Business Foolishness - not us Brits!

Clive Davis's posting The British way of doing business? caught my eye. His is a comment on a posting by Adriana Cronin-Lukas who I believe is a management consultant.

Unfortunately, I think that management consultants sometimes have a reputation for telling you what you already know about your company, but at great cost. This has given 'consultants' a bad image on both sides of the Atlantic, you only have to look at some of the Dilbert cartoons top see this (note the level of my references). The difference between the Brits and the Americans is possibly a level of cynicism and a desire to not be seen to have been 'caught out' or look a fool. This is why the Brits tend to be very suspicious of anybody with the title 'consultant'. Rather than been caught out by a consultant and losing lots of money, we'd rather not use them at all, or at least test them first – this gives us the appearance of being very cautious and reserved. Americans seem to be more willing to give anything a go; they wouldn’t want to miss out on an opportunity.

So when we see our friends over the Atlantic trying absolutely anything (including consultants) and then failing we have a good laugh because they look foolish but alas, they probably don't understand what we're laughing at. The Americans are more willing to give it a go and see this as preferable to indecision or a fear of failure. The Americans come across more positive, open and decisive; and us Brits seem more negative, suspicious and indecisive. But once us Brits have made a decision we have to ensure that we don’t look the fool so we need to succeed. We become terriers and quite determined, perhaps more so than the Americans, and all because we don’t want to look the fool!

I think that if we are honest, both sides of the Atlantic both respect, admire and are equally frustrated and irritated by the way each of us do business. No matter what we say, the UK and USA are friends and perhaps the ideal is somewhere in between.

This sort of relationship exists between us Brits and countries in the Far East. Here we see the British often frustrated when dealing with businesses in countries such as Japan, Korea and China. Endless meetings that reach no conclusions that ultimately revolve around the need to 'not lose face' (i.e. not look a fool). But when they make a decision they certainly make sure they get the job done.

Of course, another downside of not wanting to look the fool is that we don’t like to admit we are wrong. Again, the degree of not wanting to look the fool is almost a linear scale from west to east. Conversely, an upside is the need to test to make sure it’s right. I feel the Americans aren’t always as good as us and possibly the Far East is better? But then they won’t want to admit they are wrong as quickly as we British do and the Americans can’t understand why we just don’t drop the project and start again … and so we can go backwards and forwards.

This is probably one of the best arguments for a global economy – the diversity of approaches is healthy. It is the same argument for opening our doors to other cultures within our own borders, the diversity helps our own economies, helps us to work in different ways. Indeed, it would be a shame to lose these differences and hopefully the cultural identities will be retained.

It is often the complaint that cultures are being Americanised, I’m not so sure that this is the case. It might be that American cultural influence is more discernable as it is more open and less subtle. Perhaps, deep below the surface of the American culture is the Far Eastern cultural influence and maybe nearer the surface is the British culture etcetera, etcetera. Isn’t it an interesting world we live in?

But coming back to being a consultant, and I’ve really gone off track this time, there is an answer – don’t call yourself a ‘consultant’. Incidentally, it’s a bad idea to call yourself ‘expert’ too!