The Culture Map

A few days ago, I picked the book Culture Map by Erin Meyer. It’s an interesting one. The whole book is centred around a model of eight parameters which defines a culture. The image is self-explanatory.

If you look at the parameters, you will realize that in absolute terms, these values hold no value whatsoever. But, this holds immense value when you use it to compare two cultures. If you want to migrate to a new geography or if you are leading a multi-cultural team, this tells about what should you learn about the culture of the person before you. As you see here, while German decision making is consensual, Chinese is hierarchical. And on the other hand, both Germans and France accept negative feedback on face, but Germans are more straightforward as compared to the French. Focus on these not as absolute metrics but as relative metrics when comparing.