Comment by tobtoh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tobtoh | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

If I were to peel back the blog post to the relevant point (ie US culture is more risk accepting), I would agree. As someone who just completed 'cultural' training last week, risk profiles for various countries have the USA as very risk tolerant whilst other countries are very risk adverse (some of Europe, India etc). And I think most would agree that risk-acceptance is necessary for innovation/startups.

But wow, the rest of the material wrapped in that blog post ... stereotypes based on a couple of anecdotes, tarring an entire continent as a single monoculture, and inflammatory text such as 'Her cowardly behavior is the eventual result ...' says to me that this post was more about about someone's lack of understanding of culture (and dare I say attempt to appear superior) rather than any 'informative insight'.

Edit: I felt I should explain my objection to this post a bit more. In many cultures (particularly asian ones), communal harmony is valued more than individual success. This can often lead to decision by consensus (an extreme version being the one Rod saw). Is decision by consensus bad for innovation - quite possibly so (I believe it is myself). Is it cowardly? Absolutely not. Did it occur because mistakes were stigmatized? Again no - it's simply that shared decision making is valued for the community harmony. Different cultures, different values.

Edit 2: One of the tools we used on my course was Country Navigator (www.countrynavigator.com). You answer a short quiz which gives you your individual 'cultural' profile and you can then compare how closely you match other country culture profiles. It compares things like risk-taking/avoiding, do you relate as an individual or group etc. It was quite an interesting tool especially comparing how different countries related to me.

I didn't seem to get the impression that this was a rant based on his superiority, nor did I get the feeling this person doesn't understand the culture. I actually got this feeling that he does understand the differences in culture and the purpose of the blog is to make a social commentary about how this behavior stifles innovation and in most cases increase cost.

You're right, some countries value 'communal harmony', but that is not what this is about. It's not about having to meet 6 different people to get a sign-off because they have important input and will be directly involved with the product, it's about having to deal with one person who could easily make most of the decisions herself and having her take managers from everywhere because she just doesn't want to be responsible for any future disagreements.

This wasn't a brainstorming session. The manager's decision costed the time of 16 extra people and probably made the meeting go for a lot longer than needed, and at the end, instead of responding to the last question, they pass the torch to legal. To me this doesn't seem like avoiding responsibility, to me it's being irresponsible (at least towards other people's time, not even taking into account other people's sanity).

Shared decision making is all about everyone having a say - it doesn't matter if the boss/manager is there and could make the decision on their own - the boss will engage his entire team to share a decision so that everyone feels part of the team. That's my point that it's a cultural difference/value - it's not seen as time wasting, it's seen as an investment in good teaming/community harmony.

I believe you are blending two different things together. Working together as a team, and making a decision.

I agree that it's good team building to work together in a large group, but do you have to carry around 16 managers for every decision? Why is one person so afraid of standing up and saying I made the decision because I feel it benefits the company, and then go into your data and facts. Then have anyone who objects come forwarded. Instead of having to cross reference every member or other departments for trivial decisions.

No I'm not. That's the whole point of cultural differences. What you see as inefficiency, can quite often be cultural behavior. Let me illustrate with a different example: If you ever deal with Indians (particular in India), you will find that whenever you ask them a question, they will often say yes (even when you think the answer should be no). The reason is that when an Indian says 'yes', they mean 'yes I heard you', not 'Yes I agree' or 'Yes I have completed that task'.

In the same way, you judge that team as being ineffectual in making a decision, but unless you have the cultural understanding of that country, you could be misunderstanding shared decision making as something else. Your explanation, whilst completely logical, is from your 'lens' of the world and may or may not have any accuracy in explaining another person's behavior.

(I will point out here that I can't comment if the situation in the article is a cultural difference or incompetence. I don't know enough about the country nor the situation to comment. My only point is that I suspect Rod doesn't know either - he's judging them based on his world view without really understanding the cultural issues. However quite possibly, it's simply an incompetence issue).

Here you implied that this manager has a working knowledge of what the current issue is about. Or that she knows what is good for her company.

This indeed is a case of incompetence being masked with teamwork - I see it all the time (I work for government a lot).

As Archibald Putt said: When in doubt - form a task force. If doubt persist, form a comitee.

On misunderstanding of culture. Speaking as a slovene I have to tell you that it is you in this case who is guilty.

This IS the way bussines is done in Slovenia. The company he is talking about is probably one of the state owned, monopolist, socialist leftover, dinosaurs. Basically it's your average government affair.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com