As a young American expat working in Guangzhou, China, Samuel Massie certainly stood out from his Chinese colleagues. While he eventually settled into the regimented daily routine his employer expected, certain aspects of adapting to a new corporate culture proved to be more challenging.
In a recent The New York Times piece, Massie describes the greatest lesson he learned while working abroad. Because he was the lone American in a Chinese office, he enjoyed when his colleagues looked to him for an international perspective. He starred in recruitment videos and even entertained workers at large events as an MC and singer.
Samuel and most of his unmarried coworkers lived in an austere, dormitory-like development with limited access to transportation and very little to do. Knowing that many of his fellow workers were just as unhappy as he was with these conditions, he decided to do something about it.
“Living this way seemed like a slow spiritual death, and it caused me to come up with an anonymous employee satisfaction survey,” - Samuel Massie
After writing a 15-question survey on food, housing, salary, benefits and general employee satisfaction, Massie posted it on the company intranet and invited others to take it via email. Expecting to be lauded by his colleagues and maybe even recognized by leadership for being so proactive, he was surprised when his actions had a very different outcome. Within 10 minutes of hitting “send” on the email invitation, he was called in by HR and told in no uncertain terms that he must delete the survey.
He didn’t obey them.
Instead, he kept the survey up and soon had 300 responses which included detailed employee complaints including “Too many men. Not enough women.” and “The canteen food is dreadful, severely impacting employee health.”
Feeling vindicated in his choice to keep the survey up, he found himself facing his boss once again and being criticized for disrupting the harmony of the workplace. Fearing the loss of his job, he decided to begrudgingly sign an apology and cease the survey at once.
Despite wanting to be a corporate class hero who challenged authority and helped his colleagues lead happier working lives, he learned that what he’d done had been a major cultural misstep. China is a hierarchical society and rather than a simple act of goodwill, his actions were an affront to office harmony.
Change is incremental and, in a process-oriented culture like China, many factors and motivations go into making things the way they are. They cannot simply be undone or revised overnight and to attempt such an action is akin to mutiny. However, resistance to change is not only a Chinese or Asian characteristic. Most Western companies would also object to a coworker distributing such a survey without permission. Doing so was most definitely a youthful indiscretion on Massie’s part.
Looking back on his experience, Massie says he’s learned that the more effective way to create change in a foreign workplace (or any workplace, really) is by working with leadership rather than against them. Had he been more patient and culturally aware, he believes he would have been able to convince leadership to make changes and create a better atmosphere for workers.
He concludes with this: “[This experience] taught me that the most critical step isn’t to “make a difference,” but to understand. It’s a principle I’ve tried to apply ever since — in China, in global business and in life in general.”
What insights do you pull from this story? Is there anything you would add to Massie’s observations? How does the process of organizational change vary between cultures and how would you advise foreign and domestic professionals to approach such issues? Share your opinion in the comments section below.
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