Transcribed by https://otter.ai -- this transcript is mostly machine-generated and may contain errors. [Intro music] Skipper Chong Warson 0:00 Hi. I'mSkipper Chong Warson, and this is the second season of the How This Works show. This is where we talk to 100 people about what they do and their journey from their first steps to where they are today. On this episode, I'm talking toChui Chui Tan. She's a cultural strategist who has orchestrated successful market launches and growth for the likes of Spotify, Netflix and Bumble across 50 plus countries. She's also the author of 'Research for Global Growth: Strategies and Guidance for Cross-Cultural Insights' and 'International User Research.' Thanks for joining me, Chui Chui. Nice to see you again. Chui Chui Tan 0:39 Thanks for having me. Skipper Chong Warson 0:42 So Chui Chui, I sketched this out a little bit in the intro. But what did I miss from the way that you might normally Introduce yourself? Can you set the stage for the 'this' part of how this works and what we're talking about today? Chui Chui Tan 0:56 I would say I help businesses to navigate cultural nuances for global growth. So that is my one liner pitch on what I do normally. So my background is actually user experience, and I have been focusingon the international aspect of the business and user research for more than 16 years. And yeah, so now I'm focusing a lot on helping businesses to understand and identify and simplify really cultural nuances, so that they can see how they can translate that into business decisions, so that they can create products or services or experiences that is more resonate better with the local market and local audiences. Skipper Chong Warson 1:46 Yeah, because people are different all around the world. Chui Chui Tan 1:49 Yeah, we tend to say, like globalization is happening now and we will become more and more similar, but ultimately we we the culture is going to be always going to be there, and there are differences in terms of so many different levels that it's impossible for all of us to become one really. Skipper Chong Warson 2:11 Yeah. So would you mind sharing something unexpected, maybe a surprising detail about yourself that you'd be comfortable sharing? Chui Chui Tan 2:20 Yeah, so I think one thing that not many people would know about me is that I know I seem to have a lot of opinions, and I have my thoughts that I easily share with a lot of people, but because my background is well, I'm from Malaysia, so I'm Malaysian born Chinese, so when I first came to the UK to study my master and then PhD, and for a few years after I started working, have my career in UX and HCI and so on, I actually was was struggling a lot in terms of having my own voice and having any opinions. And I remember when I first doing my PhD, and you know, you we have to do literature review, you read a lot of papers, and then you say, Okay, what you're going to think about each of the argument and and studies and everything. I remember my my supervisors asking me about that. And I just, I look at him blank, and I just, I have no opinion. I just read the paper, and that is it. So it was so hard for me to write the first chapter of the of the thesis, because I've just, it's hard. I think thinking it back, that is because we're talking about culture, thinking it back. I know that's really very much to do with our education format in Malaysia or in Asia in general, because we are very much more focusing on memorizing stuff and just we don't actually have been asked opinion about, what Do you think about this, these stories or what? So we just sit on that, our chair, on our table, and just copy whatever is being taught at front, in the front from the teacher, and everything so and that go across until my undergraduate as well. When I did my undergraduate in Malaysia, we still doing that, and presentation is a big thing. We don't present. We have to present our five minutes presentation of thesis. I remember everyone was so nervous because, like, we never have to stand in front of anyone to talk about anything. So, yeah, I saw, it's funny enough. One of my ex colleagues in my last company, he was, he would look at me when I say that to him, and he was just like, what happened in between? Because obviously, now I have so many opinions. Um, so, yeah, so that is one thing that people didn't, yeah, didn't know about me, and in when they actually see me now. Skipper Chong Warson 4:58 So I wonder, and you hinted. At it already. You talked about being Chinese, born Malaysian, who you're now in London. Can you walk me through a little bit of that geographic map of where you've been in the world, where you've worked? Just kind of give me that sort of map pin, a little bit of a rundown of where you've been and where you've worked. Chui Chui Tan 5:25 So, yeah, Malaysian born Chinese. So I moved to the UK 21 years ago, just over 21 years ago. So -- Skipper Chong Warson 5:33 I got that backwards, so it's Malaysian born Chinese. Chui Chui Tan 5:36 Yes. Skipper Chong Warson 5:37 I think I said that backwards. Chui Chui Tan 5:39 Malaysian born Chinese, yeah. Malaysian Chinese is fine. I think both are the same. Skipper Chong Warson 5:43 Got it. Chui Chui Tan 5:44 So, yeah, I'm my grandparents, actually from China or near Taiwan as well. So we they so I'm third generation in Malaysia. And Malaysia actually have, it has three main ethnic groups as well. So you have Malay, Chinese, and Indian. So basically, I'm Malaysian born Chinese, but I'm also Malaysian Chinese. And so I moved to the UK 21 years ago. And so these are, these are the two countries that actually base I spend my half of my life in each country. Skipper Chong Warson 6:19 Sure. Chui Chui Tan 6:20 In terms of where I have work in so I I have traveled, I actually keep a list of where, which country I go to and which cities I go to as well, since I start working for myself, or actually since my adult life. And I also have a note, like, I have three codes -- C, H, and W. Like, C is conferences, like, I go to those places for conferences, and H is for holiday, and then W is for work. So I actually calculated that the other day I have been 48 countries. So that's, that's combinations of everything, right, like work conferences, speaking conferences, and also for holiday. So in terms of working even so I based in the UK and but all my clients are people I work with, actually across the whole globe. I'm talking about my clients, but also the local teams I work with, because understanding culture means I have to work with local teams that I bring them into my company and as my team. So that means actually constantly working with people from different backgrounds, different countries and so on. So yeah, that means even though I live in two countries, but I touch on all different cultural backgrounds and languages, although I don't speak all their languages, but it's very interesting always to see how people from different backgrounds communicate and talk to each other, and how they deal with things and interact as well. So yeah, that's I think I'm feeling lucky that I always have this opportunity to expose myself, really, to different culture and different people from different part of the world. Skipper Chong Warson 8:13 Yeah -- soChui Chui you mentioned a little bit about university and going for your postgraduate work. Can you talk a little bit about what, where, when, like, paint a picture for me, where you were when you first got interested in this idea of cultural contexts and user behaviors. Like, how did you get started in this work that you do? Chui Chui Tan 8:35 Yeah, so I my first degree is actually mechanical engineering. So I did that in Malaysia, and actually work as mechanical designers for Panasonic for a year and a half before I moved to the UK and was designing audio or audio set like your MP3s and, you know, CD players and things like that, with CD players and everything that tells my age, really and so yeah, after that, I always feel like I really wanted to see the