Imagine four colleagues tasked with building a product roadmap (in order to scale $ devoted to R&D): John from the US, Khun Jun from Thailand, Helmut from Germany, and Yoni from Israel.

Same meeting, same goal — yet they’re essentially operating from four entirely different rulebooks.

John wants to target large customers and make decisions via buy-in and open discussion. Helmut wants rigorous data before anyone commits to anything. Yoni thinks roadmaps are unnecessary constraints and wants to move fast, and adaptive to niche markets. And Khun Jun? She mostly agrees — or at least, that’s what it looks like. Read the subtle signals, though, and she has a sharply different agenda she’s not voicing, because causing friction would violate something far more important to him than winning an argument. Jun wants to make the product cheaper, not more scalable.

Now put a facilitator in the room. Here’s the uncomfortable question: whose cultural assumptions is that facilitator bringing in?

The Western default

Classical Organization Development (OD) — the frameworks, the interventions, the facilitation techniques — were built in the West, largely for Western organizations. Open dialogue. Transparency. “Win-win” conflict resolution. Data-driven consensus and compromise. These are not universal values. They’re cultural preferences that classic OD packages as professional best practices

As organizations have stretch across borders, the mismatch between OD and the needs generated by such situations as described above, can create dysfunctional OD interventions. The Thai team member who nods but never commits. The Israeli who keeps reopening decisions everyone though they were closed. The German who won’t move forward without a complete dataset while the American is already three steps ahead. None of them are being difficult. They’re being themselves — and the OD tools being used were never designed with them in mind.

What actually needs to change

A few things stand out as genuinely actionable:

Know who’s in the room before you design the intervention. Cultural background shapes how people understand concepts as fundamental as “teamwork,” “respect,” and “agreement.” These aren’t just translation problems — they’re meaning problems. What Helmut means by a decision and what Yoni means by a decision are not the same thing.

Not everything should happen in the meeting. Some voices will simply not be heard in open group discussion — not because those people have nothing to say, but because the format doesn’t match how they communicate. Effective multicultural facilitation often means doing the real work before and after the formal session.

The facilitator is probably part of the problem. If you’re facilitating, you carry your own cultural defaults. You’re probably more aligned with one team member’s style than others. In this case, OD folks probably have the same assumptions as John as to how decisions are made. That’s not a flaw to be ashamed of — if it’s a bias to be named and dealt with or modified when planning an OD intervention.

Tailor, don’t template. Off-the-shelf team interventions assume a baseline cultural context that may not exist. Genuine multicultural OD is customized work.

The real ask

This isn’t about becoming an anthropologist or memorizing cultural dimensions frameworks. It’s about intellectual humility — approaching a multicultural team with the assumption that your diagnostic lens may be mis calibrated, and that the “problem” you’re seeing may look entirely different from another seat at the table.

The team with four nationalities isn’t more difficult if you understand the underlying cultural assumptions of each player. As a matter of fact, it’s more honest about what every team actually is: a collection of people whose shared language masks fundamentally different assumptions about how work, decisions, and relationships should function.

That’s not a problem to solve. It’s a reality to design for. Carefully and with humility.

A middle manager (Bill) confides in you he is looking for another job. He asks you to be discrete about this information. The middle manager is under-utilized and kept in line by an older manager “waiting for retirement”. One of your other clients has a senior role available that is suited for Bill.

A board member calls you and invited you for lunch. You have been working for his firm for 8 months but the two of you have never met. He asks you not to mention the upcoming lunch to the CEO.

You work for a French company that has just acquired a US based subsidiary. In conference calls, the French often communicate between themselves in French to the dismay and anger of the Americans. Their comments are derogatory and sadly, unjustified for the most part. The Americans keep texting you “”what are they saying”‘?

By mistake, you were forwarded an internal email that contains sexual comments about another member of the organization.

The CEO with whom you are working constantly tells you what behavioural and systems changes he wants, but is not willing to change anything he himself does. He pays well, and the very fact that you are working for this firm has brought you plenty of business.

Headquarters has commissioned you to improve the level of transparency & and communication between the Indian remote  office and Israel HQ. Each function in the Indian office reports into the functional manager in Israel and to the site manager in India. The site manager in India demands that all messages to HQ must get his approval. The Indian site manager is a supersalesman, as well as  married to the sister of the CEO of the Israeli company.

You have been asked to understand why the level of service from Team Jo is so low. Quickly you discover that several of the union members work in Team Jo;  the team members are busy with union business, as well as operating a nail salon in an empty warehouse. If the union members want, the OD project will end. Until now, they have been cooperative.

