Why is cross-border collaboration SO hard?

Hey Everyone,

Daimler paid $36 billion for Chrysler in 1998. By 2007, they sold the business for $7.4 billion. German executives expected hierarchy. Chrysler's team expected speed and autonomy, and neither side adjusted. Waves of leaders left, and the combined company lost over $30 billion in value.

That kind of breakdown doesn't only happen in mega-mergers. It happens whenever two cultures come together without shared rules for how decisions get made and how people communicate.

Here's a checklist for any cross-border expansion or integration.

Write down your decision rights

For every workstream that crosses borders, put on paper who decides, who gives input, and how fast decisions should happen. Without that, people fall back on whatever their home culture taught them, and sometimes those defaults will clash.

This document should answer:

• Who has final say on this workstream?
• Who needs to weigh in before a decision is made?
• How quickly should that happen?

That one page will prevent more confusion than any kickoff meeting.

Set a core-hours window and protect it

Pick a one-to-four-hour overlap where everyone is online for real-time discussion. Rotate recurring meetings so the same team doesn't always get the early morning slot.

Everything outside that window works better as written updates or shared docs where people can comment on their own time.

If your Singapore team joins a pre-dawn call every week while London takes it after lunch, they'll disengage long before they complain.

Share written materials before every meeting

In consensus-driven cultures like Japan and Korea, the person in your meeting often can't say yes alone. They need to bring your proposal to colleagues who weren't in the room. If all you gave them was a verbal pitch, they have nothing to share internally, and your deal slows down for reasons you'll never hear about.

Send your materials 24 hours ahead with a deadline to respond in writing before the live discussion. People in consensus-driven cultures can circulate them internally beforehand, and everyone gets equal access to the reasoning regardless of time zone.

Assign one named owner per initiative

GitLab runs over 2,000 people across 60+ countries with no offices. Every initiative has what they call a Directly Responsible Individual, and every decision gets documented. When someone in São Paulo needs context on a decision made in Amsterdam, the answer is already written down.

Apply the same idea at a smaller scale. After every cross-border decision, the owner posts a short update covering what was decided, what the alternatives were, and why this option won. Keep these in one searchable place – a shared doc, a Notion page, or a Slack channel dedicated to decisions. When someone new joins or a question resurfaces, the answer is already there.

Hire your regional lead early, with real authority

If you're entering a new market, hire a regional lead with actual P&L ownership and decision-making power. Give them a cross-functional team and weekly check-ins with HQ.

A single account executive reporting to a VP who never visits the market can't build a real presence. Your regional lead needs enough authority to make local pricing and hiring decisions without waiting for HQ approval. Spotify's India team had that authority and used it to launch a sub-$2 tier that broke the global pricing model to fit the local market.

Go deeper

👉 Erin Meyer: Culture Map Tools – map any country on eight dimensions, including trust, feedback, and decision-making style

👉 GitLab: Asynchronous Communication Guide – how GitLab coordinates 2,000+ people across 60+ countries using documentation instead of meetings

👉 McKinsey: How GitLab Thrives as an All-Remote Company – Sid Sijbrandij on why written systems beat workshops for building culture at scale

👉 INSEAD Knowledge: Giving Negative Feedback Across Cultures – Erin Meyer on why the same words land completely differently depending on culture

Coming up on Monday

On Monday, we'll walk you through how to build a write-first culture where decisions happen in documents before they happen in meetings.

Have a great weekend!

P.S. What country or region surprised you the most when you started doing business there? We'd love to hear.