Over the past four years, Gengo has grown from a tiny partnership to a full-time team of fifty spread across Tokyo, San Mateo and Singapore. For those building an international team from scratch, here’s what we’ve learned along the way.

Communicate often

With a 16-hour time difference between our two primary offices, it takes more than email to get things done. We use several technologies and tools to connect and stay organized, including Skype for short messages, Basecamp for work on special projects with our Senior Translators and consultants and Pivotal Tracker to process technical fixes.

Because tools can only do so much, in the two hours where San Mateo and Tokyo’s hours overlap, we open up a Skype portal between the main rooms in both offices to feel like a single team. We also use this small window to schedule micromeetings across teams that otherwise can’t connect in person. We round out the week with a company-wide standup, where team directors report on the week’s challenges and progress.

Most importantly, we make time for biannual events we call Gengonferences. We met last in September in Tokyo and will all come together again in two weeks. The Gengonferences are a time for new and old Gengons to meet, look back on company progress and set the roadmap for the coming months.

Bust language barriers

Despite our small size, we span twelve nationalities and several more languages, among them Russian, German, French, Arabic, Spanish, Mandarin, Afrikaans, Italian, Japanese and English.

English is our main company language, but in our Tokyo office, many of our employees are native Japanese speakers. In this situation, we’ve found that hiring truly bilingual English/Japanese speakers can help. A bilingual person is like a silent ambassador and serves as an outlet for those struggling to express themselves in the company’s primary language in a group setting.

To help with general language proficiency, we also offer native speakers of Japanese six free months of English language training and vice-versa for other team members

Codify your culture

Even if you’ve figured out how to handle practical communication and scheduling issues, how should you handle cultural differences?

For a company that is global in both its make-up and outlook, it makes sense that our company culture doesn’t belong to any one nationality. This is perhaps best reflected by our five company values, which represent five different languages and multiple cultures:

Weniger, aber besser
Less, but better (Dieter Rams)

بالشعب و للشعب
By the people, for the people

改善
Continuous improvement

故兵貴勝，不貴久
What is essential in war is victory, not prolonged operations (Sun Tzu)

Click. Boom. Amazing!
(Steve Jobs)

A company culture built on well-reinforced core values helps communicate expectations and avoid misunderstandings, which is crucial in a multicultural workplace. The multilingual, multicultural nature of our values also sends a very clear message that everyone is accepted and respected.

Another way to embrace diversity is by recognizing individual accomplishments. At our Gengonferences, everyone votes for the most improved Gengon and chooses who they think best embodies our values. Our hackathons give the engineering team a chance to present individual projects in either English or Japanese, and we encourage Gengons to openly express their ideas year-round, regardless of how long they’ve been with us.

At the end of the day, a strong company culture is the glue that holds it all together and helps the team get through inevitable bumps in the road. This is important for all companies, but particularly for those with team members from different backgrounds.

A final tip? Building a company is hard. Stay focused, but have fun.

Go global with Gengo’s people-powered translation platform.

Learn More   or Contact us