 Hello, everyone. My name is Chance Kennedy, and I'm going to talk to you today about a site of product management that probably doesn't get talked about very much. That's cross-cultural collaboration, customer obsession absolutely is discussed a lot in our product management world. But we're going to talk a little bit about how cross-cultural interaction can impact customer obsession and bring an amazing experience to our customers as well. So let's get started. We'll talk about me a little bit. We'll talk about my winding, long winding path to becoming a product manager here at Amazon. We're going to talk about one of my favorite desserts in the world, mango sticky rice. Then we'll talk about how I failed from a cultural understanding perspective in Singapore pretty miserably. We'll talk about mango sticky rice again, just a little bit, and then we'll give you some examples of cultural differences that could say impact a business relationship or a working relationship. It's not to say you're going to go to these countries, but it's something to look at of, wow, I may never have thought about that as being impactful or disrespectful in some way. So it's just to give you some insights as to cultural differences to help you understand a little bit more. Then finally, we will talk about some tips for cross-cultural success. So I am a Senior Product Manager here at Amazon. I originally joined Global Mile, which is a freight forwarding arm of Amazon. In my previous career before Amazon, I was in freight forwarding logistics. So a lot of the experiences I'm going to talk about today are going to come from that side, but they very much relate to what we do as Product Managers in a global work environment. After Global Mile, I joined Product Assurance Risk and Safety and basically ensuring that the selection we offer on Amazon is safe for our buyers and legal with all the requirements that we have to meet across the globe. Then just a few weeks ago, I joined Prime Video on the trust and safety team. So we are working on compliant systems to enable us to provide you with content that you want to see and that our viewers want to see overall and that also meets local regulations and gives you the information that you need to make viewing decisions. So I'm talking to you about this today because I've lived overseas for quite a while. I've lived overseas probably a little more than 13 years between Germany, Korea, Singapore, Australia, Thailand, and in that time, I really gained an appreciation of cultural differences and how those impact not only my success, but the success of the organization overall, depending on how I interact across those cultures. So I spent time in 25 countries outside of the United States overall. So I've been pretty lucky and grateful for that. So how I got into product management, it was crazy. I joined the military out of high school. The recruiter actually took me to the recruiting station directly from my high school graduation ceremony, all right? I joined as an Apache helicopter crew chief. It's an attack helicopter. So I was responsible for fixing the aircraft. That role took me to Savannah, Georgia in the US, then to Korea, and then on to Germany after that. My experiences there were fantastic. However, at the time, I didn't really experience the cultures as well as I could have, especially in Korea at that time. When you are in the military, in the US military at least, it can be in a place like Korea, it can be very encapsulating. You spend a lot of time on base, and it's like a little bit of America there. So I was young and I didn't really make an effort to go and understand the Korean community, the Korean culture at the time as much as I should have. That was to my detriment, unfortunately. I did a bit more when I went to Germany. I got to take part in a lot of the festivals and things of that nature. Lots of great beer, but still, I didn't take advantage of it as well as I could have. So when I got out of the military, I went to school, way too much school. I studied electronic music production and digital audio engineering, then went on to study Korean language and literature at the University of Washington, and ended up doing a year of study abroad in Korea at that same time. I graduated in 2008, and it was a high-to-financial crisis. So there wasn't a whole lot of opportunities out there for someone with my background. So I decided to go do my MBA in Korea. Now, all the way through school, when I was in the U.S. and post-graduation from university, I worked in restaurants to support myself and to make a living. And we'll talk about how that kind of influenced my career overall. I never would have thought a restaurant job would impact my career to this day, but it absolutely has, all right? So this is mango sticky rice. Mango sticky rice is one of my favorite desserts on the planet. It's a traditional Thai dessert, and it's simple. It's a freshly cut mango, and with some very gummy sticky rice, it sticks together quite well. And then you cover that with a creamy coconut sauce. It's fantastic. I love it. One of my favorite foods to eat on the planet, I do have to say. So how is mango sticky rice important to what we're talking about today? Let's see. So, oh, I'm sorry about that. Let's try that again. So when I was working in the restaurant industry, we had this customer name, we'll call him Mr. C. And he was a bit challenging at times. In one particular night, I went to ask him, is table what they would like for dessert? If they would like some dessert? And you can never quite know where Mr. C was gonna go, but this time around, he decided to be funny. And so he turns to me and he says, eh, we'll have some mango sticky rice because he was with a Thai group of business colleagues. So he thought it was hilarious. Calling me out for something that their culture loves, their country loves because we were a fine