Regional and Country Leadership of a Business: why regulatory, experiential, cultural aspects matter most?

Managing business in Asia Pacific regions in general and ASEAN regions in particular does and will always interest and challenge me at all times. A unique set of cultures, values, ways of expressing ideas and perceiving others, all are worth learning and understanding if we want to succeed in both personal, professional and business networks in the regions. Despite this proposition also applies across continents such as North America and Europe but this time I would like to focus my discussion on the Asia Pacific regions.

Even though the growth in the Asia-Pacific economies is predicted to be low by about 5.3% during 2016 and 17 as IMF recently reported on its latest Regional Economic Outlook for Asia and Pacific, issued on May , 2016, many still remain strongly optimistic that Asia will always remain the engine of the global economy where Japan, China, Singapore and South  Korea seem always to take the lead to compete against the western world like Europe and North America. 

Whether an economy is in declining stage or in stronger growth path a country has to survive and sustain its vision and mission for continuous improvement in order to develop and grow itself to achieve its ultimate objectives of becoming a prosperous nation that brings every single goodness to its peoples. Toward that end, the availability of a set of effective governmental policies, laws and regulations as one of the so many developmental engines that drives the country towards its economic growth is certainly required.

Not only will an effective set of simple and clear-cut but relevant and effective governmental laws, regulations, policies, systems, and procedures, that take seriously and punish monopolistic, corrupt, and conspirative acts or activities be able to attract new investors and to keep existing ones happy but also it motivates everyone to feel more sense of certainty and fair treatment in regard to their future especially the future of their business in the country.

Now let's discuss the second factor, that a business thrives to become successful when the country where the business operates through its relevant and effective governmental laws, regulations, policies, systems, and procedures are in support of the business's vision and mission to exist: to become efficient, competitive, profitable, growing and sustainable. A reputable business that upholds and sustains the values of fairness, honesty, integrity, innovation, can expect to reap a huge success when the above-mentioned governmental laws, regulations and policies are made available by the government where the business operates.

It is too painful for a business to operate in a corrupt country as it might be forced to incur a huge amount of unnecessary expenses in irrelevant activities for red tapes, kickbacks, bribery, just to keep the business going before it can break even and starts making profits.

Now comes the third factor, that the employees which management or leadership forms an integral part of. An effective and reputable business organization operating in a non-corrupt country if not the least non-corrupt ones like Denmark, Sweden and New Zealand, could be assured to have a successful recruitment, selection and appointment of good people into the business organization. This includes making a successful internal development of its best-performing staff for possible promotion from within possible.

A clean or corruption-free government that rules in country where a good business operates can expect a more positive economic growth for both of them. This would enable both to make better progress in many aspects in a positive, stable,  sustainable fashion.  

Successfully running a good business organization together with your good team in a non or least corrupt country with effective regulatory instruments matters most to every business to be successful. From business perspectives, leadership team is the most determinant success factor of your organization as its members formulate and develop the governing vision, mission, objectives, strategies, and action plans, policies, systems and procedures for your company as well as providing effective leadership and oversight to the whole business organization.

An effective leadership team should encompass people of different cultures and backgrounds who not only understand the technical aspects of the jobs and regulatory aspects of running the business but also at least understand if not live the values, cultures and norms of the country or regions where the company operates. In a regional leadership context, regional leaders be they regional directors or managing directors, they usually have some country managers to lead. A regional leader should have been a country manager in one or more of countries he/she is leading, ideally where he/is from. A regional leader for ASEAN should ideally have been someone who was previously a country manager in Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, of which again he/she is a citizen.

However, I don't intend to dismiss the possible success of an Indonesian professional to become a good country manager in Poland for the first time unless he/she ever worked, studied or lived in the country for some period of time but such a person seems to struggle harder and go through longer painful learning curves for him/her to survive and succeed in the foreign country.

Besides that, not every good business can entertain such a longer learning curve of its employees as it would likely pose risks, add more costs, and create a higher degree of uncertainty as to how the business can be effectively managed in the medium or long run.

A reputable business needs someone who are both technically ready, regulatorily, and culturally hands-on or capable. You also have to understand the legal aspects and practices of how a business is run in the particular country to avoid complaints, legal suits and litigations in the country.

However still in many cases such a situation exists in the regions where the regional head or country manager, in the absence of sufficient previous experiences in one or more of the countries he/she is leading, assumes the role of the regional or country leadership. To survive the position the country managers or regional managers rely on his/her regional or local team to advise them or delegate their key tasks by exercising some tight controls over performance of the delegated tasks and their results.

Technical aspects of jobs are so universal in nature that an e-commerce systems can be run or a regulatory aspects can be mastered by training in any country; however, in contrast, cultural aspects are so specific and unique that every country cannot easily share or mix one another. It feels less painful to become a country manager or a regional director in your own country or in a country whose regulations and cultures are closer to yours e.g. an Indonesian citizen to become a country manager in Vietnam than those being too distant than yours e.g. an Indonesian professional to become country manager in Sweden.  

Unlike the technical capabilities being universal and the regulatory ones being relatively easy to learn by training, the cultural capabilities are so unique that it is your DNA and a gift from god from the day you were born in the country that lives the culture, cherishes it, and inherits it from generation to generation.... together with all the typical values, norms, traditions, beliefs, being attached to it.

Many mutual agreements can hardly be reached, conflicts cannot be resolved even become worsened and business cooperation agreement terminated before time... all are caused by confusions, misperception, and misunderstanding among the parties who are involved and interact one another as a result of the cultural differences. Cross-cultural understanding and experiences give you the ticket of success for regional and international assignment.

Thank you.

Herpiani Ng