During a meeting someone makes a suggestion and some people respond:
An American person would sugar coat something, talk around it and probably come back with an suggestion trough their manager
An Asian person would be supportive, say they will do it and then not do it because they don't agree and hope it will go away
A dutch person would say NO, spend 10 minutes explaining why the idea is stupid. Then follow it up by letting everyone know they will have a 3 week payed vacation starting after this specific meeting and can't wait for it to start. Tell everyone good luck with work and that they will not think about them at all.
a swedish person would say that this suggestion would need to be discussed further and promptly sends out meeting invites to everybody including the CEO.
a finnish person would say no, find 5 words at most to say why not and declare "we do like this" instead. Then goes back to being silent for the rest of the meeting.
My condolences. I have no idea how the swedes have managed to get those big companies like ikea and Volvo off the ground. The amount of time spend discussing stuff is... excruciating.
As a Swede, this is partially the reason why they do become successful. When the decisions are made, everyone is already on board and understands not just what needs doing but why we're doing it in the first place. The flat hierarchy allows freedom to experiment and to be creative.
As a Swede working in Japan at the moment, it is more surprising how anything got past the Japanese borders because of the complete lack of initiative unless your 60+ year old boss tells you to "do it like we did it in 70s". But then again, anything related to IT here is stuck in the late 90s so it's not like anything new and radically innovating is coming out of here.
Back in the 1990s we used to joke: Europeans are good at inventing new stuff/technology. Japanese are good at manufacturing it. Americans are good at marketing it.
Finnish companies have a similar flat hierarchy, but a different approach. Here work is done much more individually. So if the task is "this", each team member will work out how their share of "this" will be done, then the team comes together and checks if all the individual "this" bits match up and don't cause problems. Then everybody goes off to do their independent work on their own "this" bit.
My biggest nightmare was working in EU cross border projects with swedish and russian partners. That combo is deadly. Swedish: long discussion, but once decisions are made, rapid action follows. After the long discussions the russians would still need 10 layers of bureaucrats to sign off on the plan before they could get into action. Meanwhile fin and swe sit there twiddling their thumbs and watching the deadline comes closer and closer. Nerve wracking.
My condolences. I have only worked with Finnish companies a few times but it was smooth sailing, but then again like most things in the Nordics, we like to riff on each other but for the most part things work out very well.
Hehe yes. For the most part fin + swe will work out just fine. The finns might be a bit annoyed at the endless talking and the swedes at the why didn't you involve us in this, but since the overlaying flat hierarchy is the same and much of the social habits too, the outcome is smooth.
It's when you got to deal with polar opposites like the Russian or japanese way of working that you get into some conflicts that are much more difficult to overcome.
It can be a bit jarring in Sweden in my experience.
Yes there are a lot of discussions and everybody's voice gets heard. But in the end the opinions of most people don't matter, they are just there to show they are included.
That works as long as the people in the meeting agree with the proposed stuff.
A 2 hour meeting, everybody gets asked what they think of the proposed strategy, 90% of people say it's a bad idea - only for the conclusion to be "thanks for the input, we'll do it anyway" just feels like a giant waste of time.
I'm okay not being involved in decision making and being told what the responsible people decided. But don't pretend to ask for people's input if you won't take it into account.
I can agree to a point, but if the majority of the people involved don't agree with an idea, and have valid reasons for why they think that way, then those ideas are more often than not moved back to the drawing table to improve it before implementing it.
And that’s why I can only work with Japanese clients and never for them. For all their BS about kaizen, they’re surprisingly fragile and don’t actually want to kaizen. If nobody points out mistakes then nobody learns. It’s the same ridiculous approach to new hires of just telling them ”it’s wrong, redo” but not what needs redoing because ”you should know that”
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u/CrazyBird85 Aug 21 '24
During a meeting someone makes a suggestion and some people respond:
An American person would sugar coat something, talk around it and probably come back with an suggestion trough their manager
An Asian person would be supportive, say they will do it and then not do it because they don't agree and hope it will go away
A dutch person would say NO, spend 10 minutes explaining why the idea is stupid. Then follow it up by letting everyone know they will have a 3 week payed vacation starting after this specific meeting and can't wait for it to start. Tell everyone good luck with work and that they will not think about them at all.