Cross-Cultural Misadventures: The Halloween Edition

Want to hear a spooky business story? Here’s a cross-cultural mishap that cost me a lot of money. And I don’t know about you, but losing money scares the crap out of me.

Read on, if you dare…

The following is an excerpt from my book, The Accidental Business Nomad (available in hard cover, ebook and audiobook).

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One day several years ago an employee saw a ghost in the hallway of our Manila office.

Called momos (pronounced “moe moes”), these ghosts wander the Philippines and bring bad luck. A small group of employees asked that something be done to get rid of the momo. The general manager, an American, didn’t take the situation seriously. I was back in Singapore at the time and didn’t take it seriously, either. Momo jokes began circulating the office via emails. It seemed like the issue was not that serious.

But we were wrong.

The small group that asked for something to be done grew larger. The next day, half the office did not show up for work. Polite requests to return turned to threats. Neither worked, as more and more of the team refused to come to the office. Clients began threatening to end their projects with us because we weren’t getting work done. Our service level agreements weren't being met and our reputation was dropping fast. Our haunted office quickly began costing us a small fortune.

After losing more than a week’s worth of work, I reconsidered the situation. We were trying to get the team to come back, but we were ignoring the real problem, which was the ghost. The general manager went off to find out how to get rid of a momo. It turned out that we needed a priest to perform an exorcism. This cost us $20. He conducted a quick ritual involving chants and holy water and five minutes later, it was over. Job done.

“Send me the invoice,” I sighed, wondering what my bookkeepers would say.

Everyone returned back to work, except the original employee who saw the ghost. She never came back. We had to let her go while following careful HR policies to make sure we did things the right way.

Then she sued us.

And then she won.

We had to pay her salary for 6 or 12 months in addition to legal fees. I can't remember the details and I don't want to.

The momo really did haunt me. It was a painful reminder of how easy it is to let your guard down and forget how something so unimportant to one person can be deadly serious to someone else.

What should we have done differently?

We should have been more respectful, and we should have quickly worked with local advisors or confidants to help guide us through such an unfamiliar situation. In this case there was a simple, $20 dollar solution hiding in plain sight. We didn't think locally, so we missed it.

Would this have happened back home? Nope. But that's the point. Working globally is all about managing unexpected situations and finding new ways to solve problems. I've now worked in the Philippines market for nearly 20 years. It's fantastic. The people are wonderful and highly skilled with a great sense of humor. Would I consider living there? Yes, but one thing about living in Manila I never could stomach...all the damn Momos* ;)

Happy Halloween everyone!

*Quote borrowed from The Lost Boys. If you got that reference, we can be friends.

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For those of you who do not know me, I deliver global sales training, coaching and leadership development programs designed to help companies expand across regions and equip next-gen leaders to tackle emerging global challenges and leverage hybrid work opportunities.

My Linkedin Learning program covers topics on international expansion and I wrote a book about the lessons learned, good, bad and ugly, when expanding into foreign markets called The Accidental Business Nomad: A Survival Guide for Working Across a Shrinking Planet. It looks at the hyper-globalization era over the last few decades and about working across cultures. It won the Axiom Business Book Award and has been translated into traditional Chinese.