“Send In the Expat”: The Unofficial Global Strategy for Saying What No Local Ever Can
“Strategic foreignness” is real. Learn how companies use expats to do the cultural dirty work locals can’t afford to.
Sometimes, it pays to have an expat on the team. Not for their technical brilliance, or their global best practices, or because they once gave a TEDx talk on agile transformation. No. It pays because they can say the thing.
You know. The thing.
The thing the local team already agreed on, dissected over noodles the night before. The thing that absolutely needs to be said to the client, but also cannot possibly be uttered by anyone who plans to keep working in this town, this company, or this extended family of corporate in-laws.
That’s when the expat enters, stage left. Jet-lagged, overconfident, maybe a little sunburnt. They open the meeting, say the unsayable, and leave the room with their career intact.
Miraculously, this usually works. Not because the expat is especially right, but because they’re strategically foreign; untouched by local politics, unburdened by who went to school with whose cousin, and held to a different set of unspoken rules.
It’s not strategy. It’s not diplomacy. It just works.
Cultural Suicide Missions, Outsourced
In many parts of the world, especially across Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, corporate life is about what can be safely said without sparking offence, scandal, or a quiet career death. Business runs on tact rather than truth.
There’s an art to not saying what everyone knows. For example:
That the client’s proposal violates local laws and principles of common sense.
That the GM’s cousin in charge of procurement seems unable to use Excel or a chair properly.
That openly disagreeing with a senior stakeholder may not get you fired, but will get you reassigned to an irrelevant project.
For locals, these truths are radioactive. Everyone knows them. No one touches them.
Except the expat.
The expat is not bound by the same unspoken rules.
They exist outside the web of cultural obligation and implicit favours.
They don’t owe anyone’s uncle a social debt from a barbecue in 1998.
They don’t know who went to school with whose daughter.
They aren’t part of the ecosystem,
…which makes them, in moments like these, very useful.
When they say something direct, something a local would never be allowed to say, the result is often relief.
The client blinks. The room goes still. Then someone says, “Actually, that’s a fair point.”
And somewhere in the back corner, a local quietly exhales and mutters, “Finally.”
It’s not brilliance. It’s just someone else’s passport doing the dirty work.
The Magical Cloak of Passport Privilege
Passport privilege is real, and in many parts of the world, it functions like a cheat code. Certain expats, typically from “developed markets,” and typically very comfortable with their own opinions, get handed the rare ability to be both blunt and praised for it.
They aren’t punished for being direct in meetings. They are applauded for “speaking truth to power.”
When they decline unreasonable client requests, they aren’t labelled uncooperative. They’re called “principled.”
When they say no, someone inevitably remarks, “So culturally aware, yet so firm.”
The LinkedIn recommendations practically write themselves.
This isn’t about merit. These individuals did not go through a multi-year cultural diplomacy bootcamp. No one studied ancient local customs before declaring that a major client’s procurement process was “dodgy.” They simply showed up, foreign and confident.
That confidence, it turns out, gets rebranded as global expertise.
The locals, of course, do not enjoy the same latitude. A local saying the exact same thing is likely to be accused of being “abrasive” or “not aligned with stakeholder expectations.” If you’re local and direct, you’re told to “learn how to navigate the culture.” If you’re foreign and direct, you are the culture.
This professional asymmetry is rarely discussed openly, mostly because it works just well enough to be convenient for everyone.
Foreigners get to play the bad cop.
Locals get plausible deniability.
Clients get the illusion of global best practice.
It’s neat, clean, and utterly skewed.
The Resident Expat Paradox (a.k.a. “Now You Know Better”)
Let’s spare a moment for the resident expat. The one who’s lived in-country for years. They’ve figured out which social cues matter, who not to interrupt, and how to politely sidestep the tangled hierarchies without causing a scene. They’ve got the names down, understand the silence in meetings, and know that the word “maybe” often means “absolutely not.” Culturally fluent? Sure. Fully accepted? Not quite.
They still wear the expat label, but now they’re expected to act like they’ve outgrown it. They no longer get the same wide berth as the jet-lagged fly-in with the wrong adapter and the wrong tone. Instead, they live in a sort of diplomatic grey zone: too local to plead ignorance, too foreign to be fully trusted with the local power plays.
They’re often invited to say the tough thing no one else will.
They write the awkward emails.
They step into meetings where a little plausible deniability is needed.
They are the bridge between HQ’s blind optimism and local reality.
But the price is subtle. They don’t get yelled at; they just get ghosted. One day, they stop being invited to client dinners. They’re not fired, they’re forgotten. Their cultural capital quietly evaporates.
And if they push too hard, too often, without enough finesse, they get recategorized. No longer the helpful intermediary, now just that expat. The one who uses local phrases like souvenirs. The one who still thinks being “straightforward” is a leadership trait, not a liability.
The resident expat has power, yes, but it is rented. Use it well, and they stay useful. Overplay it, and they learn that local memory is long, and forgiveness is situational.
Deploying the Foreigner: A Guide for Cowards, Realists, and Clients Who Can’t Take Feedback
Let’s say you’re a local executive. You’ve done the analysis. You’ve held the polite meetings. You’ve had the after-hours venting session over coffee, beer, or something stronger. And now, you’ve reached the unfortunate truth: the client needs to be told something blunt and painful. It’s not up for debate. But you can’t say it yourself.
Why?
Maybe your kids go to the same school.
Maybe your company still owes their cousin a favor from 2011.
Maybe your boss has given you contradictory instructions involving urgency, diplomacy, and not being the one responsible when everything explodes.
Congratulations. You’re in the danger zone of polite paralysis.
There is, thankfully, a solution: send in the expat.
But you must stage it correctly.
Pretend you’ve got their back. Send a polite calendar invite with just enough context to be confusing.
Brief them with phrases like “feel free to raise it if it comes up” or “don’t worry, we’ve got alignment.” They will believe you.
In the meeting, assume your role. Nod thoughtfully. Sip coffee with a kind of Nordic stoicism.
Do not make eye contact. When the expat says the thing, stay very still.
Shift into cleanup mode. “That’s not quite what she meant,” you’ll say. “There might have been some nuance lost.”
The expat, of course, will soon be on a flight back to wherever they came from. Their inbox will be full, but their name will be off the radar by next quarter.
You, on the other hand, will still be here.
And that’s the true value of deploying the foreigner: they take the heat, you stay in the room, and everyone pretends it was a miscommunication.
There’s something quietly efficient, and wildly hypocritical, about how this all plays out. Everyone loves the language of inclusion. The slide decks say “empower local voices,” “nurture talent,” and “build global capability.” But when something sharp, uncomfortable, and likely to offend actually needs to be said, the plan shifts.
It’s no longer a teachable moment. It’s a job for the expat.
Not because they’re better. Because they’re disposable.
They don’t have to maintain the relationship. They won’t face long-term political consequences. And they certainly won’t be pulled aside at the next industry conference to explain what they “really meant.” They get to drop the grenade, nod politely, and be gone by Friday.
It’s not elegant, but it works. The expat releases the truth in ways the system can absorb without imploding. Just enough foreignness to excuse the message. Just enough distance to escape the blowback.
So yes, use them. Sparingly. Strategically. With plausible deniability.
And if you are that expat? Thank you for your service. Your ability to offend politely has been noted. Pack light. You’ll be needed again soon.
At StratEx - Indonesia Business Advisory we help Indonesian businesses build internal leadership confidence and cultural fluency across teams. Contact us to localize capability and hardwire trust into your culture.