![The Wall Next Door, The Wall Inside — Reflecting on Six Sessions [Cross-Cultural Management #12 · Final]](https://megumirai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/ccm_12_eyecatch.jpg)
In the previous article (Cross-Cultural Management #11), I argued that D&I is not a moral aspiration but a business operating system.
In this final installment, I’ll look back across all six sessions and reflect on how the learning connected to my own work and inner world.
What six sessions taught me
| Session | Theme | What stayed with me |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Mindfulness | Justice is diverse. See the invisible — context |
| Day 2 | Cultural Intelligence (CQ) | Excellence is no free pass. Adjust your behavior |
| Day 3 | Multicultural teams & public image | The biggest wall is inside you. The “need to be recognized” |
| Day 4 | M&A and cultural integration | Organizational identity clashes. Leadership through mutual learning |
| Day 5 | Global governance | The over-adaptation trap. Designing guardrails for non-negotiables |
| Day 6 | D&I as business imperative | Systems vs. power structures. D&I must be internalized as a value |
Laid out this way, the course clearly progressed from “individual inner world” to “team” to “organization” to “global society” — each session widening the aperture.
But it wasn’t just about broadening scope. By the final session, what I felt most strongly was: “Every theme circles back to me.” Mindfulness, CQ, public image, M&A integration, governance, D&I — ultimately, each one asks the same profoundly personal question: “How will you act?”
What was happening in my own workplace
Ten years since the acquisition
My company was originally a wholly-owned subsidiary of a Japanese trading firm. After partial sale to a U.S. IT company, it was acquired by an Indian firm ten years ago. Today: Indian parent holds two-thirds, Japanese trading company holds one-third.
The company has undeniably changed. Initiatives are designed for both Japanese and Indian perspectives, and most employees accept this naturally. On the Intercultural Sensitivity model, the organization as a whole is moving from “Acceptance” toward “Adaptation.”
The journey was anything but linear. Right after the acquisition, “Denial” dominated: “What does an Indian company know about our business?” A few years in, “Defense”: “Our way is better.” Then gradually “Minimization”: “We’re all human, it’ll work out.” And now, “Acceptance” is becoming widespread. At each stage, the atmosphere shifted subtly — and I experienced every transition in real time.
What stands out most is the depth of anxiety Japanese managers felt in the early years. “Will this CEO still be here in three years?” “Why should we take risks to execute HQ policy?” These weren’t complaints — they were expressions of existential fear about losing their foundation. The “clash of organizational identity” from Day 4 was playing out in my own company.
My own team, however, was a different story. Placed in a dedicated project room for a major client — effectively “isolated” — we continued the same work with the same methods for nearly 20 years. The company was changing around us, but we stayed put. I realized we had only recently begun the transition from “Minimization” to “Acceptance.”
The problem with isolation wasn’t just information lag. Spending years with the same client, same team, same tasks unconsciously formed the assumption: “Our way is standard.” We knew the company was changing — but didn’t feel it as relevant to us. This was precisely the “inability to see the invisible” from Day 1.
Cross-cultural walls with our client
Even more striking was discovering cross-cultural dynamics in our client relationship.
For years, we shared values with our client through overlapping corporate heritage, and trust was the operating basis. Then, over three years, mid-career hires surged within the client organization, and the people we encountered operated on entirely different standards.
Previous client contacts valued long-term relationships: “These people can be trusted.” The newcomers prioritized “What’s the measurable result right now?” — demanding data-backed proposals and explicit agreements over implicit trust. This wasn’t about “who’s right” — it was different cultures coexisting within the same organization.
Our team had slipped into “Denial-Defense”: “The old way was working fine.” “Why change what isn’t broken?” But through the lens of cross-cultural management, this wasn’t about blame — it was one stage in the process where different cultures collide and move toward integration. Just understanding this dissolved my anxiety and enabled a shift to “let me understand them first.”
Concretely, I realized that what the newcomers demanded — transparency, accountability, data visualization — was actually valuable feedback for improving our own service quality. Our long-standing trust relationship had perhaps made us complacent, missing improvement opportunities. The “threat” was actually an invitation to grow.
What the changing leadership signals
Over ten years, our Japan CEO has rotated on roughly three-year cycles. The early CEOs were distant and authoritative; the current one is friendly and communicative.
Through this course, I understood this isn’t just personality differences — it reflects changing expectations from headquarters. The shift from “a passive local entity that executes HQ directives” to “a local leadership team that proactively proposes and drives change.” Role expectations for every employee have elevated.
