Book review: “The Culture Map” by Erin Meyer.
How to thrive in a new interconnected and culturally diverse world
Last year, I moved to Berlin to work at an IT company. Before that, I’d lived in Russia for my whole life, so it was my first experience (ever!) of working within an English-speaking and multicultural environment.
When I started, my team represented people from France, Germany, and Italy. Later, I hired team members from America, India, Poland, and Russia. Here, I should note also that, beyond my team, our company itself is super diverse — at the moment we have employees from more than 21 countries.
This new experience of diversity engaged me in, so I started to look into how I could get this diverse group to work together smoothly. So this is how I bumped up to the Erin Meyer book ‘The Culture Map’. I found the book super insightful and want to share my thoughts with you.
A summary in three paragraphs
1) Erin created a framework where countries are analysed according to eight criteria: communication (high-context or low-context); criticism (direct negative feedback or more indirect and soft); persuasion (deductive or inductive reasoning); leadership and management style (hierarchical or egalitarian culture); decision making (consensual or top-down); trust (build through professional or personal relationships), disagreement (direct confrontation or conflict avoidance); scheduling and time perception (linear or flexible).
2) The author created a scale for each parameter. For example, ‘decision-making ‘. At one end of the scale, there are countries where decisions are made by consensus, as a result of long discussions — Japan, Sweden. At the opposite end, there are countries where they come top-down — China, Russia.
3) When working in an international team, it’s crucial to keep these cultural differences in mind. Because even peoples’ perceptions of the time can be different — in countries with linear scheduling (Germany, America), “on time” means on the dot, precisely. But, in France, Saudi Arabia or Turkey, the perception of time is flexible, so that in France, a meeting can start 10–15 minutes late, and in Saudi Arabia, 45 minutes late (!). And that’s just what on the surface! The same cultural differences are everywhere, with even the most basic issues such as “trust”.
My personal takeaways
It’s fun to understand the culture of the country where you grew up. It’s even more fun to discover your personal spectrum because sometimes it differs from your country’s average.
For example, here is mine. I surprisingly discovered that I tend towards the egalitarian culture, consensual decision making, and linear perception of time much more than the typical Russian. Actually, according to these parameters I’m closer to British culture than to Russian.
When you know your own ‘map,’ you can predict possible misunderstandings in communications with colleagues or partners, and successfully mitigate them. Another useful application of the ‘map’ is learning how to adapt your communication style to different situations. It’s particularly important to pay attention to the extreme characteristics. Russia, for example, has four extremes: offering strong feedback, disagreeing to express our point of view openly and everywhere, following a rigid hierarchy, and using a deductive (principle-based) type of persuasion. Since these cultural features are extreme, they could be triggering for people from other countries.
I’ll give an example from my practice. Once, a colleague who had previously worked in America told me that I was giving too many unnecessary details during my presentation instead of getting straight to the point. “Start with the results,” he advised me. ‘Start with the results,’ — he advised me. ‘We’ve planned an advertising campaign for the XYZ markets, going to run it on A day, expecting B results.’ It blew my mind away! How could I present an important project in such a surface-level manner? Without explaining all the details?! Without explaining why I had chosen these particular markets, how we had forecasted the results? Impossible!
Later, when I was reading ‘The Culture map’, I realised that my way of presenting ideas was inherited from my culture. In Russia, we were taught to use deductive reasoning since childhood. For us, conclusions should be logically based. We start with the first premise/reason, then the second one, and only after that, we arrive at the logical conclusion. According to this deductive (principle first) type of reasoning, skipping the premises makes the final conclusion groundless.
On the contrary, in countries like the USA, people prefer to use inductive (application-first) reasoning. This style starts with particular cases and ready-made conclusions, and only after works backwards to the principles. Widespread implementation of this style is education based on case studies. Fun fact — as I was writing this article, I noticed I did it again — I instinctively began with the principles of the book, and only after, jump to my personal takeaways. Someone from the USA would probably do the opposite — at least now I’m able to recognise the pattern!
Recommendations
If you work with people from other cultures, I highly recommend that you read the book. Here is the Amazon link: ‘The Culture Map’.
You might also want to take a deeper dive, and find out where you fall on these cultural spectrums. Here’s the tool to discover your own Cultural Profile on the author’s website.
On top of that, you could go even further (like me!) and make a profile map for each member of your team.
We live in an increasingly interconnected and culturally diverse world where adaptiveness and flexibility have become essential skills. Knowing your cultural map allows you to stretch it in different dimensions, and to constantly ask yourself how your behaviour might feel for people at the opposite end of the scale.