The Story behind
“Cross-Cultural Ambassadors & Specialists“
Part 1 – GENESIS
Philip Ray
August 2025
MADRID 1972: I was 19 years old and in deep water over a “dirty” floor….
I had my first Cross-Cultural clash in Spain in 1972 as the newly appointed Sales Manager of Grand Met’s Castellana Hotel in Madrid.
I innocently suggested to the General Manager from Gran Canarias that they should regularly clean up the floor of the 5-star bar where all the local businessmen met for their mid-morning “tapas”. Within 15 minutes of opening, the floor was always strewn with the greasy remains of a busy bar – napkins, lemon wedges, prawn shells, and chicken bones.
As a recent student of Lancaster University’s HND in Hotel Management, I couldn’t believe that the health and safety inspectors hadn’t closed the place down! What I didn’t know was that the depth and variety of the tapas’ residue on the floor wasn’t a sign of neglect; it was a badge of honour, proof of a bar’s popularity and prestige.
Needless to say, I didn’t last long with the wily “Canarias” GM who insisted that my job was to sell the rooms and conference facilities of his hotel, whereas my performance back in London was measured by sales that I made from Spain to Grand Metropolitan hotels in the rest of the world.
NIGERIA, GABON AND NORTH AFRICA 1974/5 – “I almost got lynched!! …through my own naivety!.
The following year, I was lucky enough to find a job working throughout North Africa as an Inspection Engineer for a large American Corporation in Nigeria, Gabon, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya (based out of Malta).
At my first assignment in Warri, Nigeria, I was struck by the harsh treatment some of my colleagues showed the local workers – insulting them, using aggressive language, and even physical intimidation. I made a conscious effort to build a different kind of relationship with the labourers on my team, one based on mutual respect.
I was beginning to feel I had earned their trust and respect and was becoming a “favourite”.
That all changed one day when one of the foremen decided to test and overstep “my” limits when I invited him into the staff house for a glass of water, hoping to unfreeze a somewhat frosty “friendship”.
– He went straight to the fridge and grabbed a beer.
– I tried to keep my cool and imagined that my colleagues had granted him this privilege.
However, I completely lost it when he took a cigarette from a colleague’s “Lucky Strikes” on the mantlepiece…… watching me “insolently” all the time to see how I would react!
– I grabbed the “Unlucky” Strike from his lips….. “That’s Enough!!” I shouted!
A heated exchange followed, and within minutes, a group of workers had surrounded me, shouting insults and calling me a ‘British Colonial Pig!!!‘
They saw my actions as hypocritical, a betrayal of the trust I had tried to build. For them, my American colleagues’ behaviour, though crude, was at least predictable. My reaction, they felt, was duplicitous and untrustworthy—a stereotype they associated with the British.”
I was quickly air-lifted back out to Gabon!! Loved it and was thinking this would be a nice place to settle with my girlfriend!
MALTA/LIBYA 1976 – “A Clash of Values”
After getting married to Carmen in Chile, the American inspection company kindly accepted my request to have a post more suitable for a newlywed than the six weeks in the African oilfields followed by two weeks’ rest back in Madrid.
Gabon was not possible, but the prospect of living in Malta and working in the Libyan oilfields sounded idyllic! Between jobs, I would be able to go back home for the number of weekends I had missed!
I was given 2 weeks to find somewhere to live and get settled. By day 3, we had found a semi-furnished flat in Sliema and were beginning to decorate.
Suddenly, I received a telex from HQ in Madrid. “URGENT JOB IN TRIPOLI! YOUR FLIGHT LEAVES AT 5:00 AM TOMORROW!”
The 3 days in Tripoli was followed by 5 other urgent jobs at different rigs, living in containers in the middle of the desert.
In week six, I was flown to a rig close to the Sudan border. They had an electrical problem, so the air conditioning was not working and the Coca Cola (all I would dare to drink) was hot!! It was fixed the following day, but when I went to check the equipment, it wouldn’t work!
I was not qualified to fix it so I sent a telex to Madrid.
“MAGNETOSCOPE BROKEN! REQUEST PERMISSION TO RETURN TO MALTA UNTIL REPLACEMENT ARRIVES?”
“JUST ROLL THAT PIPE, BOY!” ………
“WHAT!!!” Apparently, the local SOP for this kind of emergency was to get the local team to roll the drilling pipe on the rack whilst the inspector pretended to check them out and then paint them with a White, Yellow or Red band to indicate their condition.
Paint 30 – 40 pipes (approximately) White, then a Yellow, and every 150-200, whilst no-one was looking, damage the threads of the pipe with a hammer and PAINT IT RED !!!
This time it was me who took the decision to leave!
I sent a blunt telex “NOT ME!” and the following day hitched a lift in an empty water tanker heading back to the nearest airport curtailing my lucrative career in the oil industry!
At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing – the only thing!
It was only several years later that I realised that the right thing to do would have been to subsequently escalate the “misdemeanour” to HQ in Houston, explaining the reason for my “resignation”.
That was when I encountered PETER DRUCKER’S FAMOUS QUOTE: “CULTURE EATS STRATEGY FOR BREAKFAST”.
Enough for this first blog! Next time, I’ll tell you about my incursion into the corporate training, coaching, and consulting business.