world. For some reason, I always think the world that I wanted to see is the UK. I have no idea why. I was quite ignorant at the time. Skipper Chong Warson 9:19 Just drew you, for some reason. Chui Chui Tan 9:21 Yeah, I didn't know much about my geography was really, really bad at that time. I know not much, and I was ignorant about everything. And trying to get people to backpacking with me, but no one really wanted to, because, you know, in Asia, like you tend to finish off, finish your degree or university, and then you find a job, and then you start working and taking time off, doing nothing is kind of not really common things people would do. So eventually, my I just decided to kind of do a master course, so that is easier for me to get to the UK as well. And I thought, since I'm going to study again, I might as well study some. I'm I really like, but I didn't, I didn't manage to do it, or if I wasn't talented enough to kind of see myself to make that into a career. So I like music, and so I decided to do something about to do with music. So I applied for master course in music technology in Belfast and Northern Ireland. I remember my dad was saying, like so many places, you can choose, why do you have to go to Northern Ireland? Because I actually didn't know about the conflict at the time as well, because it was, it was still quite new at the time. So, yeah, I came to the I went to Belfast to do that for one year, and then, because my dissertation was about, my thesis was about audio games. And so when I finished, my master, a lecturer came to me saying that we actually got a grant, a European grant, that get us to do projects that collaborate with 15 other universities and companies across the Europe to help visually impaired people to assess visual using multi model interfaces. So for example, tactile or haptic or audio, and certain thing, and do I want to do it? And I just like, sure I wasn't ready to come back to the UK, because I still didn't feel like I know the culture as much. It's funny enough, at the time, I didn't even thought I'm interested in cultural aspect of the world, you know? But -- Skipper Chong Warson 11:39 This was in Northern Ireland, right? Chui Chui Tan 11:42 Yeah, I was still there. I just still feel like I didn't know about the culture as enough, because it's just one year. Most of my course mate was Northern Irish or Irish, and I still want to spend more time here. So I thought, yeah, sure, I will do the PhD, not knowing what I'm going to do or what I should will be doing what PhD is about. So because of that, I actually do a lot of interviews with visually impaired people and understanding their challenges, assess how they actually use computer at that time, with screen reader and all those things. And that kind of helped me to fall into the HCI human computer interactions industry. At the time, that was still quite new. The whole industry was still quite new. There's no such thing of usability or UX user experience or anything like that. So I started to go to computer human interactions (CHI) conferences in San Francisco and present people and things like that. So I kind of accidentally fall into user experience or HCI industry. And I started, I started to work in in an agency in Bristol. I moved to England after that, and at that time, we were still doing a lot of wireframing. You know, you do it all like it's not like you do research, you do wireframing, you do interaction design, you do it all, Information Architect and everything. But I think at one point I look like main clients for the agency. At the time, Merit International Hotel, they started to kind of realize they need to understand more about people. They are guests or people travelers from different parts of the world, because they have different needs and and so on. So I, because my background, I'm the only non white or non British in that company is kind of, you speak many languages, and at that time, China was kind of main market for them. So they said, you can speak the language. It's my mother tongue, Mandarin. And so take on that project, and we start working on that. So I traveled, my first business trip was to Beijing to help them to understand it's kind of interviewing people in Chinese people, and how they go about booking holidays and hotels and what their needs and so on. So since then we, actually, we, they become a really huge clients for us, and I become their only global or international consultant that I work with them. So I start traveling with them for to Qatar and a lot of other countries and so on, helping them to understand, not just on the digital side, but also on when in the hotels, what does that involve and so on, and also help them to create a playbook for their international design system and so on. So yeah, from that instances that I start to talk about international research a lot. I published the e-book. When I talk in the conferences, I talk about cultural differences and how people from different places kind of use products differently and so on. So that kind of planted into the whole. International exposure in terms of what I do and and all the and then we start to get a lot more projects in the agencies about international related with Google, with anything like that. And seven years ago, eight years ago, I actually decided to work from start to work for myself. And I could, I could be any UX consultant, if I like, but because my niche is in international and this is how what people know me about. And so I decided to niche in this area. And since then, I started working with many companies, and it started to evolve from purely user experience and how people use product into more strategy, and looking into not just the product, but also all aspect of the businesses on when they go into a new market, what should they do? What if they want to grow the market? What should we look into? I'm not, I'm talking not just about what people how people behave and what people want to do and what people say they want to do, my approach is more about the whole overall holistic view about the market, the people, the ecosystem. So we look into even the history of the countries and the infrastructures, the politics set up, the economy, because all of this is actually going to influence how people behave and the context of use, and their mentality and value, and all of these actually related so it becomes, it become much bigger in terms of what we look at when we talk about growing and launching in the new market. Skipper Chong Warson 16:40 Yeah, it's interesting that you've moved from that layer of what is the experience like? What do the customers want? That needs, wants, desires, pain points like moving sort of up the chain into then more product work, then more strategy work, and then more business work. So this becomes not even just a user problem or a design problem, but it becomes a much larger sort of ball of wax that you're kind of peeling back in order to understand some of these nuances. Chui Chui Tan 17:16 Yeah exactly because, if you think about that now, especially use, because culture is really huge, right? It's a big thing that it doesn't touch on how people just use a products, but it's overall ecosystem of that, and also thinking about success, being successful or or feel filled in a market. It doesn't. It's just like, Oh, are you not market your products in the right way? Or is that because your product is not resonate very well with the with the locals? Is the whole everything of it is whether the proposition is correct, that when you go into the market. Did you position yourself in the right way? Did you provide the did you serve your products in a way that people can resonate with you? So yeah, there's a lot of elements that actually led to the failure or the success of a business in the market. That's why you need to touch more on on our aspect, rather than just one thing about the experience or so on. Skipper Chong Warson 18:25 So you've worked with a lot of big name companies, and some of them