{"id":3356,"date":"2020-07-16T00:52:39","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T04:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog-alexis.monville.com\/en\/?p=3356"},"modified":"2020-07-22T04:57:09","modified_gmt":"2020-07-22T08:57:09","slug":"the-culture-map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog-alexis.monville.com\/en\/2020\/07\/16\/the-culture-map\/","title":{"rendered":"The Culture Map"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Culture Map<\/a> is an excellent book by Erin Meyer. As my current team evolves in an international context, I had the idea to use the culture map as an icebreaker to start one of our quarterly meetings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team is composed of people from France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and The Netherlands. The team has to interact daily with a lot of people from the US, and nearly all countries in the EMEA area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We used a Miro<\/a> board and one of the culture map provided in Erin’s book (reproduced below).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I gave a short explanation of the first scale: Communicating. Either you are in a Low-Context culture where the communication is precise, simple, and clear, or you are in a High-Context culture where the communication is sophisticated, nuanced, and layered (you are expected to read between the lines).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, I asked one question: Where the US would be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the team members connected to the Miro board can see the cursors of the others, and so I asked them to move their cursors to the position they thought the right answer would be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After some discussion, people started to position the US in comparison with other countries. Of course, we covered the fact that a country cannot be a point on a scale but more a range on the scale. We also covered that all people are different and that the more you know a country, the more you can appreciate the subtle differences of the different regions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We continued to iterate with the next scales:<\/p>\n\n\n\n