Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

The Leadership Culture Clash That Will Make or Break You | Sitecore (Podcast 512)

25 Sept 2025 · 1 min

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1:09

A speaker (running SAP's business) reflects on leading in Kazakhstan, contrasting Western, transparent, public-company management practices with more command-and-control local cultural norms. The talk emphasizes the need to balance non-negotiable corporate governance and clarity with sensitivity to local expectations for directive leadership, noting effects on entrepreneurial spirit.

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When I went to Kazakhstan, I was running SAP's business. SAP is a publicly traded company, the largest software company in Europe. There are certain ways you run a business very transparently as a public trading company and they're not non negotiable. So there are certain things that you bring to an organization which you have to be absolutely crystal clear on. At the same time, from a cultural perspective in that part of the world, culturally things are a little bit more command and control, which in some senses dampens the entrepreneurial spirit within the workplace, but in others it fuels the entrepreneurial spirit. It just means that from a practical perspective, you do need to acknowledge that for a British person, we tend to try to inspire and let people forge their own journey. You lead with a bit of followship in that part of the world. There is a necessity to, yes, bring your own style, but acknowledge the fact that there is a commander God. You will actually have to, you know, not dictate is the wrong word, but you have to be quite, quite clear.