Scheduled cultures
A scheduled culture does things by the clock: examples are Germany, the
USA and Japan. It’s important to have a detailed plan for everything, to keep
to it and to adhere to strict timetables. This involves the development of
medium- and long-term strategies, and a complicated system of business cases,
revenue projection, agendas, memos, milestones, benchmarking and minutes
to record plans and progress. This is the armoury of a scheduled business
community. There is a preference for written communication, usually by email,
and decisions are based on facts and figures rather than instinct and intuition.
Other cultures that conform to this model include the Netherlands, the Nordic
countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland), Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Cities which are
industrializing or have strong links with scheduled societies will also have a
more planned business culture, even when they operate in a largely non-
scheduled society. Barcelona in Spain, Prague in the Czech Republic and Sao
Paulo in Brazil fall into this category.
Flexible cultures
Countries from this category are almost diametrically opposed to scheduled
cultures. They substitute vision for planning. They know where they want to
go, but are flexible about how they get there. The watchword of a flexible
culture is improvisation. Meetings may or may not start on time, and will
never finish on time. This means that flexibility is needed in adjusting to timings
and locations, since punctuality is not seen as a virtue. The great advantage
of a flexible society is that it is quick to find unexpected solutions and can
deal with crises faster than a scheduled culture. The reason is that effort is
put into building social relationships over time, so that the relevant players
know each other well and can do things easily and quickly on a personal
basis. There is less need to write things down in a flexible business culture,
so agendas and memos tend to go by the board. Above all, it’s important to
spend time building relationships: a face-to-face meeting or a phone call is
more important than emails and letters. The majority of the world conforms
to this pattern, including the Mediterranean countries, France, Central and
Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South America and most of Asia-
Pacific, including India.
This is not to say that people from scheduled business communities are all
highly organized – many are not. Nor does it mean that everyone in a flexible
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