Strong Recruiting & Retention Strategies - These are very human issues and therefore, very personal. All professionals, regardless of where in the world they are, want to feel respected, honored and challenged. All high-level managers are driven by career opportunities and will be incentivized by them.? Title matters, and can change by region – a president in Korea might be a Director in Singapore.? More importantly, however, is how each is treated by their Asian peers, which considerably adds to the complexity of selecting local managers. Local executives are very conscious of this.

In terms of compensation, high-potential leaders are not only driven by money; however, they will negotiate aggressively on their own behalf in any part of the world – tigers are still tigers. Asian managers must be mindful of compensation equity. If one executive is a non-Asian expatriate and one is local, they need to be provided fundamentally the same opportunities and benefits, or the company risks losing one of them.

Strategic Use of Expats & Locals - There are often cases to be made for hiring an expatriate leader. By definition, the Asia leader will be an expat in some locations; and in most cases, the manager will not be from the countries they are running.

Determining how to choose the right leader to run Asia is a very challenging question. Many companies today choose Mandarin speakers because of the importance of China and because Mandarin is spoken in most Asian countries. People who don’t speak Mandarin often lose out to Mandarin speakers. Yet this ability doesn’t necessarily translate to doing a better job when running the overall region. In the enterprise software industry, the vast majority of Asia Pacific leaders are not ethnically Asian. They tend to be American, British or Australian, and secondarily Mandarin speakers. You rarely have a Japanese or Korean running Asia.

In the end, the right way to run Asia is a matter of personal style and experience. The people who know Asia best will do best.

After investing in and leading businesses in Asia for two decades, across multiple markets and thousands of executive search engagements, I’ve developed a personal operating principle that may be of use to companies as they think of managing in Asia: P&P. “We live by our Principles and we live with our Precedents.”

If you want to keep consistency in your business across diverse areas, you have to have shared values and principles, and do your best to keep the application of these principles consistent – with as few exceptions as possible. Every exception makes it easier for the exception to become the rule. This happens particularly easily in Asia.?

A commitment to consistency, a strategic understanding of regional intricacies, and strong, culturally-sensitive leadership will combine to push savvy software vendors ahead in Asia.