About the author
Mohammad Ehteshamul Haque
Practitioner. Director. Author.
Mohammad Ehteshamul Haque has spent more than two decades running operations across borders. He trained as a Mechanical Engineer at Aligarh Muslim University, then studied business management at the Indian School of Business, graduating on the Dean's List. He later completed an advanced leadership programme at INSEAD.
His career has been in heavy industry: construction equipment, cranes, and trenchless technology. The work has carried him through India, the Middle East, Russia, China, and the wider Asia Pacific region. Before joining Digital Control, he spent three years in Saudi Arabia managing multicultural teams in a demanding international environment.
At Digital Control, he opened the company's first office in Russia and ran operations across the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. He later took on Asia Pacific, with responsibility for the firm's regional operations. He also established its Virtual Reality and DevOps teams in India as captive development centres, working closely with global counterparts on technology and product development.
Colleagues who shared a working language often did not share what they meant by it. Clarity, persuasion, and decision-making each looked different depending on the reader.
The pandemic made the cost obvious. When negotiations, handovers, and reviews all moved into written form on a screen, small misreadings turned into expensive ones.
Plenty of books address cultural awareness. Few address the craft of writing across cultures. He spent five years writing one.
He lives with his wife, Sayma, and their two children.
The book
When Culture Collides with Language
A guide to cultural intelligence in global business writing. For managers who write across time zones, languages, and assumptions every working day.