I am back in Sweden after a few weeks in France and I have a minor cultural shock. The weather was colder, but that is not what provoked the shock. It wasn’t the short lunch breaks either.
While we were gone, there was major water damage in the kindergarten. They had to evacuate the building and assemble a temporary one on the parking lot. The construction was delayed by a couple of weeks because they also had to build access for the disabled (of which there aren’t any) and a separate room for changing diapers, which can’t be maneuvered in the toilet for hygiene reasons.
Thinking about the electricity installations in the escalier of our building in France (the picture above), I felt that this might have been a time where nordic authorities could have loosened up a bit. But around here there aren’t any exceptions for temporary buildings, regardless of the urgency.
I had similar culture assimilation issues a couple of years ago, when I was working in the French sales office of a Finnish company. I remember us counting then that there were about two hours a day when the French actually were working at the same time with the headquarters in Finland.
When we came to the office after the rush hour in France, it was 11 o’clock in Finland, which is lunch time. The first joint working hour started when the Finns came back from lunch at 11.15. Then the French took lunch, and returned two hours later to the other joint hour, before the Finns stopped answering the phone at 15.30 local time. The French day was then really just starting.
That is what one hour of time difference and a spoonful of culture traditions mean in practice. Add bigger distances, stronger cultural asymmetry and a couple of time zones, and it makes one wonder it ever can be possible to build a smoothly functioning global organization. The cross-cultural challenge is to turn all this into an asset.
Doesn’t that make the world a great place to probe?
Happy Easter to everybody! (In case that is something you tend to celebrate.)
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