Culture patterns for setting up a new office in another country

The context is setting up a new office / development centre in a new country. These patterns can also apply to new cities in the same country, but the problems are not as acute. I’m only focusing on the cultural alignment problems. You will also need to consider strategic and economic aspects.

Bidirectional Rotation

Seed the new office

Seed the new office with experienced people familiar with the company culture

The new office will not be familiar with the company culture, especially if all the local hires are new. This will lead to unnecessary friction due to mismatched expectations.

This cannot be fully addressed with documentation because many aspects of culture are basic assumptions and unwritten.

Therefore

Seed the new office with longer-term folks who really understand the culture. This should generally be senior ICs and leaders.

Sometimes people will volunteer as they were originally from the country or region and it’s an opportunity to return home.

Sometimes you will need to frame it as a growth assignment.

Rotate to home offices

Temporarily rotate new office members to home offices to embed them in the company culture

Even if senior folks from the home offices are strong in the company culture, they may be unfamiliar with the different assumption in the new context and may not know what to point out or emphasize.

Therefore

In addition to seeding the new office, have members of the new office temporarily rotate to home offices to become embedded in the culture. They can then help bring back what they learn when they return.

Not just a satellite

Local sense of community

It can be demotivating for the new office if it feels like “just a satellite”. This will impact retention, willingness to transfer in, and general initiative.

Therefore

Build a local sense of community. Establish an identity that is part of but not wholly controlled by the head office.

For example, interior design that is not fully dictated centrally. Run local events and create local customs.

Local autonomy

It can be demotivating for the new office if it feels like “just a satellite”. This will impact retention, willingness to transfer in, and general initiative.

Therefore

Allow for a large amount of local autonomy for leadership. This includes which customers to target, which products or services to emphasize, which policies to have. There will be limits to how much autonomy should be granted but the idea is to leave this as open as possible in order to enable a sense of ownership and trust.

Local support

Ask locals for help. They know where the problems and opportunties are.

Ask for local help

It’s a new country. You don’t know how things work, where the talent is, what the opportunities and problems are… and it will take a while for you to work this out on your own.

Therefore

Ask for local help. This includes local business executives, professors, technology groups, technologists, etc.

Trust the locals

Just asking for local help is insufficient if you don’t actually follow the advice.

Therefore

Trust the locals. Trust their advice and guidance and act accordingly.

Acknowledgements

A lot of this was inspired by my experiences at

Thoughtworks

. Thanks to Ian Cartwright, Gary DeGregorio, and Sid Pinney for contributing additional thoughts.