A New "Normal"
A Different Codebook Inside Me!
Two friends had a misunderstanding about household duties while doing college together. One of them had agreed to empty the wastebasket whenever it got “full” but the other person repeatedly broke the agreement by taking out the trash BEFORE it was time. After a great while (and much emotional distress) these two friends discovered that they had different perceptions of “full”. The one young man thought it was “full” when it was below the top of the container. The other youth in the “haul out the trash agreement” thought it was “full” when trash was well over the top and nothing more could be added. These two young men had DIFFERENT CODEBOOKS inside their heads.
THEN they were able to create a new codebook!
PROPOSAL——Understanding what others are thinking is a big step toward working together!
Here are words and language to describe the way people think. It is in the form of an app for your phone……..
An app that describes the codebooks inside our heads!
Android-- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=zoomtouch.culturecompass.com&hl=en
IOS-- https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/culturecompass/id939554242?mt=8
Don’t laugh! Not everyone looks at life like you do.
The link below gives you the book (that the apps are based on). This document describes the codebooks inside our heads-- (download the pdf and open in Ibooks or Kindle) It is an international classic and a must read for anyone who only speaks one language. (You don’t have the software inside your head to think outside the box!)
Pages 300-304 of this amazing book gives a fascinating view of how different cultures see organizations (church structure)
Here’s the bait:
The British tend to prefer organizational structure to look like a village market.
Germans tend to prefer organizational structure that acts like a well oiled machine.
The French tend to prefer a pyramid structure.
The goal of this blog? To understand where others are coming from so that we can create a new normal!