Horst is addicted to multitasking; during your conversations with him, he is doing email, people are coming in and out of his office; furthermore- he gets calls and asks you to leave the room.  You have mentioned this to Horst several times to no avail. Alas, he is fully cooperative with your project and the results are phenomenal. Nevertheless, you need to talk with him twice a month, and these one hour conversations can take 3 hours net net.

A client has signed on a cancellation policy that work cancelled 24 hours in advanced is billed at 50%. The third time in a row, work is cancelled and the CEO asks you “not to bill me for the cancellation”. The client is 10% of your business ; he has been with you for 6 months. If the FDA approves its main product, the company will need to scale-and that scaling  work will be yours. FDA approval/disapproval is 8 months ahead.

In team building and development sessions within the western world, most of the intervention is done with the group with the OD expert serving as a facilitator, who provides the setting, provides stimuli to keep things on tract and suggest meaning and context.

In very diverse global teams, this is not the case. Intervention tools are not slightly different; they are very different. I will point out the most salient differences for me as a facilitator.

• Many issues cannot be discussed in the group setting due to face saving, authoritarian leadership styles and obtuse face-saving communication patterns. These issues need to be cleared off the table before the session and/or taken off line after the session.
• The facilitator cannot just facilitate; meetings need to be more controlled in because that is the expectation from the “people in charge”, who need to be more “expert” and less loosie-goosy.
• Often, the facilitator needs to take into account the age of the participants, showing an exaggerated respect to the team manager. “Mister Ho, it’s time for lunch, is it ok with you?
• Silence is often loud protest and must be treated as such.
• Agreement is often feigned, and needs to be “treated” off line.

Case #1

A Western OD facilitator was brought in to run a team development session for a global team based in Southeast Asia. Expecting an open dialogue, she began with group sharing exercises. The room was polite—but silent. The team leader spoke briefly; others nodded in agreement.

Privately, however, several participants later told her they disagreed strongly with key decisions but would not challenge the manager publicly. Recognizing this, the facilitator shifted her approach. Before the next session, she conducted one-on-one conversations to surface hidden tensions. During the meeting, she took a more structured, directive role and frequently checked in with the manager: “Mr. Ho, would you like us to explore this further?”

She learned that silence signaled resistance, not consent, and that real alignment required careful off-line work rather than relying on group discussion alone.

Case #2

A facilitator led a project alignment session with Chinese, German, and Canadian team members. She opened with a typical Western-style roundtable. The Canadians spoke openly, the Germans offered direct critiques, and the Chinese participants remained quiet, nodding along.

Tension surfaced quickly: Germans perceived agreement, Canadians sensed unease, and the Chinese team later expressed concerns privately about loss of face and unclear authority. The facilitator adapted. She held pre-meetings with the Chinese members to surface concerns, then structured the session tightly, signaling when input was expected and validating hierarchy by deferring to the senior Chinese manager.

During the meeting, she interpreted silence as possible dissent and followed up individually afterward. What appeared as alignment in the room required careful off-line work to uncover real positions and build genuine commitment across cultures.

Many organizations go through a series of “cosmetic operations.” They produce a mission statement displayed on billboards or laptop screens, a list of critical success factors such as “the customer is king,” and cultural guidelines like “decision making through buy-in” or “assume total ownership of issues—whatever the cost.”

These elements can be genuine. But sometimes they resemble cosmetic enhancements—a toupee, fake breasts, or a facelift—covering what is, underneath, a very well-used vehicle.

For example, making “buy-in” the primary method of decision-making can turn decisions into apparent commitments rather than real ones. “Total ownership” can sometimes mean that everyone ends up doing everyone else’s job.

If you are consulting with an organization that has some or all of these features—often implemented by someone reporting into HR—here are a few guidelines to help you avoid getting kicked in the ass for being an “atheist,” meaning someone who refuses to drink the company’s Kool-Aid.

First rule: do not argue with the statements themselves.
Treat them as they are—as sacred texts. Think of them as Bibles in the drawer beside a drug dealer’s bed.

Every one of these precepts has side effects.
Work on the side effects rather than challenging the precepts directly.

For example:

• Do the organization’s heroes actually follow the rules? Often they do not.

• Why does the organization claim that “the customer is king” while routinely mistreating customers?

Focus quietly on the underlying drivers of these contradictions. Explore them discreetly, often at a senior level. Is the emphasis on “customer first” driven by marketing? Public relations? Internal politics?

But again: do not argue with the precepts themselves.

If you work carefully—and if you are lucky—those statements will remain on the wall while the organization begins to deal with its real issues.

This is reform and evolution, not revolution.

