

Please, screw up (on European corporate culture) - rodp
http://rodpetrovic.com/2010/11/please-screw-up/

======
iuguy
Wow. I'm amazed. You're tarring the whole of European culture with the same
brush based on experiences in Slovenia. The experience may or may not be
typical of _your part of Europe_ but Europe has no 'countrymen', we're all
very different from each other with different corporate cultures.

I find your post insulting on two levels - one the idea that Europe is a
monoculture, and two that somehow 'being more like the USA' means that we'd be
more dynamic risk takers. There are risk takers all over Europe. The main man
behind Ycombinator is English for crying out loud!

~~~
mdda
While it's interesting to note pg is English, for some reason he chose CA to
set up in. I'm English too, but based in NYC. As I told everyone when I
started my humble startup :

If I tried hard and succeeded in the US people would want to emulate me, in
the UK they would wonder who I had to screw over to get there. If I tried hard
but failed in the UK people would remember me as a failure, in the US people
recognize someone who tried...

~~~
iuguy
You go where the best chance for what you're trying to achieve is. For pg it
was silicon valley, for you it's NYC, for investment funds in Europe it's
going to be London, for engineering in Europe it's going to be Germany.

I don't think your analogy is that accurate, we have plenty of successes here
(James Dyson, Theo Paphitis, Alan Sugar, Richard Branson) as well as the many
smaller ones noone knows about. Also, failure is relative. In the industry I
work in, there are people that I know well who have exited on good terms, my
main business makes a fraction of what they made, but I enjoy the freedom more
and (to the best of my knowledge) so do the guys that work for me.

I do agree about the difference in the cost of failure though. Personally I
blame Del Boy Trotter for a lot of that.

~~~
mdda
Actually, I didn't come up with my 'upside vs downside analysis' here on HN :
it's how I've been explaining why I'm in the US to anyone who asks. I've had
far more nods of understanding from the people back home (in the UK) than
anywhere else.

~~~
iuguy
More than anything it gives me hope to here that. I've been relying on last.fm
to count as the defacto startup of choice for too long. I hope it all works
out for you, whatever you're doing. If you need an upvote somewhere or a
celebration of what you're trying to achieve, please send me an email.

------
tobtoh
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.

~~~
sp4rki
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).

~~~
tobtoh
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.

~~~
radioactive21
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.

~~~
tobtoh
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).

------
alextgordon
_As the European economy tries to stand up straight, while the American risk-
taking, innovation-powered economy runs forward..._

What?! "Running forward" is not a term I would use to describe the American
economy at the moment. And not all of Europe is struggling to stand up
straight.

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pavlov
Dysfunctional working environments are found everywhere, but they are not
alike. You'd find quite different approaches in US, Japan, Italy and Sweden,
for example. In all these countries, the operating environments of
corporations are essentially similar on paper, but the praxis is totally
different due to local factors and history (e.g. the state of the society when
modernization began).

I agree with other commenters that "Europe" is not such a culturally
homogenous region that this generalization would be warranted, though.

------
cherenkov
Petrovic,

Your experience isn't that far-fetched. While your observation about risk
taking and entrepreneurial spirit may be true in the US, the culture of risk
avoidance exists in the US too. Unlike what we see on TV, there is a whole
other side to America that people outside America do not see. (I say this as
an immigrant myself).

However, I do agree that having 16 managers preview a site pre-launch and
having to resort to "getting-back" on the answer to yes/no question appears
lethargic. It appears that the organization's legal folks had not been engaged
at the right juncture to comment on the content.

~~~
mdda
There's selection bias in the fact that they were pitching the US company on
the phone. The non-risk-takers in the US wouldn't have taken the call.

~~~
rodp
The company I work for is US-based.

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cherenkov
I think we ought to cut him some slack. A lot of folks responding don't seem
to take too kindly to the way Europe was represented in the post. I guess the
tone of the post is evident in the title itself, "please screw up." It is an
exaggeration of sorts, hyperbole if you will. Lighten up, please.

------
known
Refugees viz Albert Einstein & H1Bs viz Linus Torvalds contributed to the
prosperity of America.

------
dennisgorelik
I wonder what that "cowardly" manager would say when she sees that article?
While we cannot identify her from the article, she can recognize herself.

------
harscoat
Agree, clumsy post, still the main point it wants to change is that Failure is
very frown upon in Europe.

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Silhouette
I don't understand the implicit assumption of this article that risk taking is
a good thing. Unnecessary bureaucracy and CYA behaviour is damaging, but
taking excessive risks without adequate oversight/safeguards is the main
reason the global economy got into its current precarious state. This is not a
black and white issue, and the most successful businesses will be those that
balance each risk against the expected reward if it pays off to decide which
risks are acceptable.

