It’s been 4 months now working in China and I now realize my purpose here that no one else seems to realize: the go-between for approvals and reporting, stuck between the U.S. office and the Chinese partner company on our major project. At launch, my role seemed straightforward. Everyone worked under the same banner and supposedly the same mission. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that identity doesn’t always equal alignment.
The U.S. side cared about efficiency, transparency, and speed. Quarterly results were everything, and the pressure was on me to show reported progress that investors could measure. The Chinese side cared about relationships, government approvals, and maintaining the kind of market positioning that doesn’t show up in a spreadsheet. Both were valid, but they often clashed. This left me in a position to juggle expectations for both leadership sides.
I saw this most clearly in the way people communicated. My U.S. colleagues wanted clear answers, status updates, and deadlines. The Chinese team, by contrast, used softer language. A “yes” might really mean “we’ll do our best,” and a “this could be difficult” was often a polite “no.” If I passed that along verbatim, it sounded evasive to the U.S. team. If I translated the American urgency too directly, it came across as disrespectful in China. My role became less about forwarding updates and more about re-framing messages so each side heard what they needed without losing trust. I understand now why I was sent here.
Approvals were another battle. In the U.S., everything was linear: manager, director, VP, done. In China, approvals could hinge on someone outside the org chart, a government contact, or even a dinner. Yes, a meal. This made timelines unpredictable. To the U.S. team, a two-week delay looked like failure. To the Chinese team, it was just part of the process. Explaining this gap without either side losing patience was one of the hardest balancing acts I’ve had to manage. I had team members on my side request transfer out of my team because they continuously missed deadlines.
Speaking of team members transferring. I had someone quit because of the systems we had to use. On the U.S. side, everything was anchored in systems like SAP for ERP and Hyperion for reporting. Financials were expected to be clean, consistent, and easily reconcilable across cycles, with Excel models providing detailed backup. The culture around these tools wasn’t just about technology, it was about discipline and transparency. Numbers were trusted because the process that produced them was standardized.
In China, the picture looked very different. While Kingdee ERP or Yonyou exist in the background, much of the actual reporting happened in Excel sheets patched together the night before or through WeChat conversations that never made it into official systems. Yes, WeChat as in the social chat application. To the U.S. side, this looked like disorganization. But to the Chinese side, it reflected a culture of flexibility and responsiveness, where relationships and speed mattered more than perfect data integration.
I had to somehow make these two worlds in a manner everyone saw what they needed to. When one team expected an SAP-driven dashboard by quarter’s end, and the other provided a spreadsheet shared over WeChat hours before a meeting, the friction wasn’t just technical. It was cultural. One side valued systematization, the other valued adaptability. My technical manager’s role was to interpret not just the numbers, but the mindset behind them. This lead to so many frustrations on his end that I couldn’t relieve. There was no changing how things were done, so he quit.
Looking back, that project taught me more than any business class or deal model ever could. I learned that a brand can carry the same name in two places and yet serve very different missions. I learned that communication is more than words. It’s understanding context, tone, and what’s not being said. And I learned that sometimes the most valuable role you can play isn’t to push one way of working over another, but to hold the tension long enough for both sides to find common ground.
It’s not a commitment issue. I swear.
April 2, 2024