I mentioned in the introduction, like Spotify and Netflix. I wonder when a company comes to you that you haven't worked with before, and even if you're familiar with maybe the geography or the culture in which they're interested in standing up a new product, or maybe it's a previous product that is like, I know that a company like Netflix is even now launching in new markets. So what does that look like? And I'm not sure where exactly they're not operational, but let's say, you know, there's one country that they haven't launched in. When a company comes to you and they have this paradigm of, we want to know more about this country, and you already mentioned things like history and sort of recent events and cultural norms. What are other things that you think about when first starting that work with some company that's just come to you? Chui Chui Tan 19:27 It depends on how big, well, where they are in their business as well. Skipper Chong Warson 19:32 So with their maturity level, like their size -- Chui Chui Tan 19:36 Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, Spotify and Netflix, they are, they are huge, right? They already have launched in different countries. They know what they are up, they are into. And they just need to know the elements of the things that operation side and how they should launch it in the right way, and so on. But also, if you kind of think about the smaller scale, let's say not startup. A more mature startup that is ready to launch in the new market. So that is a different setup that I will actually look into in helping them. So for example, if, let's say, if we talk about smaller setup companies, that this is the time that we are ready to launch in a new market, what should we do? One of the things that I normally, I often would do with them is actually to identify which markets that is actually the best market for them to go into. The most optimal market to go into. They normally have some idea about which market they want to go into. For example, based on a lot of time. It's based on languages. It's like, oh, we go to the link the countries that is actually speak English is easy or Spanish, because it's covered a lot of Spanish speaking countries and so on. Or sometimes it's more because they already see a natural growth in that market, that they haven't done anything, but actually they can see the growth. So they want to focus on that. But sometimes, most of the time, I will ask them to step back to say, actually, let's figure out which which market is the right one for you to go into next. And I have an exercise to do it with that if I simplify it, it's more about like looking into comparing between the opportunity, the market size, and so on, and also the effort that you're going to need to succeed in the market. So for example, in some markets you have big opportunity, like, for example, India or China is huge market to get in, because huge populations and so on. But then when you look into the the the effort, it probably will take a lot of efforts, because the regulation is very different. Because you are fintech, the regulations, you need to go through a lot of hoops and everything to get into that. And language is very different. Their mentality in terms of accepting or using your products or this kind of services or domain that you're in is very different. So you need a lot more efforts and investment to get into so is that worthwhile? So you start to plot all these different things and also to identify what are the things that you didn't know about that market already that might hinder your launch in that market and so on. Skipper Chong Warson 22:16 Yeah. Chui Chui Tan 22:16 So with that exercise, normally, we'll come up clearer in terms of which market we should focus on in the near future, and then in the long term and so on. So that is normally the first step. If, let's say it's very clear already that the market are chosen is the right one, or is the optimal one, then we will one of the exercises I do as well with them is to understand what are the things you know you think you know about the market already, and what are the -- Skipper Chong Warson 22:45 Assumptions. Chui Chui Tan 22:46 Yeah, assumptions and knowledge gap and so on. So there's another exercise I do with them is more more workshop related. So it's, I call it four bucket exercise. So I gather the key people in the company to together. This could be the for the big companies as well. So I did that with a job board company in Asia, which an air pack as well, like is huge in this part of the world called SEEK or Job Street. So we did that for one of their market as well. So we bring everyone in to say, Okay, let's put your insights or the things that you know about in one of these four buckets. So for example, the first bucket is known facts, so we know that it's true. Is information that we know is true it's already fact checked, and it's already you have a lot of studies and data to fact and you can make decisions just based on those facts already. So those will put in the bucket. And then the second bucket is, I call it strong hypothesis. Skipper Chong Warson 23:45 Mm. Chui Chui Tan 23:45 So it's educated assumptions, really, and it's kind of almost true, but then we might need a bit more information to kind of make it stronger so we can move them into facts. You might actually just need a bit more data, or just validate it quickly, or invalidate it quickly to complete that, the knowledge of that. And then the third bucket is weak hypothesis. So this is more assumptions, that objectives, assumptions that, oh, we hear people saying that our local team thinks it's this way and that way. So we we need a lot more work to kind of finalize that, or we can say we know about this bit, but we don't know the other bits to to complete the whole picture. So what we should do about that? And then the last bucket is unknowns bucket, so it's known-unknown and unknown-unknown. So it could be like, we just don't know how people, how Japanese view gender, gender equality, for example, so that kind of thing. So once you plot that, then it's easy for us to, well, first of all, to align everyone aligned with what we think about the market. We know about the market, or we didn't know about the market, and secondly to identify, what are the missing knowledge that insights that we need to know so that we can make decisions how to what extent the research or the data we need to be collected, and what kind of informations? Can we combine them? Some of them is from this one insight is from the this bucket. The other insight for this bucket, but they are relevant. Can we do something so that we can answer both questions? Skipper Chong Warson 25:24 Sure. Chui Chui Tan 25:24 So, but this exercise, you have to very make sure, especially the first bucket, when we do the when I when we did this one day remotely, with a group of 15 people, I remember everyone. They are all C levels of director level, all of them put in known fact. And then I started going through that, because this, this bucket, remember, once you think it's fact, you don't do anything about it. You can make decisions based on that. So if you use a wrong assumptions and put it in there as a fact, then you're making the wrong decision. So I was very strict with them in that bucket. I just like, Do you have a backups? How do you notice this effect you have a resources and everything. So as I go through the post it note one by one, I can see a lot of them start moving the post it to the other bucket, because it's I have no I have no proof or credibility to support that. So yeah. So once you have that exercise, then we can actually make sure. Can we make some small decisions already based on what we know already, and then we can start testing and and what kind of research or informations that we need to so it helped us to navigate what the next steps is in order to make decisions in the correct way. There are a lot of way to, you know, there are a lot of growth strategies or consultant