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Episode 100
Dr. Chui Chui Tan discusses the importance of culturalization in product management. She explains that culturalization involves deep adaptation to local cultural nuances, behaviors, and mentalities, requiring continuous adjustment. Tan outlines three levels of culturalization and emphasizes the need for strategic research to uncover unmet needs and cultural sensitivities, rather than just tactical questions. Tan also highlights the importance of immersing in local markets, avoiding stereotypes, and using a balanced approach to gather insights. She advises starting with small steps and leveraging existing data to build a foundation for successful culturalization.
RESOURCES
YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@chuichui-tan
TRANSCRIPT
Intro 00:03
welcome to productvoices, a podcast where we share valuable insights and useful resources to help us all be great in product management. Visit the show's website to access the resources discussed on the show. Find more information on our fabulous guests, or to submit your product management question to be answered on our special Q and A episodes. That's all@productvoices.com and be sure to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform. Now. Here's our host, JJ Rorie, CEO of great product management.
JJ Rorie 00:37
Hello and welcome to productvoices. Today's conversation is about cultural intelligence and its role in product management and especially in shaping product strategy. Cultural intelligence and culturalization is something that I don't think gets highlighted enough in product management and in business, for that matter, in product we talk a lot about localization and making products work for local areas, but my guest today has really kind of pioneered a lot of work in culturalization, which is much broader and deeper and more important, I think, than What we typically consider as localization, which is again, just kind of bringing products to new markets, if you will. So I'm so excited about this conversation, and I couldn't be more thrilled to have my guests with me today. Dr Chui Chui Tan specializes in culturalization. As I've said, her strategies are tailored for international growth. She leverages cultural insights to craft winning global business strategies and has partnered with industry giants, Fortune 500 companies and household names, guiding them to navigate international markets successfully. Chui Chui's expertise lies in simplifying complex cultural landscapes into actionable strategies that drive business success worldwide. And believe me when I say that is not easy to do. Really excited for her new book, which is called research for global growth strategies and guidance for cross cultural insights. We'll make sure to link to that book so you can get it. Dr tan, thank you so much for joining me.
Chui Chui Tan 02:16
Thanks for having me, JJ.
JJ Rorie 02:18
yeah, I again, I spend a lot of time with teams in terms of, you know, kind of globalizing their products and getting them into different markets. And, you know, obviously some of the work is, is is good and is impactful. But I think the work that you do and really thinking about it from a broader perspective, and culturalization, which I love, that is so important. So let's just kind of set the stage first, obviously your expertise, and you write about the fact that culturalization is a better term and practice than localization. So tell me what you mean by that. Tell me what the difference is and why culturalization is better.
Chui Chui Tan 03:04
Sure. So then the most common terms everyone knows is localizations. And when I started working with different clients, and we would talk about how they adapt their websites or products or services into new market. And a common questions I normally ask, like, how much have you done for the other market, or how much are you prepared to do? And so on. And a lot of crash, a lot of time, they will say, Yeah, we do. We do quite a lot of localizations already. And when I dig deeper, it's often means they translate the language or the most, they will actually change the currencies, you know, the common things that are very common. And I realized very soon that there's a lot interpretations of what localization is, and a lot of times people always misinterpreted as just language and some basic elements within that.
Chui Chui Tan 04:01
But of course, once you start working more globally, then you realize, actually, to be successful in the market, it's just not about just the language anymore, but they are much more than that. Is a lot of adaptations you need to do on in terms of how people behave and their mentalities, and you know all the things that they do or expect within that. So I start to use the word culturalizations. It's not a word that you can find, not yet on like Oxford or Cambridge, or have any dictionaries you have, but it's quite self explanatory, because you say it, and people kind of realize what that means as well.
