Accidental Internationalist

I did not start out to be an international businessman. Rather, I initially started out to be a mortician. After that, a marine biologist specializing in squids. After that, a Naval Officer with a desire to command a submarine. All those things that a kid dreams while growing up – in my case, in Dallas, Texas. But my trek into international did begin there. It is funny how you can look back on your life and go, “Wow – how the heck did I get here?” And that is pretty much what I have done. This book is about my inadvertent trek into becoming a die-hard internationalist. I will cover how I got into the business and how I stayed in the business, and I will pepper the book with stories of my experiences, both from my Navy days (which were relatively short) and from my thirty-plus years in the international defense and aerospace industry. I will include many lessons learned and cultural stories as well, as having lived abroad three times in my life for collectively almost fifteen years as well as having over another decade devoted to international business, I have a lot of both – lessons learned and cultural interactions.

International business is not for the faint of heart. You have to be willing to go outside your comfort zone in many respects. You need not give up your core values, unless your core values are very judgmental on the ‘different’ in other cultures. One example: holding hands … with another male. I was raised a Texan, and my personal space is about three feet in all directions unless you are family or a known female friend. But in many cultures, it is perfectly acceptable as a sign of respect and trust to hold hands or offer cheek kisses with the same sex. I knew it was absolutely the highest honor when one of my northeast Asian colleagues grabbed my hand and walked me down a long boulevard. We were on our way to meet his wife at their home – an unprecedented honor as well, since in this part, as in much of the world, business meetings were held in restaurants, not at homes. But my skin still crawled, because, in Texas, you ‘just don’t do that’ – that is, hold hands male on male. In the Middle East, with representatives and customers you had known for years, you absolutely had to do the cheek-kiss thing – three or four pecks, I could never figure out how many exactly. But once you were ‘in,’ you had no ‘out’ – peck peck peck . Germany, hand-shakes all around; Middle East, cheek pecks; East Asia, hand-holding. You learn to adjust, or you fail in international business.
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One of the reasons countries may have offsets is to try to lower the hurdle for acquiring advanced technologies. In many cases – direct sales or offsets – the company ends up being the unpaid advocate for a country to ratchet up the technology ladder. This is due to the company’s ability as a tax-paying member of the US to justify why a particular technology or capability should be released under export regulations. The simplest method is to demonstrate to the USG’s satisfaction that the restricted technology is already available from other, non-US sources, and a US export restriction is impeding exports from the US in favor of other countries’ exports. It gets harder after that, but sometimes you can rely on alliances to justify a release, such as the ability of a country to invest in a joint overseas operation, and the commonality of the equipment helps both the US economy (your company) and the US soldier (deployed close to the subject country).
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One of the simplest, almost funny, example [of miscommunication] was in the middle of negotiating a framework contract. The Malaysian government wanted the costs of bank wires to be paid by the contractor. As it was done via a Malaysian bank, we wanted them to cover the cost, since, theoretically, we could not control what would be charged. I think we spent an hour discussing just this point. I finally asked the group, to no one in particular, what cost level are we talking about? No one knew. We took a break while one of the Malaysians ran to the office to make a call. On returning, the Malaysian said, rather sheepishly, fifty Malaysian ringgit, or about fifteen US dollars. After a moment of silence, my boss said, “We’ll cover the cost.” Yet we spent an hour in a room with fifteen people arguing about it until the proper question was asked.
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New countries brought new cultures and situations. Also, my added role in offsets created new challenges and experiences. No longer was my only customer just the ministry of defense or chief of the air force. Suddenly I had a host of companies, large and small, wanting to get a piece of my time to discuss how they could collaborate with my company. But all this costs somebody money. Most companies will be building in that cost into their proposal. The goal of a country should be to make their offset policy straight-forward enough that the costs of implementing it are minimal – a few percentages on the total program cost. I remember one country’s chief engineer growling at me (unofficially) that their offset policy had cost the air force three aircraft … that is a specific hint at the overall cost of the offset program. Some countries are beginning to be selective in demanding offsets – best efforts, ‘we are watching you’ kind of policies. They are working relatively well in countries with an existing defense industrial base.