Interview with Otgonbayar Togtuuny (aka Oko), Program Director of Mongolia

Otgonbayar Togtuuny

  • What Country and City do you work in?

    Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

  • What previous experiences with entrepreneurship and office management do you have?

    I received an MBA in Seoul, Korea and worked for a manufacturing company there for four years. I then returned to Mongolia with my family. I am still an entrepreneur; I own a large farm in rural Mongolia as well as a Korean restaurant.

  • When did you first set up an offshore office:

    I set up a Projects Abroad travel services office in Mongolia in 2002. We created a separate Mongolian office in 2007 to handle all of Projects Abroad’s corporate finance work.

  • How did you find qualified employees and how did you test that they would be good cultural fits with the home office?

    I rely on advertizing at the local university when it comes to staffing lower-level positions, such as customer service reps or bookkeepers. My best hires for management-level positions have come from personal contacts. My family has always had strong personal connections in government. Many people move back and forth between the government and private sectors in Mongolia, so the skilled worker groups overlap. Mongolia is a big country but has a small population. Most of the highly educated workforce moves in the same circle, so connections are vital.

    We do a phone screen before scheduling interviews to make sure that all potential employees who will be interacting with other offices speak fluent English. However, some positions report only to the local office manager and not to international offices, so I decide in advance which positions require English fluency and which can be filled by people who speak only Mongolian.

  • What was the biggest hurdle in creating an office in your country?

    Transportation is very difficult in Mongolia. It's only possible to fly to Beijing, Seoul, and Moscow from Ulaanbataar. This makes training with the head office expensive and time-consuming. However, this is solved by having just one person from the head office come here and train rather than sending Mongolians to the US.

    Another challenge is dealing with the time difference. When it is 11am in New York, it is the middle of the night in Ulaanbataar. This makes it difficult to talk in-person with the US offices. We manage this by relying on email.

  • After a year, what do you think is the most successful aspect of this office?

    Our finance office is a low-cost solution to a very expensive problem. We have ten people right now monitoring accounts in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. It is easy to find good people because we are offering the chance for skilled workers to hold positions of meaningful responsibility in an international company. People are very excited about such a prospect because such opportunities are rare in Mongolia. This makes it easy to recruit.

  • What do you think is the biggest difference between the business culture of your country and that of the US/UK? How have you worked to bridge these differences?

    Mongolia is an Eastern country, where saving face is a very important concept. American straight-shooting comes across as rude and aggressive here, so business dealings have to be conducted with a lot more delicacy. However, I have trained my employees to understand how business customs are different in the Western offices they work with so that misunderstandings are minimized.

  • What would be your most important piece of advice to someone who is looking to create an office abroad for their company?

    I’ve learned that it is always good business sense to treat your employees well, and with respect, to give them room to make decisions on their own, make sure they have a good work-life balance.