The early CEO’s distance was probably appropriate for the “control” phase. Post-acquisition, establishing HQ’s direction required a degree of authority and distance. But ten years later, the foundation is set, and the need has shifted from “control” to “co-creation.” Hence a dialogue-oriented, approachable leader — the same pattern of phased leadership change seen in Day 4’s M&A case.
This understanding was personally pivotal. “Executing well within given boundaries” is no longer sufficient. Identifying problems, proposing solutions, proactively demonstrating the Japanese subsidiary’s value — this is what’s expected. Not just of me, but of every employee. The course made this click.
Living as a boundary spanner
Across all six sessions, a clear direction emerged for my own future role: “boundary spanner” — someone who stands at the intersection of different cultures and bridges mutual understanding.
- Understand and translate both Japanese and Indian values and contexts
- Interpret client-side changes calmly and communicate them internally
- Challenge the organization’s calcified assumptions with probing questions
The era of “performing well within assigned boundaries” is over. Proactive leadership that proposes, influences direction, and creates value is what’s required.
“Boundary spanner” was a new term for me, but looking back, I’d been unconsciously attempting this in fragments throughout my 28-year career. Standing between Indian offshore teams and Japanese clients, translating not just language but culture — “Here’s why the Indian side said this” in Japanese, “Here’s why the Japanese side reacted that way” in English. But if asked whether I was doing it intentionally, I’d have to say it was ad hoc.
This course taught me the importance of taking on the boundary spanner role deliberately. Unconscious bridging and intentional bridging produce fundamentally different quality. Intentional bridging requires the mindfulness from Day 1, the CQ from Day 2, the self-awareness about public image from Day 3 — all as foundations. The six sessions’ learnings converged into this single action principle.
I’ve identified three specific commitments. First: in regular meetings with Indian HQ, present Japanese context not as “assumed background” but as explicit explanation. Second: in dialogue with the client’s mid-career hires, receive their values not as “threats” but as “learning opportunities.” Third: create periodic forums within my team to ask “Why do we do it this way?” Small actions, but the first steps of a boundary spanner.
Reassessing my team’s developmental stage
The course gave me tools to more precisely diagnose my own team’s cultural stage.
While the company moved from “Acceptance” toward “Adaptation,” my team lingered in “Minimization”: “As long as we do our job well, cultural differences don’t matter.” We hadn’t overcome differences — we’d just looked away from them.
Now we’re in transition from “Minimization” to “Acceptance.” We’re beginning to acknowledge: “Differences exist, and they have legitimate reasons.” We haven’t reached “Adaptation” — actually adjusting behavior — yet. But recognizing the difference is there, and that it has rationale, is meaningful progress.
It all starts with the wall inside
The most important thing I want to say in closing this series:
The greatest takeaway from cross-cultural management was not a framework or a theory. It was how to face myself.
What triggers me? Why do I become defensive? Only by acknowledging the “need to be recognized” that lies beneath can I begin to genuinely understand other people’s cultures and values.
For someone who spent 28 years proving worth through technology and logic, “facing my emotions” was my weakest domain. Problems arise: analyze the cause, design the fix, execute. In that process, “my feelings” had no place. But cross-cultural management taught me that emotions are the single greatest influence on judgment and action.
When a new directive from Indian headquarters arrives, the first thing I feel is “changing again?” What’s behind that resistance? Fear of change? Discomfort at feeling my approach has been rejected? Or pride — “they don’t understand Japan”? Without recognizing that emotion, constructive dialogue is impossible.
Cross-cultural walls are not across the ocean.
They’re next to you. On the screen. And inside you.
It starts with noticing the wall inside yourself. Everything follows from there.
That is what cross-cultural management taught me.
You may have walls you haven’t noticed yet. They’re not limited to nationality or language. Between departments. Between generations. Between professions. All of these are “cross-cultural.” Noticing the wall, acknowledging that the other side has its own rationality, and adjusting your own behavior — this process never ends. But precisely because it doesn’t end, it’s worth pursuing. That’s what I believe now.
Recommended reading
To build your cross-cultural adaptability
David Livermore, Leading with Cultural Intelligence: The Real Secret to Success, 2nd Edition (AMACOM)
A practical guide to developing all four dimensions of CQ. Livermore provides assessments, frameworks, and real-world applications that make CQ development actionable — an ideal next step after completing this series.
To understand cultures as “neighboring strangers”
Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede, and Michael Minkov, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, 3rd Edition (McGraw-Hill)
“21st-century globalization doesn’t mean the world merged into one — it means different peoples became neighbors.” This framing, quoted in the very first session, comes from the intellectual tradition this book represents. Understanding cultural differences not as “better or worse” but as “different dimensions” — the most systematic resource available.
Thank you for reading the [Cross-Cultural Management] series, all 12 articles.
