Translating Customer Knowledge and Company Culture between Asia and The Silicon Valley
THE CHALLENGE
When one Silicon Valley–based social media and content platform opened offices in Asia, it struggled to adapt its process and its understanding of product market fit.
80% of the world population is based in Asia and the culture and social norms on social media platforms can be quite different. Implicit communication was not working so well. The Company put in place multiple processes, encouraging staff to recap key messages, clarifying in words and images who works for whom, to do what next steps and under whom responsibilities.
That was not enough. The Asian staff was still facing difficulties making the Head quarter in the US understand the realities and needs of the Asian customers, both in their B to C and their B to B arms. The risk for the company was that the more it expanded in Asia, with people from other cultures in far-flung locations, the less it might be capable to understand subtle meaning and the more it was at risk to face inefficiency.
THE STORY
Strong with a high pace, highly collaborative culture, in which key decisions involve a great deal of consultation, the US headquarter decided to be more inclusive and suggested the local offices to organise a full day “One Partnership Asia” to foster solution from local realities - instead of a top down approach from the US.
The Singapore office reached out TheCreativeExperience, a training and facilitation network based in Singapore to help them design their “One Partnership Asia” day. The Creative Experience’s mission is to source for the most professional and outstanding trainers, facilitators and designers in the areas of creativity and innovation in order to best meet the training needs of our clients. Because of our experience in co-creation framework and of our tech savviness, we got the opportunity to work with them on this project
The 98 managers and high potential employees were supported with a team of 5 facilitators to identify what was working well, what needed to be improved and what were the opportunities they were identifying specifically in Asia.
The participants work in a tight schedule to come up with concrete idea - new technologies, internal communication, events, etc. - and even Proof Of Concept if they had already started testing some initiatives, to resolve their biggest priorities.
Not only we go the chance to facilitate 5 groups but also to animate and wrap up the findings of their entire floor. The US office flew to the Singapore office for this special occasion, confirming its willingness to hear and try new things directly from its local offices in Asia.
THE FUTURE
Getting their internationalized culture and their communication has been a priority for this company as they knew they had to adapt to the realities of a global marketplace to growth the business. With a pandemic speeding up the digital transformation process and the growth of service-based and experience-based economy, our likeness to interact with colleagues and clients who are with us and culturally like us…is decreasing drastically. While employees become geographically dispersed and it is vital for the business to shared assumptions and norms.