Stefan
Latest posts by Stefan (see all)
- Unlocking Success: Navigating Software Project Failure as a Product Manager 🔥 - March 15, 2024
- Bias toward action 💥 - February 1, 2024
- Reflections on an eventful 2023 in Product Management 🤓 - December 18, 2023
Many teams at one stage or another use individual techniques, such as Myer / Briggs Type Indicator tests (MBTI) to enhance and improve team dynamics. These are useful, and I have certainly seen them applied successfully. Another layer to the insights we can derive from evaluating individual assessments as part of a team is the various cultural backgrounds which are present in a diverse group of individuals.
These backgrounds affect how we organize our day, how we think about communication, and how we run through meetings. They are, also, a huge part of what makes diverse teams more successful.
Cultural insights are, however, extremely helpful
when we observe behavior which
we have a hard time explaining otherwise.
For obvious reasons, high-level cultural insights such as the one presented in ‘When Cultures Collide’ by Mr Lewis are obviously subject to generalizations, and do not always apply to the individual. Cultural insights are, however, extremely helpful when we observe behavior which we have a hard time explaining otherwise. Cross cultural understanding is hard to obtain and takes years to perfect. Reading the book has helped me to improve my day-to-day work in the following ways:
- Better understand the cultural ‘unknown unknowns’
Sometime we enter a situation and it is really hard to foresee a certain outcome, or predict the dynamics. Often the reason is because we are completely blind to a set of parameters / dynamics which are only visible to a subset of the audience. For these folks the meeting dynamics can be dramatically different from what you experience. Understanding a more comprehensive set of dynamics which might be at play gives you the upper hand when it comes to understanding sudden changes in attitude and behavior. - Provide rational (and scientific) explanations for a variety of dynamics
Whether it be the way we use scheduling tools, how we relate to organizational structures, or how we go through a meeting: the book presents concepts for a variety of areas in which alternative explanations would be less productive. Yes, sometimes the unknown behavior is explained by external factors (Monday’s, anyone?!?), but on average you are better off calibrating towards a more educated standard. These standards also lend themselves really really well for sharing with others. This can help mitigate otherwise problematic speculation about behavior, and provides good guidance and a growth opportunity. - Classify cultural characteristics which allow application on an ongoing basis
Cultural characteristics can be found in a lot of places. I am European, and there is a huge (often unfounded, and potentially cynical) body of knowledge around cultural characteristics. These might be funny, and offensive, or often both, but they are rarely useful. This is because, in my opinion, they are not things you can apply systematically to a scenario or team environment. Richard D Lewis does a splendid job explaining the structures behind what makes cultural norms work, and how various cultures relate to these norms in a way that is respectful, founded in science, and useful to apply to any situation you find yourself in.
In summary, I am a big fan of the book and feel that it is a must-read for anyone working in a diverse environment, but specifically Software Product Managers in highly diverse teams or when managing across countries can benefit.
Find out more about the book at the author’s website or get it directly on Amazon: When Cultures Collide, 3rd Edition: Leading Across Cultures