dining steakhouse. He didn't think we were gonna be able to get that for him, right? And he was making a joke at the expense of someone else's culture in a way. So I was like, what can we do? We've got these visitors from Thailand. Is there anything we can do? And the more I thought about it, I was like, all right. All right, Mr. C, that's what you're thinking? No problem. I'll be back in a minute. Now, I didn't say I'm getting it for him, but that was in my head. So off I go. And then about 12 or 13 minutes later, I come back in with dessert just about ready to go. Go to the table. All right, Mr. C, are you ready for your mango sticky rice? Oh yeah, yeah. Bam, mango sticky rice. Needless to say, they were very, very surprised, but it made them really happy. So, all right, so I didn't go and have the kitchen cook mango sticky rice. We actually had a restaurant next door, a Thai restaurant next door, kind of higher end. I just went next door and asked them, hey, do you have mango sticky rice? And they did. So I got some to go and we took it back to art restaurant. We plated it up all nice and neat and brought it out to the table. So it was a small thing to obsess over the customer and show the Thai business guests that, hey, we do have an appreciation for your culture. I know what you have is amazing, that food's amazing. Let's see what we can do to make it happen. It made Mr. C look amazing because he thought he was playing games, but then he got it and he was able to give a great experience to his business guests, okay? So that's the story of mango sticky rice. So when I did my MBA, I went to do an internship at a company called Expeditors. That's the freight forwarding company in Korea. I managed to get my foot in the door and it was a great experience. Was working in a different culture, cultural element for the first time. And that was pretty eye opening, to be honest, very, very different than what we would experience in the United States. And after I finished my internship, I said, hey, I wanna join the company and I want to become a management trainee in Asia. And they said, okay, do you wanna go to Singapore or Hong Kong? And I said, let's go to Singapore. Only because I knew that English was the first language in Singapore. It's really Singlish, but that's all I knew about it at the time. I didn't do my homework, anything like that. And I ended up going to Singapore, all right? So I get to Singapore and it was a great experience. I was really excited, right? I was like, oh, I made it. I'm in Asia. I'm doing the management trainee program. Oh, amazing. And I worked hard. I went through the different, I was attached to the different teams, learned a lot about the business, got to know the people, got to understand more about the culture, the work culture, the food and things of that nature. And I thought I was doing really good. I even threw out some Singlish every now and then to kind of demonstrate my appreciation of Singapore culture. So eventually I became the assistant manager for security, health and safety. And in the security world, you're always worried about somebody coming and trying to steal your freight. You're shipping electronics, things of that nature. And so part of our security protocols was that we would have anyone who came on site sign in at a guard house. So we knew who was visiting our premises. Now the guards were supposed to have people go sign in, but time and time again, they would just wave them through. Or if cars just drove through, they wouldn't chase them down. So we had in some instances, no idea who was there. And that upset me. And I tried hard to get them to check IDs, but all I had known up until that time is leadership in the army and how we would motivate somebody to do something in the army. So it probably wasn't the best way to go about things. So Josephine Lamb eventually says, Chance, give the guards a break. And she explained to me that in Singapore culture, someone who does that type of role may have a different level in the societal hierarchy. And they may not garner the respect that they should necessarily. And so I was like, okay, cool. I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna practice with them. But I went out there with a chair. I changed my strategy. I went out with a chair and we just practiced over and over and over until they built self-confidence to a level that they were actually able to do their job appropriately and everybody was getting signed in. They would chase cars down if they just drove in, got them signed in and it showed them that they were empowered and built their self-confidence and it helped us do what we needed to do to be successful as a business, okay? I failed terribly at the beginning because I didn't understand those minor details of Singapore culture. I was approaching the situation as an American as I would have in the military. And I wasn't being a good leader at the time to be quite honest. And that was a really great lesson learned for me. So eventually I made my way to Bangkok as the district manager of Bangkok. And in Bangkok, we focused on customer obsession. And when I got there, I wanted to make sure that we were all about the customer and we were adding value for our customers. Basically, if a piece of business came along that we couldn't add value to our customers, I didn't necessarily want it. I want those customers to have the best solution possible for them overall. And my belief is that if we do that for them, it's gonna benefit both sides. And if they need us down the road, they'll come back. If they don't use us that first time, whole concept, add value for your customers and obsess about them, all right? So this comes back to the mango sticky rice. So since we're in Thailand, what we did is for anyone who actually got a customer compliment or a compliment from a service provider or anything like that, we gave them mango