out there, and everyone use very slightly different approach. My approach is more insight and data led, because for me, because of my background, maybe it's UX, and is more focused on the research and also the data. And you know, what is the truth, so that we can make decisions. So for me, it's often, although it's often will involve research or some kind of research. It could be a survey or could be a very quick research or testing or whatever, but you always have to have something to back it up to make the right decisions. So that's what we normally do, but if it is a big company, then it's different. So for example, Spotify actually don't have any new market team anymore, because they launched most of the countries they want to launch. But before they will, before they launch in South Korea, for example, or Sub Saharan Africa so I was involved in part -- I play a small part, because it's a huge operation, right? And so, yeah, we were doing certain elements in terms of trying to find out how, how are the companies actually being successful in, for example, in sub Saharan countries. We didn't even get to interview users first. We actually talked to experts in the area, journalist, DJs, and you know, all the director levels of international companies who are successful in in launching the company in the business in that market. So we cannot gather as much information about how the whole ecosystem of the business work in that countries. And what does that mean to Spotify, for example, or to that specific domain? Because each domain actually, when you talk about different market, is actually very much different. So for example, I worked with Asana before the work management tool in in Japan, the same trip, I went there, and then the week after, I was with Spotify. So even though it's about Japanese culture, but the things we look into are completely different. The context of culture is different. So that's why it makes it quite complicated in terms of understanding a market, because it's not just about the market, but it's also how it relevant to the product and services and the industry you are in as well. Chui Chui Tan 25:52 Yeah, that makes sense, because it's not only the product, the offering, right, that you're that you're putting out there for customers, possible customers, but also this idea of taking the things that you know about that, so the people who use so even if you, let's say we're working with Spotify in Japan, and then also did work with Asana, the types of people who use Asana are different, or slightly different, from the types of people in Japan that would also use Spotify, right? So there's also not a generalization about this is the kind of person, this is the tribe that you're looking for when you're launching a product like this. And then I also think that something around not everyone in the country also is homogenous in that way, there may be some generalizations that you can make, but not every person in Japan or not every person in Sub Saharan Africa operates under a blanket of kind of principles and paradigms that you can measure on a scale. Chui Chui Tan 30:18 Yeah, exactly. And back to the first point you make as well. It's like even so. So, as we were talking about Asana, and the people who actually use Asana and also Spotify will be different. They might be the same person, right? Skipper Chong Warson 30:32 They might be the same person too. Chui Chui Tan 30:33 Yeah, but the context of the cultural how cultural values and and the cultural aspects surfaced or manifested are differently, right like so when it comes to the same person, when they are using, potentially using Asana as a product in their working environment, they care. They don't care about other elements that the facts that about how they self express in music, they don't that is not important anymore. When it comes to interacting with her products such as Asana, it will be more hierarchical. Like, do I have to? How do I interact or communicate or assign work with my colleagues? So the aspect of the cultural aspect that we look into will be different. That's why it's very complicated. When you we go into a new market, just think about cultural because the whole world's culture is so big. Like, what, what does it touch upon, right? Like, I talk about culture being in the air, where it's it's around us. It's embedded in our daily life. It could be the music we listen to, the the songs we listen to, or the language that we speak or not speaking, because we make a lot of noise, Asian, like Chinese, especially 'mmm' like yes and, you know, like a lot of songs, and those are also part of our culture, or the celebrations we do and so on. So I think that is, that is why it's kind of like when you go into a market you need, we need to know how to pick and choose what culture aspect and value and and context to look into, and that is relevant to that specific domain of the business that you are in. Skipper Chong Warson 32:26 Right, right. Well, about a month ago, you actually posted on LinkedIn something about a book called the Culture Map by Erin Meyer. And that's a pretty famous book, I think, in the world in which you work. And can you talk a little bit about how companies or groups can use frameworks like this, but then also stay mindful for the culture that they're thinking about, and not necessarily think about them as a, not necessarily a like a step by step method, but using it as a as a framework for how to think about and I'm also aware that you've written two books yourself, so like, how do you think about a paradigm like what Erin Meyer lays out in the Culture Map. Chui Chui Tan 33:16 Yeah -- so for those actually not familiar with this book, it's so Erin -- you have that book? Skipper Chong Warson 33:25 Right here, yes. Chui Chui Tan 33:26 I'm in Malaysia at the moment, so I don't have the book with me. It's Bucha. Okay, so Aaron's book is about, so she created, actually, eight dimensions -- Skipper Chong Warson 33:35 Yeah. Chui Chui Tan 33:35 That focus very much on how people, basically, she help with people to navigate cultural complexities when it comes to business communications, so that that's include you work with your colleagues from different backgrounds or vendors and suppliers relationships, and that actually fromone culture than The others, or a lot of examples she used in her book is about implications of a company like a Mexican company bought a German company, or vice versa, and then they have to the managers and all the setups very different. So she she defined eight dimensions that actually help people to navigate. So one of them is, for example, is negotiation, I can't remember. So one of them is about communication. So how you communicate? And is that more like, very straightforward, or actually, I just talk, you have to read between the lines, and then the other one is giving feedback. Do you give direct feedback or very high level? So you get it, you get what I say, and so on. So she kind of defines that, and then she have the skill. So she plotted countries along the scale for each of them. So Japan might be like in this on the left side of the scale. And then on the other dimensions, Japan might be in other skill and so on. So I the book is very useful because it's very much on business communication. I can see how it's useful for a lot of people that I talk to as well. They talk about when they work with people in different culture, that book has has helped them to justify or rationalize why things are not being communicated very easily, or why things are not being done after being communicated and so on. The thing for me about I have a view about framework in terms of culture. So if we don't talk about Erin's framework for business communications. There are a lot of cultural dimensions out there. So one, the most famous one, is Geert Hofstede. So that is very common, right? Like individualism and versus collectivism, power hierarchical and so on. And then there's others as well, like Trompenaars and so on. I