy, and so forth. But overall, they won't be as challenging as people from task-oriented countries.
From your vantage point, what are some strategies or best practices for tailoring restructuring approaches to align with the unique nuances of different countries, or business landscapes?
Liu Liu: I would say definitely respect, honesty, and understanding the differences and take into consideration of the cultural differences when embarking on the change. As I mentioned before, although it's a big company, global company, and people assumes we have this company culture, so therefore, everybody understands what we are doing here, we embark on a change. There's no problem.
And yeah, I would say your respect is very important to treat the employees as humans, not numbers. So and be mindful how the change will affect them.
And I remember there's a movie called Up In the Air made back in 2009, with George Clooney and Anna Hendrick. And the movie shows that extreme version of restructuring and redundancy. So the two characters they played basically fly around the country to tell people they are fired because of the employees of those companies don't see anything wrong with it. You just see it as a task that needs to be done, we don't have time to have the energy to do it - we just hired this company to do it; tell people you're fired.
So yeah, I think that's quite brutal. So be mindful and respectful to people. Yes, and also taking different approaches to people who need logic and explanation to those who want it, who need it, and also give time for them to [give] feedback and be ready for their straightforward, sometimes very feisty feedback, and to show gratitude and relationship to the staff from the culture, that they want to know that their contribution to the company means something, or meant something, if they're leaving a job.
And then you need to tell them quite clearly, that if they need to leave the job, it's not about who they are, that there are bad people because they're, it's just the need for the company to grow or to move on, or to reduce whatever it is. It's not about themselves, personally, yeah.
And just as a follow up question to that, what is the cost of doing it differently than you're suggesting?
Liu Liu (16:05): I suppose. I think the cost how to say it, one could be time. So like, you do need to take into consideration to gain give enough time for people to give feedback to allow them to feel being heard, you will obviously need to have more people to deal with different scenarios, different locations, new light, rather than a very cookie cutter, one size fits all approach.
So that actually leads on to a very good point is that when [a] company takes on the restructuring, very often, the sort of initiator comes from the headquarter from the head office. But actually, you can really empower the local level in country team leaders to be part of that process, to help you to understand those cultural differences in the what the best way is to deal with restructuring in your country because obviously, we including myself, we can't know it all.
So the best strategy is actually to really include the local leaders at your company to help you to go through this.
As the global landscape evolves, how do you foresee the dynamics of international restructuring adapting to incorporate emerging trends and technologies?
Liu Liu: I would say the biggest trend that is also sped up by the COVID is working remotely. Yeah, I think I remember before COVID it was considered a company perk, for me and my wife, we can work two days at home. So many companies, ever since [COVID] they actually we tend to hire people from around the globe but didn't have to come to a physical location together, to work together.
Well, this might be very exciting, very good opportunity to tap into the global talents. While it also poses a problem, which is often hidden, is that the differences in culture. So, particularly, when people come work in remotely, they appear on the screen, but a lot of things don't appear on the screen. So, I think the team, or the company have far higher increased challenge of coordination among teams are from different cultural background.
I think this is an area very often or still is overlooked. And also you are looking at the increased - many of the companies expand their operations globally. The clashes between the uniformed company culture and the diversified national cultures and added identities of their employees - this could be a stress, a source of stress for the staff and for the managers to have to deal with.
The other interesting development which everybody's talking about today is the development of the AI the artificial intelligence. For better for worse, this will really affect our lives greatly in the coming years. However, I would like to point out to people, that AI also has a cultural aspect, a cultural bias. Because if you think about it, all this AI is fed on data, right.
So how the data is collected and analyzed by the algorithms, really affect the output. So, looking around today, in the AI field, it's USA, China and the few other countries are in a leading position in this piece of work, so whoever is in that position, we will have a cultural bias on the scene. So that means, yeah, that AI is culturally can be culturally biased. So we need to be really mindful of that.
Drawing from your experiences, could you provide insights into how leaders can maintain employee morale and a sense of stability, while orchestrating changes that transcend international boundaries?
Liu Liu (21:27): Absolutely, I think it is a very critical thing, when you are starting a change process, everybody feels so insecure, or feels stressed. So they don't know what's going to happen to them. But I think the key thing is to really step back to look at the big picture, to really remind the employee.
One is a long-term vision of the company or the organization to really refresh remind people, what is the compelling vision they have of the company. And also to explain how the change will benefit the employee benefit in the organization might not be everybody but will benefit the organization for the long run.
