Cross-cultural collaboration
The following are assumptions based on observations from my own perspective and anecdotal experience. It is not the truth and others may have a different experience.
From regional to global
Singapore is a known hub for multinational companies, with many setting up branch offices there. For most of my career, I worked in those branch offices. Depending on the nature of the project, I either worked in a local team that had full independence and control over local projects, a local team that supported or adapted whatever Global was doing and a team that had an equal share of team members in both (this last model was especially popular during the pandemic). Depending on the working model, there’s a certain unsaid power dynamic between the two.
Currently, I work at the headquarters of European company. In a strange twist of fate, I was put on a project where I work with the local team in China, even though I just moved from Asia to Europe. The working model for this project wass similar to one of the three I mentioned above – I’m in the global UX team who are in charge of the overall strategy while the local UX team supported or adapted whatever we came up with. This was the first time I was in a reversed role and we met with several challenges when collaborating. At first, I thought it might be a clash of cultures – East vs West, Asia vs Europe, collectivist vs individualist. But if that was the case, coming from Singapore which is a blend of the two, these challenges would not seem so unfamiliar to me. Yet, here I was, perplexed and frustrated. I later realised that most of these challenges were partly a result of the different ways we perceived each other, stemming from the dynamic underlying the relationship.
Distance, dynamics and differences
Local offices I worked in (or visited) tended to be smaller relative to the global headquarters. This refers to both resourcing and the physical space they occupy. Working in a smaller office meant I had closer connections with my team and beyond. It’s like a more like a family where I knew most people, what others outside of my team are working on, and I regularly get to to share the challenges I’m facing.
As the global headquarters is much bigger, there’s just too many people and things going on to know everything. Either I just have a high-level overview but not the details, or I focus on my area and only get involved when I’m needed. Working in silos happens frequently. This could be different based on the role and department, but that was largely the case in my situation or from what I observed around me.
This difference ended up causing several points of conflict and misunderstandings for me. For example, I work in an experimental space that changes requirements all the time. Once, there was a big change that resulted in a directional shift for the entire team. The local team thought we were privy to this information and that we actively withheld it from them. I had no clue and was just as caught off-guard. But then I thought back, I definitely had made the same assumption before about the global office I was working with then too; we used to complain about how they never tell us anything. Now I know, they themselves don’t know.
Timezone and proximity also play a role in forming this perception. While we might be better at remote working, time difference and physical proximity can still put a psychological distance between the teams. Back in Singapore, when I was working in the local office, the global office did their best to keep us included through async communities or setting up certain meetings at times that were friendlier for us. However, having to watch zoom recordings of all-hands and craft events, needing to attend trainings at ungodly hours or just not being able to chat with certain stakeholders at any time of the working day were enough to remind me that I was isolated from the main organisation.
Despite having experienced that, this time, I found myself wondering why the local teams couldn’t just drop a message to the leads to find out more. After all, even if they did ask me, I would do the same thing to find out that information. I finally realised that me being based in the geographical place as leadership created this perception that I had better access to them and a closer relationship with them. That I was also like family with the rest at headquarters and knew what was going on with everyone.
Power play and pressure
The current collaboration model definitely played a part in contributing to these challenges too. Despite us being as communicative as we could, there was an unsaid unbalanced dynamic that’s exacerbated by the distance as I’ve described above. They were as talented and capable as us, the only difference is geographical location. Why do we always seem to get the opportunities to grow and have control over what they do? Noticing this, I tried tackling this diplomatically by sharing our responsibilities with them. This actually worsened the situation. Now the roles and scope overlapped and unclear, while accountability still lay with the global team. Everyone was confused and stressed.
After much trial and error, we finally found a way to adapt our collaboration model for a smoother working relationship. Due to the nature of the project, our leads still wanted the global team to maintain a certain degree of control. However, we could not neglect the local teams’ desire for strategic opportunities, ownership and growth. I suggested to split the work as such: the global team was in-charge of orchestrating how everything worked together in a single experience; the local teams were in-charge of the individual features that went into the experience, adding the meat to the bones. This allowed both teams to have strategic and executional responsibilities. As the local team had to ensure their features fit with overall direction for a cohesive experience, this gave them the chance to flex their strategic muscles while providing us the control we needed. We, the global team also had to get our hands dirty to work on the full execution of the product itself, giving the local team a chance to lead and guide us when it came to implementation since they were the experts. Now that there was clear ownership and accountability, the pressure from leadership was also distributed a little more – we were all in this together.
There’s still much more to learn
While this adapted collaboration model improved our relationship greatly, there were other things we did that I found helped to further build trust.
Visit and work with them in their space, at least once
This was a great tip from one of our leads. I previously thought that since they visited us before, there was no need for us to visit them as budget was tight. However, it turns out this subconsciously feeds into that unbalanced dynamic. Them coming to visit us means they are the ones who need to put in the effort to come to you. Us going to them balances out the dynamic.
Visiting them is fun! Despite also being from Asia, the way they worked was very different from my work experiences. Being in their physical space and work routine gave me insight into why they had certain assumptions or perception of how the global office was.
Help each other grow
Learning opportunities are mutual. We now actively find pockets of opportunities for the local team, but as for myself from the global team, I’m learning a lot from them too. This experience gave me a small taste of people management as an individual contributor – it was problem solving but for a team experience. Even now, I continue to work with their manager to continually learn how we can improve the way we work which would ultimately help our product experience too.
Be vulnerable
This was a little strange to me at first. After realising that there might be that assumption that we know everything, I found myself actively admitting I didn’t know things or sharing my challenges with them. Many times, this led me to understand what information they might be missing as well and felt was important to them.
I’ve learnt a lot from this experience, and I’m still learning. We probably still don’t have the perfect answer yet. But as I look back, these were actually just all about finding ways to inject more humanity and connection amidst amounting corporate pressures. I’m not sure if the feeling is mutual, but I’m very grateful to be able to work with them.
