​AI Can Read Your Policies, But Can It Read Your Culture?

Venky Ramesh is Chief Client Officer at LatentView Analytics, with two decades of experience leading businesses and teams globally.

One of the most useful business books I’ve read is The Culture Map by Erin Meyer. I first picked it up to become a better leader for global teams. I didn’t expect it to change how I think about AI.

The book explains something every international executive eventually learns: People don’t just speak different languages—they think, communicate and make decisions differently. Americans tend to communicate directly. Japanese communication relies much more on context. Germans are comfortable separating disagreement from relationships. In many Asian cultures, trust is built before business, whereas Americans often build trust by doing business together. None of these approaches is better than another. They’re simply different operating systems.

As AI becomes another participant in how work gets done, a question emerges: Can it understand the cultural context that humans navigate every day? We spend countless hours discussing models, reasoning, memory and agents. Yet, one of the biggest variables in AI success may be something much older than technology: culture.

Same Process, Different Conversations​

Over the last two decades, I’ve worked with teams across the U.S., India, Mexico and Eastern Europe. The same business process can produce very different conversations. In the U.S., meetings tend to get to the point quickly and decisions are often made in the room. In India, the real meeting sometimes begins after the meeting, as people build alignment before execution. In Mexico, relationships often influence how business gets done. In Eastern Europe, I’ve found teams remarkably analytical and comfortable challenging ideas if it leads to a better answer.

Global Policies, Local Context​

Conclusion

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