sticky rice. And we would bring them up at the branch meeting in front of everyone. And we would talk about what they did. And everybody knew the story of mango sticky rice. It's something I told them about at the very beginning. And so we would give mango sticky rice to all the people that got compliments. And it was fantastic. They get some nice food. They get some support for the work that they've done. And they get to share the mango sticky rice as well with their colleagues. And it was really great. So what we're looking at here is actually, these are like a book that the team put together for me when I left. And every one of these pages has references to mango sticky rice. And when I received this, I was a little bit blown away. They really took mango sticky rice to heart. They understood the importance of customer obsession. And for me, it was important that they understood I knew elements of their culture and I respected their culture. And yes, it's just through a dessert mango sticky rice, but it's something special and unique. So it meant a lot to me that that had stuck with them and hopefully it helped them continue to achieve success down the road, okay? So let's talk a little bit about some examples. Korea is a very confusion, historically confusion society. What you're looking at here is actually an offering given it one of the holidays to deceased ancestors. And if you're doing business in Korea, working with Koreans, there's some things you have to understand about that. There's a big respect for age, authority, education level. And with that, you're going to talk to another party a certain way based on those aspects. So what can happen a lot of times in Korea is somebody may ask you very early on how old you are. And in America, that is not appropriate from a cultural perspective, but there they're really trying to understand the hierarchy and how they should address you and the type of language that they should use with you. If you're older than them, they're going to speak to you in a different way than if you were, if they're older than you, okay? So some industry there. Bowing is a big deal in Korea. It's a sign of respect. You bow deeper than the senior. And when you say thank you, hello, goodbye, what have you? And I learned this lesson very interestingly. We went to a shop with a older friend of ours and as we lived the shop, he turned me around and made me bow and I didn't go deep enough and he pushed me down farther to bow to show respect, okay? So very important for that culture. A business card etiquette is something you may not think about. If you were to go to Korea for something like a business meeting, you're going to meet, I don't know, your partners on your teams over there. Business card etiquette is very important. You never want to give a business card with one hand. In America, you can just kind of throw it over, slide it on the table, no big deal. It's for contact information. But in many Asian countries, it's a very important card. So you want to give with two hands and you also want to receive with two hands and then look at the card, take time to look at it, see what their name is, see what their title is so you can understand seniority. And then you typically lay out the cards nice and neat on the table for use throughout the meeting so you can reference the names of people and whatnot. If you weren't to do that, it may not come across as respectful and it could actually impact your business relationship in some way, shape, or form, okay? So always give with two hands. Eating and drinking, you will probably get asked to go out and have dinner and drinks with Korean colleagues if you work with them and you go to Korea. Some very special eating etiquette as well. So if you pour a drink for an older colleague, you always want to pour it with two hands or a senior colleague, you pour with two hands and you can see here, the gentleman has his hand under his wrist to pour some soju for his colleague, all right? Understand that if you are eating and you eat all the food on your plate, they might give you more food. Not my, they will. And that's because that's just part of their culture. They want you to be happy and they show their caring, I guess, through food. And so if you eat all the food on your plate, they're gonna keep filling it up. So if you want to stop eating, you'll eat just a little bit on your plate and they won't keep refilling it, all right? Finally, this one is something that when I went to Korea the second time really struck me as odd and I didn't appreciate it at the time. So our older Korean friend, he didn't really speak English and every time he would call me, he would ask, what did you eat? And that means as I understood it at the time, have you eaten rice? I could never figure out. I was like, why is this guy always asking me if I ate rice? But turns out it can also refer to meal. So he was asking me, hey, did you have breakfast? Did you have lunch? And that's just them showing a level of respect for you and that making sure you were nourished and you got your food. So it was an interesting experience until I really understood what was going on, all right? So China, something called Guangxi and I'm probably saying it wrong and I do apologize if I am saying it wrong but Guangxi is something that's very, very important in China and it has to do with relationship building and the fact that you do business with people that you have a certain level of relationship with. If you are to just go over as an American and you fail to develop a quality relationship with the people you're working with, it may not be as successful as you would hope because you haven't built that Guangxi, okay? Business card etiquette is still there and you can expect small talk, small talk before jumping into major business discussions. So in the U.S., we have no problem just jumping right into the discussion. We're