• by David L. Smith , January 13, 2003

Leisure traveling outside the U.S. is the most unique experience. Every time. You get a chance to see things you might have never seen before or might never see again. You get to experience different food. You have the opportunity to get caught up on your reading via the long plane ride and hopefully some down time on the beach or by the pool. And, you get your eyes opened by being exposed to different cultures.

My family (wife Karen and 12 year old son Dale) went to Thailand for Christmas. First to Bangkok, staying at a world-class hotel but venturing out daily into the heart of the city. Then on to Koh Samui, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. (Koh is Thai for island).

The cultural differences that we encountered reminded me once again that, no matter where you are, if you operate solely based on your own assumptions, you could be very wrong. I have brought this back with me with the resolution to listen more and talk less (really!). To observe and take in what the other person’s perspective is on things before I try to put my views out. This seems real basic, but it’s not the way that many of us operate day to day for most business interactions. We are all too anxious to get our own agendas on the table. And we forget that, if we don’t understand the basis of someone else’s agenda, that making a deal becomes problematic.

Some of the examples that reminded me of this are interesting and some are down right hilarious:

The most obvious is that “they drive on the wrong side of the street.” Think English rules. Now, this was not a big issue, as we did not drive in Thailand. Labor is so cheap there that having a driver take you places makes the most sense. But, you have to really be aware when approaching an escalator or a stairway because all of those are on the left hand side too. And walking down the street, your natural inclination is to pass people on the right when they want to pass you on the left and near collisions abound. Especially when you come upon somebody who is clearly American or European and neither of you can figure out if the other is following local rules or hometown rules.

The funniest one is the “come here” sign. It is regarded as rude in Thailand to signal someone by showing him or her your palm or with your palm up. As a result, when you want to signal someone to come to you, you wave at him or her with palm down. You say goodbye and I say hello!

Another thing that just plain caught me by surprise more than once-salt and pepper. In restaurants and hotels that cater to westerners, salt and pepper is on the table for us. We put the salt in the shaker with all of the holes. We LOVE salt. They LOVE spice. So the salt gets the single hole container and the pepper gets the container with all the holes. Kind of interesting the first time you pepper your French fries or other “Europe food.”

Their primary religion, Buddhism influences many things. Basically, the attitude is like the Baba Ram Daas book, Be Here Now. The present is what matters. Nobody is seemingly worried about what is going to happen down the road. Or what already happened. As a result, you will find people yelling at each other over something that happened to be an extremely rare occurrence. In fact, their national “saying” is Mai Pen Lai. Which, roughly translated is, “I am not going to come down on you for your screw up because it has already happened and there is nothing that can be done to change it.” Why would you argue about something that is in the past if you can’t change it? Interesting. When you finally get into Thailand enough to invoke Mai Pen Lai by voicing it to someone you would normally be saying something much stronger to, the tension all goes away and nice things start to happen.

Another thing influenced by Buddhism and Mai Pen Las is every day disagreement. We tend to deal with disagreements through leaning forward and confronting. They tend to deal with it by pulling back, effectively diffusing the energy. Pull vs. push in everyday conversation is interesting. You should try it.

One more thing that tickled our funny bone — There is a restaurant in San Francisco called Betelnut that is pan Asian cuisine with a California overlay. There is a restaurant in Koh Samui called Betelnut that is California cuisine with a pan Asian overlay.

There are many other differences including agriculture still being the base for their economy, the hot climate (cool for them) in the middle of winter, the Internet cafes on every block, etc.

I hope that we can remember the lessons from our travels. Primary being that you cannot know what is on someone else’s mind, what their frame of reference is or what their agenda is unless you listen before you talk.

And, remember what Buckaroo Banzai said about situations like this. “No matter where you go, there you are.”

Happy New Year to all. I hope that this year meets and exceeds your expectations, both from a personal and professional standpoint.

David L. Smith is President and CEO of Mediasmith, Inc.