The owner played golf on his own course at weekends. His new manager, a British golf pro, spent weekends with his own family and never turned up.
He had run golf clubs before and knew exactly how it should be done. The owner mentioned a couple of products he'd rather not see in the halfway house. The manager kept them on the shelf. They were his best sellers, and he could prove it.
Then, while the owner was away, an old friend of his came to play. A big man locally, his own group in tow. The manager didn't come out to greet them. And at the halfway house they asked the friend to pay for the drinks there and then, in cash. He said he'd settle later. They wanted it now. He didn't have it on him - so he stood there and borrowed the money from his own guests, to cover a round he was hosting.
People took the manager aside. Just do what the owner asks, they said. That's how it works here.
I know how to run a golf club, he told them.
He was fired a few weeks later, and genuinely shocked when it happened.
Here's what he never accepted. In Asia the owner is always right. Not because he knows more - he may know nothing about running a golf club - but because he is the owner, and everyone below him arranges themselves around that. You might be the expert. He's still the owner.
That's the part a Westerner finds hardest. Being right, watching the boss be wrong, and saying nothing. It grates. But out here, being right at the owner's expense is the fastest way to lose.
The job was never to be right. It was to make sure the boss was.
PS. More from the corridor here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidthomas-asia/