Chui Chui Tan 04:44
So for me, it's like localization is more on the structure level of adaptation. So you just kind of make something changes, and often is one of process. You make the changes of the language, or you make changes of the currency, and that is it. That is. Done so that you actually can communicate easier. But culturalization is a deeper process, so it's actually helped to build more connections with the audiences in in many different cultural levels. And it's also required continuously, continuous adjustment, and because it's you can't be possible know everything about a country, and then just do one of things, you have to keep improving. And things might change because of certain elements within their environment change, and they start changing behavior. So you need to start modifying them as well. So that's why I start to use culturalizations, because it's a deeper sense. It's a deeper layers on that. And the other thing I also want to mention as well is, you know, the word culture, and when I just started, it's very common. We always say it's like, oh, this country have very unique culture. You know that Japan is Japan has very unique culture. Or we can say, oh, let's we, let's adapt our products into the local culture. But then I started wondering, like, what does culture actually means, right? And when you actually Google culture, and a lot of things come up, it's actually organization culture, you know? It's more about organization. And then when you go into like, publications like New York, the New Yorkers, or New York Times, or, you know, all this big publication, and you say, oh, I want to find articles about culture, and this pop culture that came up, you know, like, it's really different things when you go, when you even search for podcasts, sometimes I want to say, Okay, what's out there, and then you search culture, and it's all all these different organization, culture, pop culture, subculture, and all this came out, but not really the culture that I am looking for. So I have been kind of like looking into how actually to interpret better what culture is, but actually cultures, it's a simple term, but it's actually a very complicated word, because you have many layers and many facets into that and and to me, it's actually wrapped around us. It's not language, but it's also the food we eat, the music we listen to, the building they we build, and you know how we communicate each other, the festival we celebrate our costume we were, you know, like lots of that, I can go on and on and on and on. So I think the whole main thing I'm trying to convey to businesses is that culture is huge, like many layers, many facets. That's why, when you're thinking about cultural adaptations for your business, you can't just focus on one narrow aspect to it. You need to kind of pill the different layers and say, what does that mean to your product and services? How does that impact people perceive your brand or use your brand or services and so on. So yeah, that's why, like, the work culture is, is, is quite complicated, but I like, that's why I like using culturalization to represent the complexity, but also the interesting layers that actually we are trying to unpail When we talk about expanding your businesses to to global markets, goes to the point of it being so much more than localization, right? And, and culturalization. And the word culture, to your point is, there's, there's just so many elements and nuances to it. And, and I don't think we think about it, it's, it's a little bit like the word strategy, right? We, we all think we know exactly what strategy means. But then when you, as you, as you say, kind of start feeling back the layers of the onion. It's like, okay, and same thing with cultural, culture and culturalization.
JJ Rorie 08:45
So I love that. So it's, this is such a great conversation already, and we're only five minutes in, but so, so tell me, tell me more about your levels of culturalization, your three levels I think you have of culturalization. What that looks like, so that, so that listeners and leaders can understand and of the some of the details of what you're what you're seeing there.
Chui Chui Tan 09:07
Yeah, so in my book, actually mentioned about three layers of culturalizations, and to be honest, like this, this is just really basic layers. There's much more, especially when you get to the third layer that I'm going to cover, and there's much more to unpick there. Let's, let's start with these three layers. So I have level one. Layer One is, I call it respect establishment. So it's about building the basic connections that your products or your service or your brand has with your local audiences. So it's to build the basic solid repo to show that you actually respect their culture, or respect what they actually value in a society or in a country. So it's kind of respecting their cultural sensitivity, their local law, their values and so on so of typical examples like not creating content or not promoting something on your website or on your campaigns or anything that might offend the local values or even geopolitical sensitivity that you have to actually pay attention to. So the most typical examples I always use is because it's easy to relate. Is the the geopolitical mistakes that companies make in terms of in their survey or in their products or websites or so on, kind of talk about or adverts, even that talk about Tibet or Hong Kong or Taiwan as a separate country from China. So a lot of them actually either get banned or backlash online backlash, and have to apologize to the Chinese government and Chinese netizens as well, so things like that. So it's very it's sometimes making those mistakes, actually quite hard for you to come back once your brand is kind of like being their reputations is kind of a bit damaged. It's hard to apologize and come back to it and so on. So this is kind of basic things religions as well. Like promoting be, for example, in a, in a in a very high Hindu religious countries, also on. So, yeah, it's kind of like making sure that you have you understand level, like, I respect your culture. Now I'm coming in like, let's welcome us coming into your countries and so on. The next level is actually, I call it cultural expectations. So it sounds very trivial, but it's actually important. This is kind of like, more like the localizations we know of, like the daily elements that we talk about currency earlier, but also naming like some country you start like, for me in the UK, I'm Chui Chui tan, because tan is my last name when I went back, go back to Malaysia, I'm Tan Chui Chui. So all the document have to, like, fill in differently, um, the forms and everything. Um, so yeah, there are things like that all on your forms you probably want to make sure, not forcing everyone to say you have to fill in your middle name, or you have to make sure there's no dash or in your name, because this is not allowed. But a lot of names in a lot of countries actually have a dash in between their first name, for example. So things like that, you need to kind of make sure date format as well, like formatting like you start with day first or month first, or the other way around in the US. So don't get that right wrong, so that when bookings and stuff like, they book the wrong dates and so on. So all this is kind of like the basic things that you don't want to hinder the customer experience when people use your product, and then the third layer is experience enhancement. So this one is more complicated. This is the one that will set your brand apart, because you remember you did the first layer, right? You didn't offend anyone. And then you give them the basic experience and layer to integrate. But the third layer is where you actually enhance the experience that the local customers or audiences would have when you use your products. They are more likely to be able to relate to you because it fits into their ecosystem, fits into their mental model, fits into their financial setup because of how you provide some in terms of payment methods or so on. So these are the things that you could do on another layer.
