Meet Marie.
Marie is a German business consultant tasked with reorganizing a French company.
Excited with the prospect, Marie initially enjoyed her frequent trips to Paris and the directive with which she was tasked. But soon, she faced regular roadblocks that would make the fun project a chore.
The French company she was to reorganize was hierarchical and centralized. Despite this, Marie had difficulty identifying the appropriate decision-makers, as a number of people claimed to be in charge though they didn’t actually hold any power in moving the project forward.
Their interference threw rocks into the cogs of this project, slowing it to a standstill, and the delay resulted in even less support from the French team.
At this point, she wasn’t even able to secure a meeting with management or access the information required to complete her mission.
Marie had two choices: a) abandon the project, or b) find someone who could assist in her cross-cultural understanding of the way a stereotypical French company functions.
The Working Parts of a French Company
Marie was lucky enough to find her Zookeeper at the wedding party of a friend.
Using an analogy, this Zookeeper – a French manager who’d worked for over a decade in Germany – managed to crystalize Marie’s understanding of the hierarchy in the French office and the politics with which it functioned.
The Zookeeper told her, first of all, to abandon her German ideas of how an office should function. Unlike in Germany, companies in France don’t function like well-oiled machines.
Instead, he said, they are more like royal courts, in which the CEO reigns supreme. He is the king, and surrounding him, are his noblemen, knights, servants, etc. – all of whom vie for his attention.
They do this by constructing their own fiefdoms.
As Marie was someone sent in from the outside to manage a project, she should navigate this world like an earl.
As quoted from I am the Monkey, the Zookeeper advised:
“Be humble in the right moment. Be bold in the right moment. Be courteous when required. Be rude when needed. Build your political relationship and network, until you have the ear and favor of the king or one of his important ministers.”
By abandoning her expectations that a French office should function like a German one, Marie would be able to get the job done effectively in this foreign culture.
A Culture’s Office Hierarchy is Often a Microcosm of the Country’s Structural Macrocosm
France, itself, has a thousand-year-old history of strong monarchies. Further, its current politics is centered around a strong presidential state; so much so that President François Mitterand was deemed the “last French King.”
French thinking and the stereotypical hierarchies of French companies have been influenced by this historical structure and the way in which it functions.
In understanding this, Marie was able to adapt her behavior to a new frame of interpretation.
The idea that “French companies are like royal courts” created a firmer, almost visceral blueprint for not only what was expected from her, but for the methods by which she could achieve her goal in this setting that differed greatly from her own back in Germany.
This is one example of how analogies can aid a manager’s understanding of a new cross-cultural environment. We’ll be talking more about creating analogies in the coming weeks.
Success Across Cultures 