Life in Thailand

Those of you that have visited Thailand have probably noticed the amulets that most Thais wear on chains around their neck. These are essentially good luck charms, designed to ward off evil spirits. Although they commonly reflect Buddhist motifs in their design, the amulets reflect the older, animistic beliefs that Thais still adhere to. The amulets are usually small bits of cast metal or stone and inch or so high, but that brings me to what I wanted to write about today.

I’ve noticed lately that amulets seem to be getting much bigger. It’s now quite common to see large round amulets as much as three or four inches in diameter. Now, this may just be fashion, but I’ve also noticed that the number of amulet stalls in shopping malls and other places has dramatically increased as well. I think there’s more at work here than just fashion.

These are somewhat uncertain times in Thailand. It’s not just politics, but southern unrest, a world economic decline, rising oil prices, and many other concerns that have a large number of Thais seeking a little extra help in keeping the bad things at bay.

A few days ago, I was a panelist at a seminar aimed at helping Thai businesses to expand internationally. That’s what I do when I’m not traveling and writing. One of the questions got us talking about how you determine whether or not to do business with a particular person. It’s a natural question, but the Thai moderator had a hard time believing that there wasn’t a specific set of questions you could ask to help you figure this out.

His point of view was understandable. Thais have a highly formalized system for interacting with each other based on the age and class differences between any given two people. It’s a fundamental part of their language. To get along in Thai society, and to do business, you need to know your ‘place’ in the social hierarchy, which, while it isn’t ‘documented’ like the old Indian caste system, is nonetheless just as rigid and important to the culture. While some of the information needed to know your position relative to another person can be gleaned visually, to really be sure, you need to ask some key questions. You won’t find these questions written down anywhere, but every Thai child learns them from their parents, and knows them almost instinctively.

While Thai culture is not the only one where this condition exists, it is somewhat in the minority. While America is not a truly classless society, the differences between the classes are much more subtle and fluid, as well as subjective. In addition, class plays a only a very minor role, if any, in business dealings. As a result, Americans, along with most westerners, develop a more instinctive method of getting to know people and deciding whether or not to deal with them. It’s a rather haphazard system, and some people get better at it than others. I suspect that a common trait among successful people is that they’re better than average at judging people, even if they don’t realize it.

While Thais know, at least at an intellectual level, that westerners are different, they still have a hard time accepting that there are few, if any, rules governing interactions with people from other countries. At a loss to know who to trust, and with a high aversion to risk, few Thais have been successful in international business, and in fact very few even try.

Okay, it’s been a slow start to the year. It generally seems like not much happens around Asia between the western new year and Chinese New Year. The newspapers still have to fill up their pages, so it was with some amusement that I read in today’s Bangkok Post about an elephant problem in one of the provinces bordering Bangkok. The problem is actually rather serious, but it’s still an amusing image. The first few paragraphs of the story follow:

Elephants stop, loot trucks on dark road
by MANIT SNUBBOON

Chachoengsao - The chief of Khao Ang Rue Nai wants the road through the wildlife sanctuary closed at night after a herd of elephants held up and looted a string of cargo trucks. About midnight last Saturday a herd of 20 elephants blocked route No.3259 (the Ban Nong Kog-Ban Wang Nam Phon road) holding up 10 trucks, Yoo Senatham said.

They tipped some vehicles on their side, spilling the cargoes on the road so their young could eat, and gorged on sugarcane and tapioca.

The full story can be found at the Bangkok Post web site.

Even though the temperatures outside are “frigid” by Bangkok standards - mornings are in the low 20s (Centigrade, low 70s F) - it’s hard to believe it’s almost Christmas, a problem made the more difficult since 25 December is just another working Monday here in the Land of Smiles.

Which is not to say that they don’t try to get into the spirit of things around here. Stores have decorations up, and there’s even a (fake) Christmas Tree with presents under it at the gym. At a number of shops, the staff are wearing Santa hats, which makes the Thais look like elves. They don’t give out candy canes though.

In any case, this is all just a round-about way of wishing everyone a merry Christmas, and a happy new year while I’m at it. Where-ever you’re spending this holiday season, I hope you enjoy yourself and your travels.

You may not have known it as such, but you’ve probably heard some variation of the infinite monkey theorem. Although it takes many forms, the basic idea is that if you put a large number of monkeys in a room full of typewriters, they’ll eventually produce a script for Hamlet.

What does this have to do with life in Thailand? Well, believe it or not, over the years I’ve observed that a number of Thai companies (perhaps most of them in fact) apply the infinite monkey theorem to employee management. While they don’t employ monkeys, they do engage the nearest human equivalent.

You see, rather than hiring experienced and qualified people who can do the job, they tend to hire people with no experience or qualifications who work cheap. Part of the reasoning behind this is a rather common short-sighted approach to human resources. Since inexperienced people can be paid a lot less, their cost to the company is lower. Of course, that assumes that they can do the job, and do it as productively as someone with more experience, which is practically impossible. The ‘insurance’ Thai managers employ to eventually accomplish something is to hire several low paid people.

Now you’re probably wondering, “If they hire several low paid people instead of one better paid qualified person, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of hiring cheap labor?” Yes, it does. It’s one of the great mysteries of Thai business management, that they never really seem to consider the on-going costs of staff. One of the first lessons I learned when trying to sell software to Thai companies was that you could never justify the cost of an application based savings of staff costs, even if they were potentially significant. As far as virtually ever manager I ever met was concerned, their staff cost nothing. Cutting staff, or even reducing future expansion, would result in no savings, as far as these people were concerned.

There are other reasons for hiring more people than is really necessary to do a job. The commonly held view is that Thais like to work in teams, and do not like to have personal responsibility. That’s why jobs in the government and state owned enterprises are so popular. You don’t have to really do anything, you can’t get fired and if you stick around long enough you can get paid a lot of money.

Is this such a bad thing? After all, the world is full of clueless managers. Yes, I think it is a problem. Such practices make Thai companies terribly slow and inefficient. Thailand is slipping down the rankings of international competitiveness, and their blindness to staffing costs is probably one of the big reasons. Thais still consider their country to be a low cost manufacturing base, even though Cambodia, Vietnam, China and India are now far cheaper.