actually have more issues with those framework, not because it's not useful, but I find it really hard to apply it practically. So give you an example, like if I tell you, I give you two scores, one South Korea and one UK/US. So individualism versus collectivism. One is a very high on collectivism and one is very high on individualism. How do you translate that into an action, right? How do you use that to design something design your website, or how do you use that to create your strategies, and so on. So it's very hard, and it become very it becomes really hard to very subjective stereotyping as well. So I find a lot harder to use, and also a bit more subjective and not as practical. I found a way that you could potentially use this kind of framework like Hofstede's or Trompenaars', is see how things are manifested. So, for example, if a country is high collectively society, how is manifested in, let's say, in healthcare, so more collective society means that actually, they spend more they the whole health. They take care of each other's health. Skipper Chong Warson 32:53 Yeah. Chui Chui Tan 32:57 And when looking at, for example, when my mom actually fell asleep one last year or two years ago and broke one of her bones and everything. So our whole family, me and my siblings, three, four of us actually went together with her to see the doctor or the specialist and so on. So it becomes a very family matter, really, when it comes to health related and how does -- Skipper Chong Warson 33:45 This was in Malaysia that this happened, right? Chui Chui Tan 37:05 Yeah. In Malaysia. Skipper Chong Warson 38:04 Because I saw that you posted on LinkedIn about it. Chui Chui Tan 38:06 Exactly. Skipper Chong Warson 38:07 Yep. Chui Chui Tan 38:07 Yeah. So about that, like, how people in Malaysia, what, yeah, the post that you were talking about is, like, I was bringing my mom, that is for quarterly checkup. I was sitting there just observing every single elderly person actually accompanied by their kids. They are all mobile but the kids are always with them. They always accompany them. So what does that mean if you're a health tech company or you're designing? You need to actually care for that kind of behavior, you need to be bigger and kind of have a system that actually caters for more family viewing on those things. But if it comes to, let's say, IKEA did a very good one in India. Before they launched in India, they actually visited 1000 houses in India to understand how people live and so on. So they do a lot of local adaptations, not just on products, but also on their operations and so on. So being a collective society in India means multi-generational household is very common. So how do you sell the products that you're selling? Need to cater for that or family gathering, spontaneous gathering is very common. So you need to have things that you can stack up for the chairs and stools, you know, things like that. So you can use all this framework to say, Okay, if it is highly individualistic countries, how does that manifest in the behaviors for the domain that you are in. So that's one way that I can see this kind of framework be useful. Back to Erin's framework. I think hers is much more practical because she focused very much just on business communications. So it's very narrow. So, when it comes to communications, there's only certain elements that are involved, right like feedback and how people respond and so on. So hers is very practical. She can use -- we can actually use that very easily on that. But for mine, I actually focus very much on business growth, that business expansion. So as we talk about it touches on a lot of different aspects. It could be coming from authority figures or relationships or infrastructure set up, you know, a lot of different elements. So it's very hard to kind of put it in a framework that says, in this country, they behave in this way. So you plot it in one thing, because there are a lot of elements that inform how people behave in certain things, not just one cultural element that led to a certain mentality, for example. Skipper Chong Warson 41:01 Yeah, 100%. I would say that I have also found the "Culture Map" helpful. The last company that I worked for full time was a Ukrainian American consulting company. And one of the things that was helpful not just for the products that we worked on, because we worked on projects all around the world. A lot of them were in the United States, but increasingly, throughout my time there, we were also working on products that were also operational south of the border, so in Mexico and Colombia and Chile and adjacent areas. And one of the things that I thought was really important was to take the design team -- so from an operational perspective and understand what might be some of those beliefs and systems that folks who are in the Ukrainian team, what would they align to in terms of leading, deciding, or even the idea of disagreeing, right? Where do they fall on the spectrum, and really, at least generally understand where are their differences? And that's not to say that we didn't utilize it in other ways. So for instance, I can think of a project that I worked on. It was a healthcare project, and the client team was mostly Indian. Now, granted, they weren't in the country of India, but their background was as folks who were born in India, born and raised in India, who now lived in other parts of Europe. And so one of the things that we found super helpful was to actually plot them out. According to where Erin Meyer said, generally, that these traits lie, and it was helpful to understand how they receive feedback. You know, what kind of hierarchy they conform to, because it was slightly different. And once we could have some of those soft conversations to understand where they were coming from. It made the working together so much easier. Chui Chui Tan 43:06 Yeah, that is exactly what I hear a lot of people was talking about when they talk about the book and being able to -- I think in two ways, right? Like, sounds like you -- you can use that to rationalize, to explain, really, like, why things are not working as well, and that helps you to navigate as well. Say, Okay, then we can see how we're going to use this to give feedback, for example, in other countries. And once you know, like using that, I think frameworks like this is useful when to for the explanations, like you see a certain behaviors, even for Hofstede's. One, you see certain behavior, and you can say, okay, it makes sense, because that's they are actually high in this dimension. So that is useful, but it doesn't tell you what you should do to right to kind of overcome that problem. I think Erin's one does, because it's actually more straightforward in that instance. I think the other problem, and I was thinking about, even with Erin's one, is when you plot a countries against a skill, how it makes it very static, right? Because it makes it very stereotype as well. Like this is exactly everyone in that country behave. And when you see something, then you just use that as a reason to explain that. But then there might be nuances that is not or, you know, in other contexts, it probably doesn't behave like that. So that's why, for me, it's kind of like plotting countries on skills sometimes feels a bit too fixed, and culture does change slightly, evolve, not very quickly, but some is to a certain extent, in certain elements, they will change. So how does that, how does that work? And the other thing I was thinking of as well is, like, you need a lot of data to cover all countries in the world. So that's right, if you look at Erin's and on her website, you can pay to actually assess the comparison countries, or you look at Hofstede's ones, I think they cover quite many, like 50 or something, but it doesn't cover a lot of them. I think Hofstede's one in South -- yeah, in Hofstede's one in Africa. I think they only have two African countries so far with the data. So I think, yeah, I think in any tools, it's