Chui Chui Tan 13:48
But it's also the most complicated one, because it doesn't have a it doesn't have, you know, very clear answer, a playbook as such, like for this country. Just do all this and then you'll be fine. And it's also depending on the industry you're in, the product you're selling will be different things that you need to pay attention to, as compared to the other brands that actually selling completely different thing in the same company. And this is a bit where I would say, like collecting local insights and local data, and like life through international cross cultural research will be beneficial, because then it helps you to understand the local context and environment and culture in a very in a deeper sense, so you can make a better, more unique decisions than your competitors are doing. Yeah, it's, it's, I love those, those levels, because, again, to your point, they, they lay the foundation, right? You're not going to succeed if you, if you disrespect from the local the local people, local government, etc, even inadvertently, it doesn't matter, right?
JJ Rorie 14:59
It's, it's, if you're, if you're doing that, like you said, it's kind of hard to come back from it. I'm sure that's a lot of work to come back from. So so that, and then just layering on more and more kind of, kind of the basics, the expectations, experience, I think that's a really great way to look at it.
JJ Rorie 15:17
And just a, kind of a personal note when you're talking about the month differences, right? Or the way that that different places have the, you know, display dates. My, of course, in the US, it's usually the month and the date and the year, but, but most, or many other places, it's day, month, year, and my birthday is July, 7, which is the seventh month and the seventh day, which I'm always, I'm always glad about, because I never screw it up, which I know I would otherwise. So that that I think, thank you parents for having me on the day that I can, that I could make that easy, so quick question, just to follow up that on, on, I want to, want to dig into something you talk about in your book that I love. But quick question on just a follow up, because all of this is, it's all just so important. How important is it to employ and engage local people anytime you're growing into a new market. For example, if I'm a United States based company, and most of my employees are American, and I want to go to Malaysia, or I want to go to somewhere, you know, how important is it for organizations to find partners, to employ people there, to find find those connections, to make sure that we're doing all of the levels appropriately.
Chui Chui Tan 16:46
Yeah, there are a lot of ways of doing that. So I think, of course, the best way to kind of understand the local culture and context and everything is is, well, first of all, to make sure that you don't stereotyping first, because that's amazing when very easily make also what you hear around, Oh, someone say in this, in this country, you don't do this and do that. So you cannot start collecting some, unconsciously collecting some bias elements within that. So depending on where you are on your market if let's say you So, let's say some country companies actually have a few local sales representatives, internal team within that you can actually get some informations from them. But also, I always say, be careful of that, because as much as actually they are locals and they actually have the knowledge. But at the same time, sometimes them within themselves have some stereotyping as well, and and self beliefs on what they think happening around them, or what they think they are. They are people, the people in the local country one so I still feel like that is the subjective views on how you do that. So you can, you can do this research sometimes Right? Like you can kind of do a lot of certain level of informations online, but you have to be careful like anything else and anything in in our life, like internet and JJ, PT, on AI never, always, right? So you still have to make sure that actually, you cross check and everything else is available. So the best way to do it is you immerse yourself in the country, right? So if you have budgets, sure I see, I think it's very good for you or the team to kind of go out and immerse yourself, to to to the place and see observe how people are doing that and so on.
