The Culture Map
BOOK REVIEW
The Culture Map - Erin Meyer
A readable study on cultural differences will prompt multinational business leaders to rethink their management style
I seldom purchase books spontaneously so it must have been in a gust of self-actualisation that I was propelled to buy The Culture Map just before boarding a flight home to London at the end of a typically hectic week. A few days prior I had traveled to Malta, where my company runs a pharmaceuticals production facility, to visit the local team and deliver a presentation to a group of government officials. From there I flew to Hamburg with an investor on a show-and-tell tour of our German operations. In the evenings I was usually collaborating with my CFO and VP Legal, by both phone and email given their location of Toronto.
This itinerary is not atypical of the one I've been maintaining for the last three years, despite a temporary slowdown due to the pandemic. Because of this, I've often lent thought to how to best lead my teams given they spread across such varied cultures. Erin Meyer's alluring title converted my casual browse in the airport bookstore into a focused reflection on my management style.
“Sometimes cultural diversity on global teams creates fault lines, but other times that same level of diversity can be a great advantage.”
Meyers, an INSEAD professor and expert on global teamwork, introduces eight cultural spectrums which she uses to map cultures over one another. This is used to identify similarities between, for instance, the way France and Germany like to structure business presentations. These cultures expect a comprehensive explanation of frameworks, criteria and methodology before the final conclusion, versus the American approach of leading with the punchline first.
The assortment of cultural juxtapositions can be fascinating, like in the case of an Australian VP who is perceived as relatable and humble because of his habit of riding his bicycle to work. Upon bringing this habit to his company's new office in China, his team members react with humiliation that their boss is using this 'low class' mode of travel instead of public transport. They feel it reflects poorly on them and indicates they are a lower-ranked team than others.
“The British may be more high-context than Americans – particularly where humour is concerned – but in comparison with Latin Europeans such as Spain and Italy and including the French they are very low context.”
Meyers uses examples to keep the book interesting so I was able to breeze through it by maintaining a faster reading pace which is reserved for books whose value comes in the gist rather than quotable text. I find this to be a common theme especially in business books. That said, some of Meyer's cross-cultural stories will certainly spark dialogue between business colleagues, such as the optimal balance to strike between group decision making and top-down instruction.
As the business environment continues its globalization rush, strong leaders will need to know how to culture switch fluently and often. This book is a great first step to mastering that skillset.
-NP, January 2023
Reading notes from The Culture Map