always useful. I think all these frameworks are also good in raising awareness about cultural differences, I think that's very important, because a lot of people, even though they know their differences, or they say like they cannot judge others of not being the same as them, but yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't actually occur to them actually why those differences and how those differences are. So all these frameworks actually raise a lot of awareness in terms of, ah, okay, I can see why they think like that, or I can see how they behave like that. So yeah, they have their pros and cons as limitations, I guess, yeah. Skipper Chong Warson 46:19 And I wonder even about making it really personal with you and I having this conversation now. You Malaysian-Chinese, having lived in London, as you said, outside of Malaysia for now half your life, a lot of it in the UK, and myself, my mother's Korean, and I'm born and raised in the United States, though, how do those different elements of culture? So I wouldn't necessarily find you on a framework like any of the three that you've just mentioned. I wouldn't necessarily find you in the UK, and I don't know that I would fully find myself in the United States, either because of the cross cultural component of both of our own lives. So that, going back to that idea that as human beings, we're really complicated, and so just because you're in a country or you've been raised in a culture doesn't necessarily mean that this is exactly how you will act, as you said, like static points on a spectrum. Chui Chui Tan 47:24 And also, I believe you and me as well, you we, I can speak for myself. It's like I can be more British in certain aspects of my life, and then when it comes to certain things, I'm quite Malaysian or quite Asian. So yeah, it's like, where do we belong, right? Like, where do we -- if we have to fix in certain things, like, do we move from one dimension to the others? Like, oh, suddenly in this dimension we are British, and suddenly the other one we are Malaysians. And so, yeah, it's quite -- that's why it's kind of like, it's very dynamic, yeah. Skipper Chong Warson 48:02 Yeah. Chui Chui Tan 48:03 Yeah. But again, those tools are still useful in certain ways. It's how we go about using them. Skipper Chong Warson 48:10 100% and I think the framework that you described before about having the four buckets, right? What do we know? What are strong hypotheses? What are weak hypotheses and what are assumptions? I think that's also important to understand with the team that you're working with. What is it that we know amongst ourselves? Because in this day and age, you can go and ask an AI tool or internet search for something, or do deep research, look at a country's history, whether you're doing book research or you're looking on Wikipedia or wherever it is, you can have all of that information, but in the end, you need to have that human agreement that here's what we know, here's what we don't know. Let's go figure out some of these other things and fashion our path forward. Chui Chui Tan 48:59 Yeah, exactly. I actually, I talk about framework, actually creating a framework, but it's not a framework. It's more like canvas, if you think about the business canvas, because I'm still thinking that there's so many different aspects of culture that we need to think about, like I was saying, like the politics, the geography as well. You know, geographic actually does -- the geography of a country does influence how people behave in certain ways because of the limitations or the availability of resources or things like that. So even that, we have to consider into the understanding of the countries or the culture or other context as well. So there are so many different things, so I have been spending a long time trying to simplify them as much as possible, and group them into different groups. I think, in terms of like core values and -- within the COVID, they have anything. I have been using that, for example, I'm preparing for a work to help a client understand their Colombia market. So I've been using that to say, Okay, now I have this in this framework I have, for example, the first one I have about social context. So we have authority and hierarchy. Is that really relevant to this domain? And what does that look like in Colombia? And then relationship, and then every single thing, and then you have infrastructure, digital infrastructure, physical infrastructure, and all the different things and trust as well, like so every single element, it actually helped me to think about, within each of this context, or each of this aspect, what are the things actually we can find out about Colombia, and what does that mean to this business or this client's business? So for example, one of the values is that they have live in the moment mindset. So what does that mean? So they are more likely to want to pay for something that, the promotions -- they are more thinking about now, last minute, I just want to use it now and I'll pay now. So it could be the truth of how they manifested. It could help you to actually create hypothesis for you to bring into kind of test it. Otherwise, you will go into a research blank trying to find every information. So I have been using this canvas to kind of identify which of the important nuggets that we need to look into on that. So, yeah, it's complicated, like you say, but it's also make it very interesting as an edge. Skipper Chong Warson 51:49 Yeah and all of these things that we're talking about, we'll make sure to have links in the show notes, so that way people can if we're visualizing something, maybe there's an example that we can pull out maybe, like your four buckets, or maybe even the framework that you just described, if you're comfortable in sharing them. Chui Chui Tan 52:06 Sure, definitely. Yeah. Skipper Chong Warson 52:09 So Chui Chui I wonder how you envision your work in the future. Right to zoom out for a moment, what sort of trends or challenges do you see emerging in the kind of work that you do around culture and strategy through the lens of business. Chui Chui Tan 52:26 For the future, I think it's very hard to have a conversation these days without talking about AI. Skipper Chong Warson 52:33 There it is, here we go. Chui Chui Tan 52:33 A while back, actually, last year, I was doing an experiment with a friend on how AI could be used for cultural elements. We know there's cultural biases, right, like when ChatGPT and all those things, because, for many reasons, because the information or data being treated like -- being used to train more of English or in a certain context, and then you have a lot of other biases, and being woke in Gemini and things like that. But what we were looking into as well in that experiment is if a company trying to use AI or LLM to help them to figure out, instead of going to do research or finding data and so on, use LLM to say, What should I know about this market and how -- advise me? Give us advice on what are the strategies we should do? How accurate, how complete? So we were trying to measure that. So we actually tested ChatGPT. This is last year, and Baidu's Ernie. So it's like Chinese, and then we have Jais, which is Arabic. So we tested for China, when we actually compare ChatGPT with the Chinese Ernie for Chinese market, so they know about the market better, and so on. And then we compare. And then Arabic is Saudi Arabia, we use that. So it's very interesting in terms of, it's useful, I think, like any other context that AI is being advised to use, it's good to give you a starting point, it will tell you. So you might want to look into this. You might want to look into this, this kind of social behavior in these countries, or the Islamic teaching on that. But if very high level, and also it's not complete, and has hallucinations happen as well. Skipper Chong Warson 52:48 Errors. Chui Chui Tan 52:58 Yeah, so yeah, it's actually used, if you could use it as a starting point, but you always need to