Chui Chui Tan 18:45
On top of that as well, if you want to do research and collect more informations and kind of understand a bit more focus on what you want to know so that you have the answer to kind of get your strategy on your product strategy, then sure. So you probably want to get some experts in terms of understand, doing some local research, user research or market research, to kind of understand a bit more about that.
Chui Chui Tan 19:13
So, yeah, there are a lot of ways of doing that. So I have been helping businesses on I've covered actually over I was counting this over the weekend, like, I think I've covered over 48 countries now for different, different, different clients, and some is pre launch time. It's like they already there and trying to improve and so on.
Chui Chui Tan 19:35
So, yeah, I also, I don't speak the languages. I obviously don't know everything about all culture, but I know the I know what to look into, and I know enough to kind of have a framework to make sure that what we go look into is kind of useful to so on. So I have my local teams to kind of help me on the logistics side of it, in terms of finding the right. People for us to talk to, like right participants, or research participants for us to talk to, so that you actually meet to our target users, or so on and so on. And sometimes I have my local local team to kind of moderate, but I'm kind of manage that to make sure we are on the right right directions and ask the right questions, so that we actually can have an overview of that. The one thing I kind of realized is as good, sometimes clients actually go straight to a local team, like, for example, they want to do research in Indonesia, they went straight to the Indonesia team to kind of say, Oh, can we do that? One thing is that I, from my experience, is it's possible sometimes, that local teams, as much they have the insights they sometimes might be, might be kind of not blinded, but actually didn't pick up the nuances that is so common to them, and there are so many terms that we're just like, Oh, can you ask that questions and prompt me for tomorrow? And just and then, why is that doing that? And they were just like, why are you asking those questions? Because this is how we do it. Like this is normal, but to us as a global view, global perspective, which is like, that is the one thing that is so important make this market so unique that we need to do something about it. So sometimes local teams might not be able to kind of identify that, and you you need to have that kind of global view. So that's why, kind of where it comes in to make sure that we have a balanced and global views on perspective on everything else as well. So yeah, I think, I think that's, there's a lot of ways of doing that, but yeah, and also, I'm just mentioning about going out as well. Like I sometimes go out with some clients or teams going out to countries, but they just stay in a hotel, just go and view the research, go back, being careful and and it's like, you do need to go out, and sometimes it might be scary, like you go to a country like, oh, like, went to Saudi Arabia last year, and it's me and another client who is a female as well. I have been before, so I kind of like the country has changed, and it's more modern, and it will be fine. We have a weekend to explore. But then there's a nervousness about, oh, it's like, I was told, it's like, we should just get out to Dubai and then come back again after the week, and so on. But I managed to convince them, and then we stayed and we we actually went into the local, local places and local experience and everything like it helped us to understand the whole complicated insights about Saudi, for example, in terms of modernizations, and also the the conflicting value that they have, of of the their religion. So it's so complicated, like, if we didn't do the emotions, we wouldn't be able to kind of find out. So if you go out, do go out, do it.
JJ Rorie 23:08
Yes, that that's phenomenal. Yeah, that's phenomenal advice. I really appreciate you talking about that, because it is so there's just so much that we we could forget. I love the point about sometimes locals, you know, have blind spots, right? And it's, it's all, it's a human, human behavior and kind of human nature to do that. We do that with anytime we're immersed in something so long we just assume everybody knows it. And so I think that's a really great point. So speaking of research, and you mentioned kind of research and how you do that. So one of, one of the parts of your book that I love the most is when you discuss research and how doing it the right way so imperative to success. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna read you or quote you here, but I really liked the part where you talked about strategic versus tactical, or, you know, tactical and strategic, not necessarily versus but just, you know, the two kinds. So here's a here's a quote from your book. "What makes strategic cross cultural research important is its emphasis on local audiences, experiences and contexts. Therefore, instead of asking tactical questions, you should look into asking strategic questions, for example, tactical research question, what feature do the Japanese users want? Strategic research question, what unmet needs or pain points to Japanese users have that we can address?" I love that. It's so important. So can you share more on your thoughts of tactical and strategic, and kind of how those two work together. Or you know, you know how to know which one is is appropriate at the right time. You know how to make sure you're being strategic and asking and not kind of fall into a tactical trap.
