"If there are no visible symptoms and you're feeling fine, you may decide to put it off for a while," Kalb says.

But the same does not hold in the Arab world: if you call someone "ibn kalb" (son of a dog), you're insulting both the person and his forebears.

Some are much more technically oriented than customer oriented, which has a sizable effect on how they prioritize, said Ira Kalb, clinical marketing professor at the USC Marshall School of Business.