The slogans and decorative elements may stay in place, much like the portraits of Stalin or Mao that once hung on walls. But the actual behavior of the organization can change.

This is a short article, but it is carefully thought out. You may need to read it more than once. I welcome questions and will respond to comments.

Postscript

Suppose “Customer is King” is an official value, while in practice customers are treated like toilet paper.

Rather than attacking the slogan, take another approach.
Let the King remain King.

Instead, examine individual customer complaints like an ethnographer studying a culture.

The slogan stays on the wall.
But the investigation reveals that while the aggregate numbers look good, the individual customer experiences can be severe.

That is where the real work begins.

I have just finished reading Nancy Scheper Hughes ethnography Death without Weeping-The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil; this ethnography outlines how universal maternal instincts are not so instinctive nor universal. The death of young children In northeastern Brazil (Bom Jesus) is often “enabled” by the mother; no mourning whatsoever takes place, and even childrens’ names are not assigned until their death-in their lifetime they can be referred to as “little tykes” or miserable “critters”.

This brilliant yet shocking ethnography led me to think-are there organizations where everything we take for granted (the metaphor being maternal love) may be turned upside down on its head? My resounding answer is “of course”. Many organizations can define logic, or to be more accurate, the observers’ logic, which in our case in OD has very many biases.

I have been lucky enough to have worked all over the world; I want to point out 5 things that I have seen that are very logical if you see them from the inside, but quite in-comprehendible when observed out of cultural  context.

1. A manager is seen as not deserving his stars until he brutally cuts down to size subordinates who may have been vying for his job.
2. Meetings with no agenda and no discipline which generate effective decisions.
3. Lying is acceptable behaviour as long as you make sure that the facts are stated in opaque mutterings.
4. Structureless organizations with a rigid hierarchy.
5. A rigid hierarchy where everything gets done via bypassing the system

In fact, I really do not think that we in OD (and management) really understand that  positive organizational behaviour  is not achieved by drinking some elixir or following certain principles. Each organization is, in many ways, sui generis, one of a kind.

Conclusions

The key conclusion is that organizational behavior cannot be reliably judged through universal management or OD (organizational development) principles alone. What appears dysfunctional from the outside may be functional within a specific cultural and organizational ecosystem. Therefore:

• Organizational logic is context-bound, not universal.

• Observer bias strongly shapes OD diagnosis and intervention.

• Practices labeled “bad” or “irrational” may serve stabilizing or legitimizing functions internally.

• Culture often overrides formal structure and stated values.

• Each organization should be treated as sui generis—requiring ethnographic sensitivity rather than prescriptive frameworks.

The broader implication is that OD practitioners should adopt a more anthropological stance: suspend assumptions, study lived reality, and interpret behavior within its native context before prescribing change.

Plenty of posts and videos show younger people being presented with, and ask to identify, things like dial-up internet, analog telephones and fax machines. My memories precede these artifacts.

I am going to date myself since this post deals with much older, even ancient, yet very beloved memories of the antiquated equipment/accessories that I have used, and worse than that, still wish they were in service today.

Our school desks all had ink wells, into which we inserted bottles of ink, provided by the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal, aka Bureau métropolitain des écoles protestantes de Montréal. The Board also gave each pupil a fountain pen, and a nib. Upon hitting the floor, the nib would break, and ink would be splattered hither, thither and yon. Grace a dieu, we are also provided with blotting pads, to blot the ink from pearls of wisdom we wrote, and/or, for the ink which splattered on the floor.

You could break one nib, which could be labelled as unfortunate, or carelessness. Break two nibs, and you did not get a third strike, but rather a detention, meaning, walking home in the dark at 4 PM.

At the beginning of each school year, there was a sale of old text books, used by previous students. In each used book, there was a stamp which could read:

PSBGM

1961 Sherman Waxman

1962 Sophie LaLonde

1963 Glen Snow

I am not a materialist, but I always preferred new books, except for math. I knew that nothing could save my white ass from algebra or geometry. Whether or not you purchased a used book and bought a new one, a book cover was provided by  RBC Banque Royale, aka The Royal Bank of Canada. These paper covers featured  pics of bankers at work in a branch of course, as well as high buildings and places of employment.

Some teachers rationed these book covers, others believed “to each according to his needs”. I loved these book covers, and tried to weasel as many as I could. “And what is that wad of book covers doing in your hand?”

On each book cover were two lines: Name & Subject. We were all given one hour to wrap these books. “No need to giggle and chatter-wrap the books and then read one of them; this is not a social gathering. Did you hear what I said?”

New books and new paper covers each had a distinct smell. The ink made stains.

They all made sweet memories of a simpler place in time.