The author’s first overseas business assignment came when he was 29 and a
sales manager at Xerox, running a team in New York City. The company
sent him to Puerto Rico to turn around its failing business there.
Because he didn’t know the culture or the market, he arrived without an
agenda and just listened to people for two weeks. He learned a few
important phrases in Spanish so that he could relate to his new team.
His experience there helped him later in his career, when he had to
manage people across a variety of cultures. In 2002 SAP hired McDermott
to head its North American business, which was struggling. He viewed the
company’s belief that it could simply transfer its strategies for the
German market to the U.S. market as part of the problem. “Leading in any
country is all about reading the room, respecting the culture, and
understanding the nuances of how people perceive information,” he
writes. “You have to care about what the culture needs instead of just
focusing on your agenda and how to get it done.” In one illustration of
that, although he and his wife have kept the family home in
Philadelphia, he moved into a house in Heidelberg to demonstrate to his
employees that being a part of the German culture is important to him.
[ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]