Joe Armstrong Quiet, collaborative, and disobedient ” Swedish engineers differ from their U.S. counterparts While American patent law is fixed on finding who had the idea, in Sweden, when they ask who had the idea, nobody knows , because nobody can remember. When Bluetail was founded, there were discussions on how the shares were going to be divided up and it just seemed natural that everyone was going to have one-twelfth each. The more senior members did not ask for more equity. Then, some of the international press asked the founders, "Hey what are you, a load of communists?" But it turned out that this partition of shares helped avoid many problems in building the company. It was also the fastest way to do it. The founding engineers wanted to build a company quickly so they said, "There, that's it." This type of pragmatic mindset has been a competitive advantage to the company since its founding. As Bluetail grew, its managers considered whether to get funded in the U.S. or in Sweden. In the U.S. they would have been able to raise more money for the company, but would also have had to deal with much greater control exerted by their shareholders. The traditional way of founding a company in Sweden had been to take a bank loan out on the house and to finance growth through profits. The risks involved were personal. IKEA, a privately owned furniture company that doesn't even publish its books, fueled its expansion through its own profits. The owners are speculated to be some of the richest people in the world. This is a very Swedish way of going about doing things, so U.S. venture capitalists need to understand that by nature, Swedes are skeptical of giving up control. Communicating on the job furthermore demonstrates a slight difference between Swedes and their American colleagues: The Americans will send e-mails with a colossal amount of people in CC to demonstrate how hard they work, and how clever they are. As an example, an e-mail was recently put in our system saying that we had a problem with a customer. Now from the U.S. side, there would immediately be a flood of e-mails: "We're working on it, we're doing it, we're on the job, Bill," and then they would be writing progress reports every day. At the same time, there was this stunning silence coming from Sweden, since the Swedes were actually working on the problem rather than writing e- mails to each other! And then the Americans criticized the Swedes: "Hey, we are not seeing much visible evidence that you are working over there." "But we are! We're not talking about it, but we are working!" The Americans have a habit of overstating everything, they market themselves and everything they do, while the Swedes understate everything. A lot of people aren't aware of this difference. Whereas Americans will say they are the world's best at something, a Swede may say he knows a little bit about something, which may actually mean he is really good at it! This can lead to grave misunderstandings in business. A funny story to illustrate this is when the American side set up an e-mail discussion list for the technicians. The measure of performance was how many mails were sent by each team to this mailing list. The Swedish team was once again criticized by its U.S. colleagues: "You guys are not very active, can't you mail a little more to this list?" In fact, I admit I never even read the list. Nonetheless, the Swedish side finally decided to mail around a bit . . . and the U.S. side got really angry . Deciding that this sort of miscommunication could not go on, the Swedish team sent one of their technicians to the U.S. for a meeting. After about half-an- hour the Americans realized that the guy knew what he was talking about. And after about two hours, the meeting had turned into a straight question and answer session, the Americans just sitting there dreaming up any possible question, and he had definitive answers to them all. From that point onward, the Swedish team received no more criticism. Company survival through disobedience In general, Swedish technicians get a lot more trust than U.S. technicians. Swedish engineers won't ask their boss for permission, they will just do it. Quite a few claim that Ericsson has survived so well because of the disobedience of its technical staff. The mobile phone was created even though the Ericsson board decided not to put any development money into it. The technicians believed so strongly that they managed to hide the development behind some other projects. This was true with the electronic switch as well. This atmosphere at Ericsson has created a lot of spin-offs, which initially was seen very negatively, until it was understood that letting employees outside the corporate structures actually increased product development speed as they started to buy back the spin-off companies. The way Swedish companies arrive at decisions is also very different from what I have experienced in other countries . Once, I asked the head of Ericsson strategy how decisions were made in his company. The reply was: "I don't know." One day, a senior executive managed to explain: "Imagine a big cocktail party in a room with a lot of doors. All the doors open , the big bosses come in and begin talking in groups of twos and threes. They frequently change the group they are talking with and this goes on for a while. At the same time a gang of workmen come in and start painting the floor. The management doesn't notice the workmen because they are so busy talking. So the workmen are painting, saying 'would you mind moving this way a little bit,' and finally they have painted everything including the doors and there is one door left and then everyone goes out to dinner through the one unpainted door. And when you ask them afterwards, nobody remembers the painters or why they went out through that one door." And that is the way decisions are made in Swedish companies. This is interesting. |