Chui Chui Tan 24:59
Yeah. So let's talk about what tactical research and strategy. Strategic Research is in my definition, so tactical is a lot of time is more like testing. So you probably wanted to test a prototypes to see whether the prototype interface actually makes sense to the local audiences or the copy that you actually use or translated. So it's something that you have something to show them to see whether something's working. So it's very tactical. You take that, you get the output, the insight, and then we make changes to the to your prototype or your products. And that is simple, and that, and then, but then strategic research is more like you're thinking about your road map. You're thinking about the decisions that the company or your team actually could do in the in the short term, mid term and long term, sometimes quarterly, quite some time, half a year, and then sometimes yearly plans as well. So to me, tactical is good, right? So you kind of make a decisions, and you have to move on. It's great. But at the same time, if you want to be valuable to valuable to your team, to the business, especially, or to your stakeholders, if you are just a researcher, you need to be able to kind of provide more insights in terms of why people doing that. And by the way, you didn't ask us to do this. This is what we found as well, you know, to use those informations to inform other things and also to start gathering those insights about the culture, about the behavior or how things work within a country or society.
26:35
So take example, like you were saying about the features, right? Like, it's really easy to kind of see, okay, what people want. And, like, maybe a brand positioning, is that right, or, or the pricing is that, is that what the price right? If we put it on, on this amount of money, like, is that what people want? So you can test that. You can do a few tests to say, okay, these features is what people want, and then we talk about them that features actually doesn't make sense, or the filter features doesn't really make sense to them, and so on. But actually, while you're doing that, you could also add questions about, sometimes it's as as simple as asking, why and why do you feel? Like, Oh, actually, tell me about, how do you make that decision, so that you actually have the mentality, the rationale behind that decisions, so you will be able to explore a bit more so, for example, when you talk about pricing, they might say, Yeah, this is this is okay, this is affordable. But then you need to start asking. You probably want to start asking, Okay, why understand their economy set up, and also, is the price monthly actually useful? Then you start to asking about, oh, actually, most people get paid for on a weekly basis. In that country. In some countries in Africa, they get paid in in weekly so when you want them to pay something for subscriptions model or monthly or in a frequent basic, then you start to say, okay, even the prices we are showing them is monthly. They say, yeah, that is fine. And this is actually more affordable. And this is actually when you start digging in how their financially, financial setup is in that countries and the economy setup is in that country, then you kind of realize how maybe you actually need to have a plan for weekly rather than monthly, you know, like, open up more things that you're actually not aware of.
Chui Chui Tan 28:36
So, yeah, there are always things to kind of think about, instead of us answering that tactical questions that you are testing or you're finding out, you could actually opening up to kind of have a bigger views in terms of what they are, and the holistic perspective about how things work in the ecosystem in that country as well. So that is more important, because then the more tactical research you do, you gather every now and then, gather some strategic insights, and you start to build up the whole picture, or fuller picture, about the market as well. So that is, like, really important. For example, we I was doing research for I was helping online dating websites not up. Online dating app that there's a Bumble. So they that Bumble. They their proposition is all about woman make the face first move. So woman has to be the one message. One day much woman has to be made the first move to send a message, and then the guy only then can can reply back. So it's a very strong propositions throughout the years. But then in Japan, it just like, how do we culturalize our business and products? Is the proposition still right? So there's some tactical things that they will kind of say, can we see, like the features, all the features that we did a competitor analysis?
30:00
Like all the so many competitors, local competitors and international there. Then some of them is very like, I want to get married. This is the app I go to. This is like, casual is the app I go to. So where do this sit? But then this competitor analysis, the tactical side is just look at what other competitors have in terms of their filtering, you know, like here, filtering might be height, might be age. But then in in Japan, we see a lot of filters that have other websites. House is like, when do you when do you have your day of this a Saturday, Sunday, or is that Monday, Tuesday? Because, of course, that is actually quite important thinking about that in blood types. Because apparently, maybe the hypothesis is like, blood type, you know, like it's, do you match on the blood types? So it's kind of important. So there are a lot of all these features on almost all of the four or five of the competitors side. So the tactical thing is easy to say, Oh, we just spend time and build this branch as features as well. But once we start to get more strategic, asking the questions that we realize actually a lot of them is actually not important for the users.