Clear communication, absolutely very key, again, communication, based on the needs of different types of employees from different types of culture, very important. As always, I would also add to personal connections, I think, particularly for those teams, from relationship-based countries, they really want to feel still, during the process, they want to feel personally connected.
So it's vitally important for the managers, for the directors, for the ET executive team members to really show your face, wherever you are either virtually or in person and to show your face, so that they remain connected, so people don't feel abandoned. So that's very important.
In the meantime, while people are going through this uncertainty, and in a sense of instability, we could carry on to recognize that people's contribution, carry on with rewarding those who are still doing well. So yeah and celebrate the success.
Because particularly important during the, the change process, people end up in this mode of wait and watch and see. So the productivity can go low. So it's therefore this celebrating the pros, the success, reward and recognize it, which was carry on to do well, to really set a good example, for the teams to really carry on doing that job. And I mentioned previously already, is to really empower the local leaders of your company to be part of it to work together.
So yeah, to really help to use their way the way they know best to keep the morale of their local teams, keep them going.
Felicia Shakiba: I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think you said something really important, which was showing your face and just being there as a leader being connected and not delegating that type of very sensitive work to someone else. But actually, having that presence as a leader and having the courage to sit in front of someone during a restructure I think is really important, both with employees that are leaving, and also employees that are moving around in the organization, as well as those who are still there who may have lost some team members.
Liu Liu (25:12): Yeah, yeah, I think because you do that show your face, and then I think people will know, you do care about them. It's not just you don't just see them as numbers and figures. Yeah.
Felicia Shakiba: Is there anything that we haven't talked about today that you think is important for us to know?
Liu Liu: I would have to say one thing. I think it's very important for the leaders to do if necessary, is to be honest, go one step further, if not honest, is to say sorry, if you have to because during the current year, financial climate among the resources is scare, and many companies has to shrink in size, because the financial resources restrained. So as leaders and managers, even for the team member and the board member, just be honest, and say, sorry.
So this is where we are. We are really sorry to let you go as if people would understand.
But if you try to come up with this very pretentious reasons, we want to move forward to this and do that people can see right through it. And then you actually make it worse, people think you're disingenuous. Yeah. But if you say, Yeah, we are hitting a bad patch, we are sorry, we have to let you go. I think people would really take it more to heart more understanding, than you are trying to come up with some cover up reasons.
Felicia Shakiba (27:04): That's interesting that you say that, because I know that, in my experience, during a restructure, I've actually been told not to say sorry, because it strikes a chord in the person who might be leaving and get some upset, and organizations don't want that type of emotion to pop up.
But what I'm hearing from you is that there are some people who just want to feel like their manager who might be moving them or letting them go in a new direction, they just want to know that they feel that empathy for them, is what I'm hearing you say?
Liu Liu: Yeah, I would say so I would, I would say that, because at the end of the day, whichever culture you are coming from, we're all human beings. So there's some very universal value that would transcend the cultural difference. So if you're genuine, towards people, I think people can see that they understand it. So I think in the saying, like, from my home culture and in China, they said, If you give people your heart as they will, yeah, they will return with their heart.
Felicia Shakiba: Taking a step back from the topic of restructuring, and just thinking about how do we communicate with people internationally? Because I'm sure there are a lot of people out there that are having or struggling with communication across borders, how do teams or individuals or leaders best understand the right way to communicate internationally with other team members?
Liu Liu (28:49): I have touched on a few concepts like the task-oriented culture, relationship-based culture, high context - low context, probably people would have heard other sort of concepts as well, I think the key thing is to really come out that blind spot. The bigger the company or organization becomes, internationally, I think the biggest blind spot it can become, because we are so successful in expanding.
So then therefore, the so-called company culture, can really feel like oh, this is the culture and company. And that is a biggest, the big blind spot of overlooking the cultural differences in different locations, different teams, that becomes quite a stumbling block. As managers of all levels, they really need to come out of that. So yeah, we do have a company culture, but we equally don't ignore or overlook your employees' national identity and their own cultural background.
Felicia Shakiba: Liu Liu, thank you so much for being here. It's been a great pleasure. And I can see a lot of what we talked about here today transcend through a lot of people and the work that they're doing and the experiences that they're having. So, thank you so much.
Liu Liu: Oh, it's my pleasure to really share with you and with your listeners. So yeah, I can carry on to a lot more. So yeah, I really hope we have other opportunities to explore other areas of this cross-cultural work.
Felicia Shakiba: That's Liu Liu, Strategic Leader for Environmental & Economic Sustainability for Tearfund.
