When Aaron arrived in Moscow to take charge of the manufacturing plant his Israeli-owned company had just purchased, he expected to settle in quickly. Although he’d grown up in Tel Aviv, his parents were Russian-born, so he knew the culture and spoke the language well. He’d been highly successful managing Israeli teams and had led a large organization in Canada. Yet six months into his new job, he was still struggling to supervise his team in Moscow. What, specifically, was he doing wrong?

A version of this article appeared in the May 2014 issue of Harvard Business Review.