31:18
Actually, there are other things actually more important, like smoking or not, you know, there are certain features. And to think about the whole traditional view of women make the first move is, actually, is that okay? Is that acceptable in within their cultural values? So you can start to ask, actually, slightly different questions when you get into the tactical one, so that you just don't stick into that you can add more value to your stakeholders, to your team, your product teams that you work with. Of course, all this information will be useful for them in making decisions on their products, road maps as well. So that's why I'm saying, like even you do tactical one, it's good to answer your questions are brief, but then always actually include some strategy elements into that that makes so much sense. And Bumble is actually a really great example of, you know, a business that was built on a certain value point, right and very tired, and a business model, of product was built around a certain, certain position, and that position may not work in other cultures, right, in all cultures, so at least not in its kind of, you know, static, original form. So that's, that's a fascinating example, and really, really great insights into where there are times when we we need tactical, you know, inside technical research, but we can always turn that or use that time, use that insights into asking a little bit more strategic. Because I think you know what, I'm sure you know, I teach a lot of people product management that both in university, at the corporate level, and one of the key kind of pillars that that I try to teach when it comes to customer intelligence and customer research, user research, etc, is to to dig and to ask the right questions and not just ask, you know, very specific, you know, closed ended kind of questions. And this is a really great example of why that matters so much. Because, you know, sure we can get a very specific tactical answer from someone or from some group, but if we're not digging a little bit more, we're not going to get those nuances. So that's really great. And again, I think that part of your book is amazing. So another plug for your book, we're gonna, we're gonna put a link out there, and all of you need to get that, get that book because it's nice. Okay, so just a little bit more general question, and we touched on some of these through the conversation. But are there some common areas that you see, businesses, teams, make mistakes when it comes to this, I think the most common, like ones, is stereotyping, like we talk about that, and, you know, it's kind of very, very clear about, like a lot, I have a lot of people actually have a preconceptions of what they believe a country or market is, even especially the higher, maybe higher level stakeholders, sometimes even have a stronger view of what a market looks like and so on. So that is the one thing that I often see, and one of the way I actually go in and kind of address these issues. It's in my book, and it mentioned about an exercise that I call for bucket exercise, where actually I've kind of forced all the stakeholders, and that's relevant, to be in a room, sometimes virtual, virtually or in person, to say, actually what informations that you think that you know of about this market. And also. So what do you think you want to know? And it's important for you to set your products strategy or business strategy, or so on. So kind of get them, everyone together to put it in the full bucket. For first bucket is facts. So it's like it's known facts that everyone know is is true. So in this bucket is, is, is, you can actually make decision based on whatever in that bucket.
35:26
The second one is strong hypothesis. So it's something that is, you know quite well, but you feel like you probably need one or two things to kind of validate or invalidate that, or give a bit more information to kind of give the full answer to that statement. And third one is weak hypothesis. So it's kind of like kind of No, but not sure. So we need more things to kind of make sure it's right or it's wrong. And the fourth one is unknowns. So when we do it, when I do this exercise, is very common. You can see a lot of them into the facts, because they say we know that, and and then I kind of always make sure that tell me Well, like, how you know that? Can you give me a link to it? Can you give me a kind of a reference of, when did you do the research and you have this insight? And because sometimes it outdated So, or sometimes it's just really their view. So when I asked that, oh, it's just quite funny, there's one time that I can see all the post its start to move towards the because they don't have the answer. It's like, oh, it's going to get to me. And now that so they move them to the strong hypothesis to make sure it's like, because it's really important to make sure the first bucket is really correct so you don't make the mistake of and making decisions with the wrong or weak hypothesis. So that's a way to kind of make sure there's no stereotyping. The other thing as well is make some I saw actually some products managers or C level is actually sometimes they, they kind of like make a risk, do a research, or quick, not even user research, some quick analysis about certain things, and then start to make decisions very quickly. And that is fine sometimes, because sometimes you you can't just wait to have a lot of information so big make a decisions, right that. But there's a balance between how, how accurate and also how,
Chui Chui Tan 37:23
how much the insights that you're using, or information you're using to make that decision is represent the full picture. So sometimes it's easy for them to take one, one thing that they found fascinating from a research or from data, whatever, and then stick to it, and then keep making decisions based on that one thing. Um, sometimes it's fine, but sometimes it's just very risky, because then you actually ignore other things that might attach to it. So, you know, the example I can't remember is that the a picture like someone is touching something, you say, Oh, this is a probe or brush, but actually it's the tail of an elephant is a hope, right? So you actually take just one piece of information you thought that's a brush, we can make a decision based on that and and actually turn out it is the tail of elephant, and you kind of lose the whole picture and say, Oh no, the decision you made is actually incorrect. So, but sometimes it's okay to kind of make that decision based on whatever information you have, because you have to move on,
