So far as I could tell, Bill Weithas had scarcely been out of America when he was appointed worldwide CEO of Lintas.
So, during the lengthy handover, his predecessor in the post, Tim Green, took every opportunity to give Bill the benefit of his long years in international management. Especially the crucial but subtle differences between different ethnic groups. “The Flemish are very xxxx, but the Walloons are totally yyyy”. Ah!
When it came to New Zealand (had Tim actually been there?), he pronounced: “The problem with the Kiwis is that they don’t know that they don’t know.”
By this stage, Bill just looked terminally bored.
Sometime later, walking down Orchard Road in Singapore with him (on his first trip there), he stopped me and pointed at a neon sign.
“What do you see there, Rog?” he asked.
It was a Johnnie Walker logo. “And there… and there… and there…” McDonald’s, Fuji, Coca-Cola.
“It’s a global village,” he opined. “You just don’t need to know all that stuff about cultural difference anymore.”
Well, he certainly didn’t.
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