check. But what the problem I'm looking into is that it doesn't really give very detailed context in terms of the nitty gritty, the insights that are very important that you will only get when you talk to people, or you observe how people are doing it and so on. So you talk about future. So I think people will start trying to use this in any way they can. So there's a challenge. I don't think it will replace what we can offer as a human and how we're going to look into that kind of complexities of cultural elements. But I will be interested to see how that being evolved in playing into because in the future, like we have DeepSeek now, we have Le Chat from France, that actually, I think it's very popular at the moment. So if, let's say a company who knows technology is going to evolve very quickly, especially in this area, if let's say the training, there's a one technology, or one LLM is going to actually have different data from different points that it becomes so powerful, will they be able to provide even better or stronger in terms of cultural elements on that instances? Skipper Chong Warson 56:07 Sure. Chui Chui Tan 56:08 I don't know whether that is possible, but I think that is something to look into, I guess. Skipper Chong Warson 56:16 Yeah, and I wonder about putting large language model, or whatever AI tool search you're looking for you're using. I wonder about putting it through your four buckets framework as well, right? So putting it in the same -- just a participant in the room with yourself and the team and maybe C level people, or whoever is operational, and using it as an input, but not using it as, Okay, here's the definitive guide to what the culture looks like in this area, or what the components of this kind of buyer looks like -- don't take that at its face value. Take it and interrogate it and do the due diligence to understand what is like you said, a hallucination, what is real information, and then what is information that actually shows up currently in those customers by going out and talking to them. Chui Chui Tan 57:23 Yeah. That's actually really good point. I actually haven't made the link into -- yeah, the four bucket exercises, I can definitely see the link like you say, like using that if you don't have as much information, because sometimes the market is so new, like, the whole business actually have not much knowledge or data point to get into, I guess, will be a good start, but it's just be careful, like to put the right in the right bucket and to ask the right questions when they come up with output as well. Skipper Chong Warson 57:56 That's a really good point that you make in terms of how best to use the tools. I wonderChui Chui is there a topic that we haven't covered yet, something specific that you'd like to get into? Chui Chui Tan 58:11 Yeah, I think one of the things though, currently, I'm reading Sapiens, a brief history of humankind. Okay, do you know that? Skipper Chong Warson 58:18 Noah, I don't remember his last name, but yeah. Chui Chui Tan 58:23 I actually have this book because I'm reading it, Yuval Noah Harari. Skipper Chong Warson 58:27 Oh, okay. Oh, sorry, I'm thinking of another book. Chui Chui Tan 58:29 Yep, yeah -- this one. I think he has another two books. I started to read this book because I'm just thinking about, you know, like the whole world is talk. It's, we are in a crazy world at the moment. Like I always thinking about everywhere, yeah, everywhere. It's like the differences and people are talking like it's very hard to accept who everyone are, right in terms of culture or races or ethnicity or even identity or so on. So it actually made me think, this might be my next book, but this might be my retirement book to write, right? So I'm just thinking, like, I think I was curious about, where does all these differences start? Where does that stem from? Right? Like, if humans start from one, depending on how we actually believe in human evolutions, right? So like, but how does that change? Because the change the cultural, the changes or differences is not just about how we behave in mentality and so on, but it's also our gene, right? Our physical like physical, everything, right? So, how does that start changing? I was thinking about the borders, because geographies do make a difference. There's another book I was reading when I visit my friend in Berlin. It's about how geography actually change countries in terms of their economy and everything so and. This is a huge topic. I'm just, it's something in my mind, like, at what point we change and why? So we are technically, we are same, right? We are sapiens, right? Skipper Chong Warson 1:00:11 Yeah. Chui Chui Tan 1:00:13 So why the differences, and how does that evolve and so on, and what does that mean? Into not just business, we talk about cultural elements in business, but it's also in our life, daily life, and also in our governments and everything. I remember I was giving a talk to a German university, and all the students are very young, like 18-19, it's a small area of Germany, and so a lot of them actually haven't gone out and exposed to a lot of different culture, but they were actually using my models in their in their classes and everything. And she gave me feedback. She says, Oh, your model is easy to understand, and different level of culturalization everything. She says she got the feedback, apart from the working with on the products are different for different culture, a lot of them came and says, Oh, after your courses, I understand my parents better because their parents were immigrants, so they are but they grew up in Germany as and as German so they start to understand why their parents behave in a certain way, or their boyfriends from different cultures is that, oh, we have less fight now and so on. So it's interesting in a way that understanding cultural differences and all this complexity and being observant about them and being -- Skipper Chong Warson 1:01:37 Yeah. Chui Chui Tan 1:01:38 I think it's useful, not just on business context, but also personal life for everyone. So that's why I'm really excited about, you know, like going University, I think every kids, we should start kind of teaching about, like, spreading this kind of concept into as much as possible. Skipper Chong Warson 1:02:05 I was thinking about while you were speaking, funny enough that you brought up that idea about separation, about there's an American poet named Robert Frost, one of his most famous poems is called the Mending Wall. And one of the most remembered lines from that is -- so the narrative in the poem is that there are two sort of parcels of land, one has apple trees and the other one has pine trees, and there's a wall that separates the two. And the voice of the poem says, "Do we really need a wall to separate the pine trees from the apple trees, like it doesn't seem like that's necessary." And then the neighbor says, "Well, good fences make good neighbors." And that seems really apropos in terms of what you're talking about. Because do they really? I'm not really sure. Chui Chui Tan 1:02:58 Yeah, it's the same, right? I was thinking about borders. I said, when does border status? Like, how do we define this bit? And then this bit is this country, and the other bit is the other country, and the culture is different, you know? Like, how does that happen? I think I need to, yeah, that is one thing I really want to dig deeper into and trying to understand, make sense of that eventually, and write a book and simplify it, and write a book about that. Skipper Chong Warson 1:03:28 Well, I can't wait to see how those thoughts develop, so I look forward to the book when you get to that point. So Chui Chui, let's get into our closing questions. And these are closing questions that we ask all of our guests, but we've already done sort of a little bit of a metaphorical and poetic exploration. But I wonder if there's a significant lesson in your life or in your work so far that you wish you might have learned earlier. Chui