Crack This Code

I keep waiting for him to say something profound, to deliver insight. But aside from repeating the few observations he had shared in India, there's nothing. After all of 20 minutes, Rapaille informs me that the visit is over. He has to meet his wife for dinner--and they're not eating vindaloo.

Back at my office that night, I call Ajay Mookerjee, the executive director of Harvard Business School's new India Research Center, who's based in Bangalore. I share with him Rapaille's take on Indian rules and pragmatism, corruption, and the caste system, hoping for some perspective.

And of course, Mookerjee disputes it all. "Sitting in his lakeside villa, it looks like he's getting quite used to spinning theories about other people. I don't think he has quite understood the Indian psyche here," he says. I'm not surprised. No one enjoys hearing their culture reduced to stereotypes. And it's difficult to digest Rapaille's theories if you aren't used to thinking about culture in psychoanalytic terms. Nevertheless, the conversation reinforces what I'd come to suspect: Rapaille is 25% substance and 75% shtick.

And yet, as we're wrapping up, Mookerjee mentions an article he read that morning about America's inability to embrace a zero-defects policy. "Unlike Japan," he tells me, "they don't like to be right the first time. Americans love to fail… they like to learn from mistakes… I thought that was fascinating." After we hang up, it dawns on me that Mookerjee was referring to the American code. He didn't realize it, but the insightful article he had recommended actually was one I had emailed him. The subject: G. Clotaire Rapaille.

Danielle Sacks is a Fast Company staff writer.

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