having a meeting, here's what we're here to talk about, let's talk about it. But in China, that's not the case. You can expect to have small talk at the beginning of the meeting. They will probably ask you about your meals. They will ask you about the weather perhaps, how your travel was, if you're gonna go see somewhere while you're traveling and that's all about building that relationship and that rapport, okay? So they may also ask you to go have dinner and drinks as well. It's something you wanna do. This is part of building the relationship in China and building that Guangxi with the people that you're working with or the business partners that you're working with. So go enjoy it, enjoy the different food. There may be a lot of drinks, some of them be prepared for, but yeah, it's something you really wanna do. So in Asia in general, handshakes are not the same as they would be in the West necessarily. Now before COVID, here in the US, a firm handshake was something really important. You're taught as you're entering the professional world that you need to have a firm handshake, not too hard but not too soft and that is going to be a bit of a signal to the other party about you. And if somebody gives you a weak handshake, it can come across as less than positive. In Asia, however, a weak handshake could be quite common and that's not a negative thing, it's just shaking hands is not historically part of their cultural background. And so I think things are changing a little bit. It's becoming more common, but if you don't get a really firm handshake as a foreigner in Asia, just don't be surprised, okay? The other thing I haven't listed here is losing face. In the West, it may be okay to challenge someone in a meeting in front of others or call them out a little bit. In Asia in many places, that's a no-go. You do not wanna make anybody lose a level of respect in front of other people and make them lose face that can absolutely damage a working relationship. So just be careful of that, okay? So we all work in a global environment and especially here in the tech world, if we're product managers, we're gonna have engineers from all over, the operations teams from all over sales, different stakeholders from all over. And you need to understand that, okay? We're not just working in a bubble, we are a global workforce at this point and it's important to take that into account in your interactions with people. And so take the time to learn different cultural attributes of the cultures you're working with. How do you say hello? How do you say thank you, things of that nature? What's the proper business etiquette if you're to go overseas to have meetings with colleagues in a different country and learn some of the language? This is one of the biggest things. All you need to do is learn like one, two or three words, something like thank you, good morning, hello, and it's gonna show them a level of respect for their culture that they're absolutely gonna appreciate. So biggest game changer I could actually tell you is to learn the local language if you're working with those colleagues, okay? Ask how to refer to someone in the US, not much of a problem to call somebody by their first name, but if you were to go to a place like Korea and you're to call someone by a first name, it's very senior, really disrespectful. So when you're meeting someone, you can ask how would you like me to refer to you? What would you like me to call you? I did it just today in the meeting. So don't be scared to just ask that question, okay? Practice active listening, repeat back to the speaker what you heard them say. Sometimes some context is lost in translation and by practicing active listening, you can alleviate any of those barriers that may creep up because of that. Avoid slang. If you are going to use slang, be prepared to explain it to the part you're talking to because it's not always understood, okay? And then practice culturally appropriate etiquette, do study beforehand and take it into account, okay? And then ask your colleagues if you're actually doing it the right way. I believe that I'm doing this correctly. I'm eating the right way. I'm not putting my chopsticks in a bowl, putting it on the table. Is that the right thing to do? Or I poured the drink to a senior with one hand. Was I supposed to do that? And that'll guide you the right way and that will also build your rapport and relationship with them because they see that you're taking an interest in those important cultural attributes of their culture. And then finally, embrace it. When you get to experience something like that, go all in. It's a lot of fun. It can be uncomfortable at times, say if somebody wants to go to Asana in Korea or something like that, but that's a very traditional experience there. Or in Norebang, it's karaoke. And so maybe after dinner, they'll wanna go do round two at a Norebang and sing with you in your own little rooms and you have some more drinks and whatnot. But embrace it. It's part of their culture. It is who they are. And when you embrace it, it just kind of opens doors for you overall. All right. So thank you very much. I'll send you off with some pictures of my family, little world rats and my wife and my wife is Thai. So those cultural aspects come into play every day for my life. If you have any questions or thoughts and whatnot, you can reach out to me at LinkedIn. Feel free to DM me. The key thing here is appreciating those cultural attributes and the people you work with and your colleagues and potentially customers, stakeholders, it can impact the success of your work and the success of your business. So make an effort to actually learn about that and practice some of those cultural elements, all right? And then use those to obsess about your customers and that will help you succeed. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it and have a good day.