Brief review of Erin Meyer's "The Culture Map"

I have just finished reading Erin Meyer’s book, “The culture map” Thanks to my colleague Lily van Egeraat who sent a hard copy for me from the Netherlands. I will highly recommend the book to anyone working in a multicultural setting whether in person or remotely. The book reminded me of an “exchange” I had with a Dutch Colleague in The Hague Netherlands in 2016. A group of us finance colleagues were meeting for an international finance meeting. Meetings were scheduled to start at 9:00 am. On the first day, by 9:00 am all participants were seated except me who came in at 9:01 am (I had carried some Kenyan tea for workmates, and I needed to rid myself of the baggage.” On entering the meeting hall I was asked by my Dutch Colleague, “Dennis why are you late?”. Notice the Dutch directness. I was and still am surprised but she was not letting me off the hook that easily simply because I had smiled, she was concerned that I could have gotten lost, the map that I was given was not clear, etc. The Kenyan in me was like, it is ONE MINUTE, what is wrong with you. Up to today when I think about this I am like, “I was not late.” I brought up this discussion with another Dutch colleague that I work with in a different organization, and he calculated for me how many minutes I had lost, - 20 to be exact because were 20 persons attending that meeting and each of them had lost a minute thanks to my being late. I had never looked at this from this perspective. From my mathematical and business angle his calculation made sense, from my cultural background, I was like flexibility for us is the order of the day. Please be the judge.

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The book brings out varied perspectives based on culture and how it varies from one country to another. On an 8-scale map, Erin has plotted 8 areas that vary from country to country. The 8 parameters are communication, evaluation, persuasion, leading, deciding, trusting, disagreeing, and scheduling. Understanding how varied cultures and countries view each of these elements, helps one understand how to engage with others from those cultures with limited friction. One important point that Meyer mentions is looking at the scale not from an absolute positioning of the various countries but the relative position of one country to another. An example is that Kenya is considered a high context communication country, this means someone must infer to what a Kenyan says in order to get the meaning of exactly what they are saying. This as described in the book, “listening to the wind.” If you ask Ugandans, Tanzanians, Rwandese etc., they will tell you Kenyans are nothing but direct to the point of being annoying, but the Americans find Kenyans too coded. Looking at another culture relative to a colleague’s culture in my view puts a lot in perspective.

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One point that will catch your attention is the direct communication nature of the Americans (USA) and their indirect evaluation nature which leaves most managers around the world and especially Europeans dumbfounded. A French will expect that as the Americans are direct in communication, they will do the same during either staff evaluation or evaluation of success or failure of an event etc. But during evaluation, Americans apparently are trained to give one negative for every 3 positives and if you come from a French culture where your managers are mean with the positive feedback and dish out negative feedback like pop corns, you may think you are really performing well and about to take over your boss’ job when your American boss is telling you, “ pull up your socks or buy new ones if these ones ?cannot be pulled up, as my high school class teacher used to tell us” ??

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On decision making Erin makes a comparison where decisions are made as a group and in consultation and in that case the decision making is slower but once a decision has been made, it is like the laws of Medes and Persia of the olden days, they cannot be changed. In such contexts Erin notes that decision making is slower, but execution is faster. The contrast is where decision making is left to the manager and the decisions keep on changing as new information becomes available. In this case decision making is faster but execution is slower since new information may render what was a solid decision yesterday, very useless today and everyone goes back to the drawing board. The working dynamic of these two groups can be daunting because on group is seen as too rigid while another is seen as erratic and indecisive.

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The book makes mention of the position of a manager in in the various cultures. Some cultures are hierarchical while others are egalitarian. If you are in a hierarchical culture, everyone goes by what the boss says and so as a boss you need not state your opinion from the beginning if you want to gather varied opinions. If you do, no one will give any contradicting view no matter how ridiculous your views are. In this culture, there are only 2 rules, Rule No. 1, “The boss is always right”, Rule No. 2 “If s/he is not right refer to rule No. 1.” In the egalitarian culture, a boss is a facilitator, and the team can and will debate with him/her on their points in order to build consensus, come up with new ideas etc. Understanding this is very critical when a manager is dealing with a team from both cultures. If in a hierarchical culture it is advisable not to give up your corner office as a boss because you will be seen as a commoner, and this doesn’t exude confidence in your team as to your leadership capability. If in egalitarian culture, seating a bullpen like everyone else is actually strength.?