Chui Chui Tan 38:25
but you have to look into how important that decision is. Can they be reversed if it is not as accurate, and what is the impact to it to kind of make decisions on or can we do actually, small,
Chui Chui Tan 38:41
small, incremental changes, so that actually we can do it and then get tested and, you know, make more and more insight to kind of make that big, to become big decisions. So that's the second ones that I often see teams actually making, to make decision too fast with one, and then stick to one, and then I will share the third one is that
Chui Chui Tan 39:07
sometimes they will kind of run into making decision very quickly. So I was talking to a CPO, a company, and in that conversation is that it's really overwhelming, which, fair enough, like culturalization can solve very overwhelming. But at the same time I say, so let's talk about, like, where you are and so on. One, one thing like, just like, Okay, we want to go into. We are already in this market, naturally, because we didn't launch specifically, people just pick out our products and services. So now Should we want to get into? But we're worried, like, so tell me how. Like, asking me, like, tell me how. How can we make sure that we do the right marketing to it to this market, because we see some, some, some growth in that naturally. So it's kind of like, I just like, let's step back. Like, why marketing start with like, you know.
39:59
So is this the right market for you to focus on to start with? Actually, maybe they are growing. It's fine, you just leave it. But actually you have a bit better markets that you should focus on, because of the opportunities, because of the low frictions of going in and so on. And also is that the product, the marketing, the marketing, the marketing strategy you should think about, or actually it's a product of brands to think about it as well. Because growing a business in other in a country, on a new market, it's always have to be everything. It's not just one team to do everything else, right? So imagine your marketing is so well and you have a great brand in that countries, but then your product is not matching the local elements or local needs. Then you invite someone to your house to a party about the party is crap, and then it's not going to stay. Or you actually really great party in the House. You have all the music and food and everything, but you're actually not very good in in bringing people along with you, because you connect with them locally. So that doesn't work. So you always have to be a whole, whole teams to make it work as well. I think my book, in my book, I use the metaphor of you, you need a whole, well, your whole village, to raise a child, and then it's like the whole whole team's whole business to build a business in a local in a local market. So yeah, it's kind of like, if you are products, sure you look after your products, but also you need to kind of make sure you communicate as well and together with your with your other teams. And likewise, other teams might should work together always with the products or brands or design or so on as well. And yeah, make sure that you just, you don't, you don't just focus on one thing think think that is the one thing is going to go and then go straight into it, step back and think about, is this the right market? What should we do? What is the challenges first that we should focusing on first, I want to, I want to just dig very, very quickly into to that last one, because my kind of last question for you is, how, how does a team or a leader get started? Because, to your point, it can feel overwhelming to, you know, because, because it is complex, and there are things, and we don't want to just do the wrong thing. So, you know, you kind of thinking about that, that executive of, I know it should be marketing. I'm just going to run towards marketing that you know, it probably soothes us to grab onto something and move forward in this overwhelming kind of feeling of launching into a new culture, etc. But if you had to give advice to folks listening, who are again, you know, contemplating moving into a new Geo, new culture, a new country, etc. What is that one or two first steps like the the first thing to do, even if it's just thinking or planning or what have you. But what is what would be like that first step that you can take to start yourself on a successful path for realization, I could understand it's actually very overwhelming and but at the same time, sometimes it's you can start from very small. You know that we talk about the whole layers that different layers, like, oh, you can sell first layer, second layer, and then when you get to the third layers, even within that, you can start small, right? You can start saying, Okay, we actually did some some research, or even desk research, or informations that you get from the industry informations, you know, industry data, or also on or whatever internal informations you have. I think it's great to just kind of sit down and say, Okay, what do we actually know already about this market? Right? Because we talk about the exercise, and you can just simply put whatever you have into the bucket to by yourself. And also, when you're already in a market, sometimes it's actually a lot of people forgot about going back to see what data they have, and not just the data as it is, but sometimes you can kind of dig deeper into okay, we can play around with this data and that data combinations, and then get information from that, and then see what actually you can derive from that. And then you can say, Okay, actually, we can make certain decisions based on that.
