Consider the experience of one Silicon Valley high-tech start-up….let’s call it Catchall.

After years of success in the US, Catchall began international expansion. The  corporate culture was anchored in two very strong values: 1) a belief that strong debate and open disagreement are the foundation of good decision-making, and 2) the opinion that hierarchy and deference to authority lead to mistakes and complacency.  Catchall hired and trained employees based on these two beliefs, looking for staff who would thrive in a confrontational egalitarian environment. When the company grew internationally, these values went with it. Catchall believed its strong corporate culture to be a key to its notable success.

But its first international acquisition, a company in Stockholm, proved so challenging the subsidiary eventually had to be closed.  One Swedish manager explained, “In Swedish culture, we put such a strong value on consensus building that we avoid disagreeing openly with others. Instead we express differences in opinion gently, so that consensus can gradually emerge. When we were purchased by Catchall, many Swedes felt the confrontational behavior of their Catchall colleagues was completely inappropriate and maladaptive.”  In just six months, Catchall was struggling with startlingly high turnover, and as the company developed a reputation as an aggressive workplace it became nearly impossible to attract necessary talent.

For its next move, Catchall took a different approach, using a system that I call Culture Mapping to better understand their own organizational culture and compare that to the culture of the next target country.

The Culture Mapping process, which I developed at INSEAD by building on the work of many in my field, is made up of 8 scales that represent common management behaviors: Communicating, Evaluating, Leading, Persuading, Leading, Deciding, Disagreeing, and Scheduling.  By comparing the relative position of your corporate culture to the cultures where your company plans to expand, you can pin-point potential areas of conflict and strategize how to deal with them.

Catchall began its next move by mapping out their corporate culture on the 8 Culture Map scales, identifying where it stood on each dimension and also which scales seemed most important to the success of the company.  The Catchall Culture Map looked something like this (Exhibit A); in particular note of dimensions 3 and 6.

Exhibit A:

This mapping process allowed Catchall executives to prepare themselves for the ways their corporate culture was likely at odds with the local way of doing things.  After a cultural analysis, a company might decide not to move into a particular country after all.  Or they could decide some features of their preferred corporate culture might not actually be so essential; they could make some adjustments if a business opportunity looked too promising to pass up.

Comparing Catchall’s corporate culture to Swedish national culture, Catchall executives realized that they could have been more aware of how their own company values would clash with the Swedish style, and set a plan in advance to mitigate the difficulty. Exhibit B below shows the 2 most important dimensions of Catchall corporate culture (3 and 6).  Sweden is close to Catchall’s corporate culture when it comes to egalitarian behavior (# 3) but far away on the expression of disagreemnt (# 6).  With some early analysis, they realized that with some planning, they could have addressed this clash before it their Swedish initiative.

Exhibit B:

When an opportunity came up in Israel, they realized the Israeli culture’s comfort with open disagreement and egalitarian tendency was a perfect match for Catchall’s corporate style (see dimensions #3 and #6, Exhibit C).

Exhibit C:

It was apparent from the first negotiations that here employees challenged their bosses in front of others without discomfort from any party, just as was common in the Catchall organizational culture. Catchall proceeded with the deal leading to years of fruitful growth and collaboration.

As your company expands, look carefully at the corporate culture you have fostered at home and pinpoint how that culture will need to adapt to succeed in various local cultures around the world. The Culture Map shows you how.

Erin Meyer

About Erin Meyer

A Professor at INSEAD, Erin Meyer is author of The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business.