He was the newest Danish manager of a Swedish/British company. He'd been assigned to manage a team comprised of Danes and Swedes. This question had come up in his head a lot. "Whenever we get together and try to resolve some kind of problem or create a new strategy or process, we never get anywhere. They're so slow and indecisive!"
The Swedish team took a very consensus-oriented approach to decision making. They were always saying, "That's an interesting idea and we'll have to get back to you on that." Then, they go back to all the people who are touched by this, and get buy in from people.
The senior management from the UK didn't have much sympathy. For Lasse, it was, "You're the Scandinavian team, you should be fine."
Discussion
Subtle differences make a difference. The problem is a difference of what is perceived as good management style, conflict resolution, and so on. But these things had never been discussed with this team. The only expectation and assumption was that they were all Scandinavians and it wouldn't require team setup.
But expectations or assumptions should be established at the beginning. Lasse needs to talk to other managers who had led successful cross-cultural teams for this company. He needs to consider if there are cultural pieces that have been overlooked. It's important to do basic team building like setting guidelines and expectations at the start. But also look at the cultural profile of the team. Coach people to let go of that 'our way is the right way' mentality.
Once you do that, you can go back to the business problem instead of getting stuck on "my way is the right way" mentality. Lasse had hit an identity crunch and needed to stop and take the pulse of the whole team and consult his internal resources.
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