I really focused a lot of my research on these two pieces of literature. On the one hand, it’s Erin Mayer’s Culture Map. … Let me just tell you that she takes effectively eight different dimensions across which she looks at how different cultures think about different aspects of life, and how that then becomes a challenge for business that tries to cooperate across different cultures. So it’s things like how folks communicate with a lot of context or with low context. How people persuade others: do they give principles first, or do they give the application first and then explain the theory behind it? Which comes first? How do people make decisions? Is it consensual? Is it a top-down decision-making culture? So she really looks at those eight dimensions and explains where different cultures fall in those spectrums. On the other hand, Hofstede Insights looks at some other dimensions of power, distance, individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty, avoidance, masculinity versus femininity, long-term orientation, and indulgence versus restraint. So slightly different dimensions, but again, very interesting insights in terms of how different national cultures tend to fall on different sides of these spectrums. 

Decision-making culture seems to be quite different from the way this often happens in the UK, or the US, or some other countries. So how is it different? Well, Erin Meyer explains in the Culture Map that effectively you have two sides of the spectrum; consensual decision-making and top-down decision-making. In top-down decision-making cultures, the boss will probably hear out opinions on the team, but ultimately is expected to make a call and make a decision. And in consensual cultures, that’s just not the case. Bosses tend to get everyone’s views on the table and basically work the group until they get to some kind of alignment and consensus before deciding on a particular course of action. I think in the West, or specifically in US and UK culture, we have a little bit of a tendency to look down on consensus-based decision-making culture. You know, Patrick Lencioni, super well-known famous author and organizational health consultant, he wrote The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with, talks about consensus-based decision-making, and this is a quote: “It is through seeking consensus that we get mediocrity”. So this is kind of the mindset that I’m coming into this into this question with. So then over time, I’ve learned that actually, both processes work perfectly well and ultimately gets you to the same solution. Because the more consensus you have, before you make a particular decision, the more time you gain back at the change management time and the change management piece. 

It takes a lot longer to arrive at a decision, but once you arrive at that decision, everyone who was part of it becomes your ally, becomes your change management ambassador. And together, you get it done and embed the change in the organization much faster. So I used to think that this was a bug. It’s not a bug. It’s a feature. And really, the lesson learned for me is calibrate your approach to making important decisions based on the cultural context that surrounds you and resist the urge to dismiss the other approach. Neither is better or worse, they will ultimately both get you to where you need to go. 

But I just want to say it’s not all about national cultures, so I think it’s really important to say that, you know, just because someone’s British, or American or French, doesn’t mean that they subscribe to all of the cultural norms of that particular country that they come from. We are made up of, again, lots of unique traits and identities, and it’s really important to avoid stereotyping folks. You look at that graph, that spectrum underneath, and the UK tends to go with more indirect negative feedback, the dark negative feedback. So most UK companies, norms are probably within that blue sphere, but it doesn’t mean that a particular person who works at that company may not be somewhere else in that spectrum. So personal preferences may be miles away from dominant cultural influences, it’s important to remember that.