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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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The
Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live
and Buy as They Do by Clotaire Rapaille |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Congruity The best marketers
understand the need to present products and services in ways that resonate
with likely buyers. Crossing borders requires making the message ring true
for each different culture. Coltaire Rapaille introduces readers to this process in his new book,
The
Culture Code. Through an interview process that proceeds systematically
through several levels, Rapaille gets to the bottom
of why people feel certain ways about things, and then boils that sense down
to a single word or phrase. Readers may agree or disagree with how he summarizes
these cultural codes, but the process may be instructive for all. Here’s an
excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 6, “Working for a Living: The Codes For
Work and Money,” pp. 112-116: “What do
you do?” When
someone asks you that question, you could offer any number of answers. You
might discuss your role as a parent. Or you could talk about the various
things you do to maintain your household. You might respond with a list of
your hobbies. In There is
something very powerful and revealing about the way we ask “What do you do?”
in American culture. It’s another way of asking “What is your purpose?” as
though one were looking at an unfamiliar machine and asking “What is it
for?” We usually ask it almost as soon as we meet someone. “Where do you come
from?” is the first question, followed by “What do you do?” The answers
enable us to size someone up, as well as providing an evening’s worth of
small talk. In several
other cultures, one’s work is not nearly the passion and preoccupation it is
in ours. Stendhal’s classic novel The
Red and the Black defined a French culture in which one’s life had value
only if one served the country (as part of the military—the red) or God (as
one of the clergy—the black). All other occupations were vulgar, best left to
peasants. This attitude still pervades French culture and leads to a system
in which the unemployed receive more money than many service employees
receive. A major best-seller in Most
of my European friends are baffled that I continue to work so hard long after
I’ve made enough money to keep me comfortable the rest of my life. To them,
the concept of continuing at one’s job because one loves one’s work is
unfathomable. Europeans usually take six weeks of vacation every year. Here,
two weeks is the norm, and many people take their work on vacation with them,
or even go years without a vacation while they are building their careers. This
has been the American approach to work from the very beginning of our
culture. When our forefathers came to Americans
celebrate work and turn successful businesspeople into celebrities. Donald
Trump and Bill Gates are pop stars. Stephen R. Covey, Jack Welch, and Lee
Iacocca are mega-selling authors. Instead of Bonjour Paresse, our best-sellers
include The Seven Habits of Highly
Effective People and Good to Great.
Billionaire owners of sports teams, like George Steinbrenner and Mark
Cuban, make the headlines as often as the athletes they employ. Why does
work mean so much to us? Why do we
need to love our jobs? Why is it
so important to us to have a strong work ethic? When I set
out to discover the Code for work in The “bad
focus group” conversations of the first hour of the discovery sessions
varied widely. While some participants spoke with excitement and optimism
about their jobs, others complained about long hours, low pay, and difficult
employers. And while all seemed to agree that work was something you “had to
do,” their attitudes about this obligation ranged. When we got to the third
hour, however, and I asked participants to recall their first imprint of
work, a very clear pattern emerged. I had a
paper route when I was a teenager. There were days when I
dreaded it—snow was the worst—but for the most part, I had fun
with it. I liked collection days, and not only because I got tips. I liked talking
to the customers and getting to know them.—a forty-Jive-year-old man My most
powerful memory was just a couple of weeks ago. I’m a camp counselor and I
ran into one of my kids at the video store. She saw me and ran into my arms
and brought me over to meet her father. When she said, “Dad, this is my
counselor,” she said it like I was a queen or something.—an eighteen-year-old woman I work
three jobs to keep my family going. It seems that the only thing I do is work
all the time.—a forty-seven-year-old
man I
remember my first grown-up job. I worked during the summer in high school and
college, but this was totally different. This was a career. I liked having
colleagues and taking on assignments and planning out my future. I got a
promotion after only six months and I felt like I was on the map.—a thirty-two-year-old woman I worked
for the same company for twenty-three years. One day, a bigger company bought
them and suddenly I was out on the street. For six months, I kept trying to
find a new job and kept getting nowhere. When I wasn’t looking for a job, I
felt like I had nothing to do. My wife and kids had their lives, but I had
nothing. I finally got a new job for much less than I used to make. It
doesn’t feel the same, and I don’t feel the same.—a forty-seven-year-old man My first paying gig
changed my life. This was it. I had arrived. I was a professional musician!—a
twenty-nine-year-old man My first memory of
work was watching my mother break her back lugging boxes of fruit for her
fruit stand. It seemed to me that she was struggling all the time, but she
never complained about it. I know she didn’t like the long hours and the hard
labor, but she liked talking to customers. Everyone knew who she was—she was
the fruit stand lady.—a sixty-nine-year-old
woman The tone
of the stories ran the gamut—people were happy with their work, they hated
it, they felt invigorated, disappointed, or overwhelmed—but the energy of
the stories moved in a very specific direction. Work put you in a position
to get to know people, excite children, keep your family going, or plan your
future. Work could make you feel that you were like a queen, that you were on
the map, or that you had arrived; work could make you feel that it was all
you did; if you lost your work, you could feel that you had nothing. Though
participants might have suggested otherwise in the first hour of our
sessions, their third-hour stories gave them away. For Americans, work wasn’t
simply something you did to make a living or because you had to do it. Even
if you didn’t like your work, it had a much more powerful dimension, a
life-defining dimension. The
American Culture Code for work is WHO YOU ARE. When we
are wearing the new glasses provided by the Culture Code, the question “What
do you do?” takes on added meaning. In essence, when we ask someone what she
does for a living, we ask her who she is. Americans very strongly believe
that they are what they do in their jobs. Why are unemployed people often
depressed by the loss of their jobs? Because they are unsure of how they will
pay the bills? Certainly. At a deeper level, though, it is because they
believe that if they are “doing” nothing, then they are nobodies. If work
means “who we are,” then it is perfectly understandable that we seek so much
meaning in our jobs. If our jobs feel meaningless, then “who we are” is
meaningless as well. If we feel inspired, if we believe that our jobs have
genuine value to the company we work for (even if that “company” is ourselves)
and that we are doing something worthwhile in our work, that belief bolsters
our sense of identity. This is perhaps the most fundamental reason why it is
important for employers to keep their employees content and motivated. A
company operated by people with a negative sense of identity can’t possibly
run well. Some readers of the excerpt may
disagree, claiming that “I am not what I do,” but others will see how the
process lead logically to distilling that code from the interviews. Observing
and understanding patterns can lead to conclusions. Readers of The Culture Code who “get” the process, are more
likely to present themselves, their products and their services to customers
in ways that are congruent with the culture of those customers. Steve Hopkins,
August 25, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the September
2006 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Culture Code.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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