My name is Erin Meyer. I'm Professor
of Organisational Behavior at INSEAD,
which is a business school outside of
Paris. I study how cultural differences
impact organisational effectiveness. I am
also the author of the book The Culture
Map, breaking through the invisible
boundaries of global business.
In today's global economy you might be a
French person working in Korea, you might
be a Russian person working in Brazil, or
a Scottish person trying to do business
in France. But what's really complicated
is trying to figure out how to adapt
your style to the society that you're
working with to get the results that you
need.
Often people think the challenges will
be things like, should I shake hands or
how should I ask for business cards. But
the real challenges are ones that are
much more subtle. I had a situation in
Japan recently where I gave a
presentation to a small group of
Japanese. Afterwards I asked if there
were any questions and no one raised
their hand. So I went to sit down. My
Japanese colleagues said to me,
"Erin, I think there were some questions. Do you
mind if I try. And then he stood up and
he looked at the group and he said, "Does
anyone have any questions?" When no one
raised their hand he looked very
carefully at the audience and then he
said, "Oh do you have a question?" And this
woman said "Thank you, I do" and she asked
a very important question. Later on I
said to him how did you know those
people had questions. And he said well
it had to do with how bright their eyes
were. These are the types of things that
if were aware of them we can look for
the interaction. the silent interaction,
that's impacting us. But if we're not
aware, we might go through our entire
business without even realising how
culture has impacted our success. For
example, I worked with a team a while ago
where I had just British and French
working on the team. I asked the British
what's it like to work with the French
and they said, "Well Erin, you know the
French they're very disorganised, they're
always late, they're always changing the
topic in the middle of the meeting, so
it's very difficult to follow them."  A
little bit later a group from India
joined the same team. I asked the Indians
you know how'd it going working with
the French, and they said to me, "Well
Erin, you know the French they're very
rigid, they're very in adaptable, they're
so focused on the punctuality of things
that it's very difficult for them to
adapt as things change around them." This
is what I call cultural relativity and
you can tease out on my culture map
framework how France is between the
UK and
India, which then leads to these opposite
reactions. This can be helpful if you're
leading a global team. I've been working
with Heineken, this big Dutch Brewing
Company. And a while ago they purchased
a big office in Monterrey Mexico and I
had these Mexicans who are managing
Dutch people now in the Netherlands.
People learn from a very young age that
an authority figure is really just a
facilitator among equals. And in Mexico
children learn from a very young age to
really defer to the authority figure. So
I had these Mexicans who are managing
these Dutch people and they said to me,
"You know, Erin, managing Dutch people is
absolutely incredible because they do
not care at all that I'm the boss. So I
go into these meetings, I'm trying to
roll out my strategy, my team is
contradicting me, they're challenging me,
they're taking my ideas off in other
directions, sometimes I just want to
plead with them, please, you know don't
forget that I'm the boss so this is
really complicated. In today's global
world it means it's no longer enough to
know how to lead the Mexican way or the
Dutch way or the Scottish way or the
American way. We have to be flexible
enough to adapt our leadership style to
the environment that we're working with.
I've developed a system that I call a
Culture Map, which divides culture up
into eight different dimensions. It looks
at things like how do we build trust
differently in different parts of the
world or how do we make decisions in
different societies. And then I have
countries that are positioned up and
down these dimensions that help people
to decode how culture is impacting their
work. If you look at this culture map
framework that I have you can start to
tease out these often opposite types of
reactions that cultures have to one
another. So this can be helpful if you're
leading a global team. There's some
research that shows that the highest
failure rate when people are working
with other countries is not between the
UK and China, but between the US and the
UK. And this happens because people
assume because we speak the same
language, because we seem externally
rather similar, that there are no
cultural differences we keep trying to
push our own culture and that leads to
the highest failure rate. So what I
suggest is that people remember that even when they're working
with cultures that seem very similar,
they always need to be on the lookout
for how these cultural differences are
impacting their success. Often people
think that challenges will arise only
when we're working face to face, but even
when we're working over the email or the
telephone cultural differences may be
impacting us. For example, in the UK it's
very common at the end of a phone call
that you would write into an email
everything that had been decided and
send that recap out. I was doing some
work in India a while ago. One of my Indian
clients said, "You know, Erin in my
culture if we make some decisions on the
telephone and we come to some
conclusions verbally, that would be
enough for me. If you get off of the
phone, then and you put into writing
everything that we've decided and you
send that email to me, that would be a
clear signal to me that you don't trust
me." So companies need to be thinking
about this not just when we're taking a
trip, but at every moment that we're
working internationally. There's some
very interesting research that shows
that if you show a video of fish
swimming through an aquarium that people
in Western countries will see mostly the
fish in front and people in Asian
countries will see mostly the things
that are happening in the background.
People in different parts of the world
are trained to think differently. So when
you bring together people from different
countries you can have a much more
complete way of seeing things. The team
may be better at identifying risks,
better at coming up with innovative
ideas. As long as the manager knows how
to manage these differences effectively,
it can be extremely positive for the
organisation. But you have to be
extremely flexible to lead in today's
complex cultural environment. We have to
be flexible enough to adapt our style to
the society that we're working with in
order to get the results that we need.
 
