The American Edge

Noura M. came to me with one objective; to help her secure her second interview with an American advertising firm. When I asked about her first interview she slumped her shoulders and shook her head. She just didn't understand what had happened.  After all, she was the most qualified person in the room. The recruiter couldn’t see it. She was being interviewed for the Senior Global Marketing Director position. The interviewer asked: “Tell me about a campaign you led.” Noura's

The deal was going perfectly, until the buyer got quiet and said one strange sentence. A few minutes later, Rizwan G. reached out to me. He’s a client in my  Evolution  program, and he’d just finished a meeting with a major U.S. buyer. He could feel the deal falling apart. The American buyer made an odd comment about “playing sports inside somewhere,” then went distant. I had a strong suspicion what Rizwan meant, but I didn’t want to guess. I asked him one clarifying question

The leaders I work with across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar are among the most capable strategists in the world. But in high-stakes American meetings, the hardest part is rarely the strategy. It ’s making your value land the way it should. This is not a lack of expertise. It’s a misalignment between the rich cultural logic of the Gulf and the low-context performance expectations of the American boardroom. In the US, efficiency is the currency. People want the point early

Success in the GCC is built on deep foundations of trust and long term relationships.