44:41
And sometimes it's kind of like, see what Internet data you have and then make that decisions. Or you say, actually, we just need a bit more small scale of research. What enough for us to kind of make the first steps? You know that from the very beginning, I say culturalization is is continuous journey.
45:00
Me, and it is the case. So it doesn't have to feel like I need to make no quite a lot of piece of that country to make a big decisions or to see something different. It could be a small piece to start with, to say, Okay, let's do a certain thing, like we just look into our features and see how people kind of use them and not use them, and how it actually fits into the cultural, cultural context. So, for example, if you are educations related, like digital attack, and you might look into, okay, how does that like you want to look in South Korea or in Asia countries, like, like, what does education look like? You know, like, oh, performance in academic is really important. But who is actually making the decisions on which university to go into is that the kids, the students, are actually the parents, or actually the tuitions teachers. So there are certain elements that you actually could easily find online already on, you know, that this kind of papers and scientific papers talking about how important so it within that, then you can actually say, Okay, with that, can we actually get into this market easily? You know, like small step at them at each time to kind of see what you have, and sometimes during the exercise of what information we have to be able to kind of bring you towards that. So the other framework that I sometimes use with client is very quick. One is to kind of see if that the market that you want to get into first, or is that the right market to focus on for next level is, is two exists and one axis is effort that frictions effort you needed to do. One is opportunity. So how many, how, how big is the time, the total addressable market, and so on. So you kind of plot them into the axis in terms of, yeah, big opportunity, huge populations in India, in Indonesia. But then the friction is, is hard because then you have to go through the legal regulations, because the way they do, they do finance, for example, is different, so you might take more time, and then within that exercise, it actually will enable you to find out how much you know about market and how much you need to do more things to kind of help you to do answer. So there are certain way that you actually can see what small steps you can do now to help you to move forward, and as you go forward, and you can let more informations you become more and more confident to to make a bigger decisions as well.
JJ Rorie 47:39
I love that advice. I If you don't know for sure that you should go into the market, use that framework and and even if you think you do, I think it sounds like a great framework, you know, effort and opportunity to to validate that, and then absolutely, like, just starting with what we know and the bucket exercise, and putting putting what we know or what we think we know in that, I think that's those are great starting points. And I think the confidence that it, that it brings with knowing that we can't possibly know it all right now, that we're always going to be learning there's, there's a comfort level with that. And I think that that's also good advice to for people to get started right? Sometimes we get, you know, so So potentially overwhelmed that we just assume this will be so so difficult that we're not even going to try. And I think, I think those are all great, great insights or great advice to help people just get that first start, right, the teams just to do some internal investigation and and, and just kind of understand where they stand today. So that's that's wonderful. And this, this whole conversation, has been just so fabulous. I have thoroughly enjoyed meeting with you and learning from you. I've loved our time together, not just on on the podcast today, but the time we spent together. I'm so excited that you agreed to come on and chat with me and share your insights so Dr. Chui Chui Tan, thank you again so so much for joining me on product Voices.
Chui Chui Tan 49:10
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
JJ Rorie 49:12
And don't forget to go check out the book. Our book is called research for global growth strategies and guidance for cross cultural insights, and we'll have links to that and again, thank you all for joining us on productvoices. Hope to see on the next episode.
Outro 49:29
Thank you for listening to productvoices, hosted by JJ Rorie, to find more information on our guests, resources discussed during the episode, or to submit a question for our Q and A episodes. Visit the show's website, productvoices.com and be sure to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform. You.