Chui Tan 1:03:57 This is probably more life, but also applies in work as well. I think, like most recently, I'm just learning how to care less. It doesn't sound like -- it could sound negative in a way, like I care less about my work or whatever. But what I mean by that is care less about how people think about me, for example, care less about other elements that are happening that I don't have to be involved in, because it's not my business. Because, like, for example, I'm visiting my family in Malaysia, and staying in the house that has eight people -- is that eight, seven, including me, is eight, and I stay here sometimes for a month, two months, three months, when I visit my parents. And so there are a lot of things -- I have nephews and nieces, and sometimes I feel like care less means that I don't involve as much. So there are less things to stress about, or things like that, but also at work as well. Like you care less about how things -- if things actually didn't go your way, or actually you felt like you need -- you can do better, or I felt I can do better, then I should care less about how it's being perceived in some way, because it's already happened, right? It doesn't mean like I don't care about the quality of work, or for my clients, it's more care less about the things that are not as important, to be more accepting and let go really. So that's one thing that I wish I knew earlier, and I'm still in the process of learning, need to be even better in these instances. So, yeah. Skipper Chong Warson 1:05:45 Well, I think there's another part to the care less, which is, then you need to decide what you care more about. So there's the other piece that kind of works with both, but and it's also that care less also sounds like the one word, like, if someone is careless, they're not paying attention, or they're not -- but you're talking about care less like the two words, sort of sentence. Chui Chui Tan 1:06:12 Exactly. Care less about things that are not as important. I like you pointed out about what is the other way around. Like, what should I care more and pay more attention and put more effort and energy into the things that are important to me? Skipper Chong Warson 1:06:31 Yeah, so you've already talked about Sapiens, and we've talked about quite a lot of other books just on this episode. You have two books yourself. But what's something that you're reading or watching or listening to that you would recommend to our listeners. Chui Chui Tan 1:06:47 I haven't been watching much at the moment because I'm here, but actually one thing that I was watching quite a lot before traveling was Netflix on what's it called -- Culinary Class Wars. Skipper Chong Warson 1:07:06 Oh, okay. Chui Chui Tan 1:07:07 Did you know that? So it's -- Skipper Chong Warson 1:07:09 I don't. I haven't heard of this yet. Chui Chui Tan 1:07:10 South Korean. They actually brought in a lot of all the famous, very high prestige chefs. And then those actually very -- it's more like stalls and stock and shops and restaurants and so on. So they actually have them competing against each other, but then they bring them together, and one of the episodes is about business as well. Like if you want to start a restaurant, you need to think about your menu. You need to think about your pricing. You need to think about how to attract people, because they brought in a group of people to say, "Okay, now you have three stores. Each store has a few chefs, and they have to think about menu." And they are -- all these people that are brought in to eat the food. They are given a chunk of money to order whatever they want. So it's based on the menu they order, and they kind of compete against who actually won the price. So I love that. And I actually found out that there are so many Korean words actually quite similar with Cantonese. They sound very, very similar. I didn't realize that, because I know Cantonese. I always find South Korean language is quite complicated for me to understand everything. But from that series, I kind of realized that a lot of words are actually similar. But then again, I start to look into why, and it's very interesting, again, the culture elements of how Chinese characters actually influence South Korean, as you probably know. So, yeah, something I was watching. I listened to a lot of podcasts, though. Skipper Chong Warson 1:08:54 Is there one podcast you're listening to right now that you're really jamming on? Chui Chui Tan 1:08:58 I listen to a lot of the Diary of CEO -- Skipper Chong Warson 1:09:02 Okay. Chui Chui Tan 1:09:03 -- from Steven Bartlett, because they actually brought in not just about business, but it's also a lot about health, about how you present yourself, how you communicate, that a lot of different experts from different -- it touches on different points of your life, like, for example, if personal life, mental health or health in general, but also business and entrepreneurships as well. So yeah, that I do follow quite a lot. Skipper Chong Warson 1:09:35 Got it. Yeah, it's all connected. So Chui Chui, if you had a day off suddenly, and you had unlimited resources to do whatever you want in that one day. What would you do? Chui Chui Tan 1:09:47 One day? Skipper Chong Warson 1:09:48 One day, unlimited resources but a constraint. Chui Chui Tan 1:09:53 Constraint. One day, if my parents are still around, then I will bring them to wherever they want, just a very quick trip to somewhere they want and enjoy whatever food, really nice food, or experience certain things with them. If not, I really want to do a crash course of Taiko drumming. Skipper Chong Warson 1:10:17 Oh, okay. Chui Chui Tan 1:10:18 It's something that I really -- I actually went for a few classes, but I really want to just get on with it and do a very intense course, find a really good teacher for that one day. Since I have unlimited resources, I can get anyone. Skipper Chong Warson 1:10:20 That's right, yeah. The world's foremost expert. Chui Chui Tan 1:10:40 Yeah. Skipper Chong Warson 1:10:40 That's nice. So I'd like you to make a prediction. What is one thing that you think will be true in a year? Chui Chui Tan 1:10:47 One year is actually pretty soon and short. So I would imagine that we will still be worrying and talking about the same things as we have been this year and last year. So for example, we will be still talking about AI and how it's going to influence our life and our job. And people are still worrying about how it can be useful and harmful in some ways. Yeah, we will still be talking about equality and sustainability and so on. Yeah, maybe in a different level, a different context, but I think this -- we will still try. I think we will still be struggling and thinking about how we can actually pass through this, hopefully in a few more years, and things will change. Yeah. Skipper Chong Warson 1:11:47 So Chui Chui, where can people find out more about you? Where are you online? What other places should people look for you? Chui Chui Tan 1:11:55 So I have my website, beyo.global. And on there you can find the link to my books as well. I am more active on LinkedIn, and I also have started a YouTube channel at @chuichuitan. So these are the top three channels that I'm using, and where you can find me easily. Skipper Chong Warson 1:12:23 Awesome. Well, thank you for your time today with the conversation. I know that I learned a ton just us talking back and forth. Chui Chui Tan 1:12:31 No, thank you. I love the conversation with you and questions and discussions we have as well. So thank you. [Outro music] Skipper Chong Warson 1:12:37 And that's it for this episode of the How This Works show. We appreciate your support. Subscribe so you don't miss out. Skipper Chong Warson 1:12:44 This podcast is a product of How This Works co, a product strategy and design practice, where we find ways to work better together and produce the right outcomes for your growing company. Skipper Chong Warson 1:12:56 Until next time, remain ever curious and we'll talk again soon.