The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Buy and Live as They Do [Paperback]

Understanding other people - their behaviours, their decisions, their communication - can be regarded as one of the most critical elements on the way to unleash the power of Diversity. Over time, experts have developed a variety of models trying to explain some of the differences we observe or experience when dealing with others. Gender differences (born or bred) were examined and today account for some of the behavioural patterns. Cultural models (with different meanings of `culture') try to describe characteristics or traits of groups of people, and how they compare with other groups on certain dimensions. Typically, these were chosen by someone (mostly Western males) and then applied to cultural contexts where they may or may not be relevant. In his book, The Culture Code, Clotaire Rapaille presents a quite different approach to understanding cultures and how they play out in everyday life. Concretely, he shows how to immerse in a foreign culture in order to explore what makes people tick - and how. His discoveries have been eye-opening - for marketers at first, for cultural experts later, and for many of us still today. Based on his research of thirty years, he describes the underlying meanings, interpretations, values and/or unconscious connotations that we apply to different things in life. In practical terms, he says that food, love or work carry different meanings for people in different cultures (or other contexts). However, few people have been aware of the vast implications the different `codes' (as he calls the connotations) have. Actually, they explain many cross-cultural processes more accurately and more effectively than any of the Hofstedes or Halls ever could.
With a number of powerful examples, Rapaille illustrates the concept of codes, their impact, and how we can eventually access and detect them. His analytic methodology highlights the importance of the meaning behind the words people say: In group interviews, he pays to attention to the differences of ad-hoc statements and patterns that become evident during a longer discussion, or more emotional statements once a comfortable atmosphere has been established. These guiding principles have been used in auditing organisational cultures and in stakeholder interviewing for a long time. When Rapaille started his work more than thirty years ago, it was groundbreaking, and his personal stories present a wealth of lively cultural diversity: French himself, and a academic psychologist, he was called to work on corporate marketing projects. His pioneering approach led to conclusions and recommendations that sounded weird to his clients, and apparently it was not easy for him to get his innovative ideas of change through. Does that sound familiar to you with respect to your work as a Diversity practitioner? If it does, the book will offer more of this.
The learning from The Culture Code goes way beyond better understanding the American (US) culture. Actually, more than a dozen areas Rapaille talks about won't be immediately relevant for Diversity practitioners. But the entire concept of understanding `codes' is very helpful in tackling `Inclusion'. Clotaire's work confirms current, leading-edge approaches that focus on individual mind-sets and personal drivers rather than grouping people in categories - that might not be relevant for them. The Culture Code serves as an implicit education on paradigm shifts and empathy, thus bringing out the essence of effective inter-personal conduct. If we manage to transfer these insights onto other levels and in more areas, we will be much further ahead in our journey to leveraging individual potential and making the most of all the differences that make a difference.

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CONCEPT

The principles of human behaviour and thought are fascinating and useful in their own right. However, the fact that this knowledge can be applied with such clarity to business challenges such advertising, marketing and sales - to the enhanced benefit of the consumer and business - is truly exciting. Dr. Clotaire Rapaille brings this principle to life in "The Culture Code". He explains that the Culture Code is the unconscious meaning we apply to any given thing and he goes on to describe how giving due consideration to this unconscious meaning can have profound positive effect for all concerned. Considering and understanding the `Culture Code' for any given situation or set of circumstances can be truly revealing.

BACKGROUND

3 Unconsciousness's

There are in principle 3 human unconsciousness's at work: Freudian individual unconscious that guides us as individuals; Jungian collective unconscious that guides us as the human race; and, a core concept to this book, Cultural unconscious that guides us as a nation.

3 Levels of the brain

The human brain can be expected to respond to situations on any of 3 levels: the Cortex which handles learning, abstract thought and imagination; the Limbic System which handles emotion; and the Reptilian brain which deals with survival and reproduction.

3 Human Structures

By looking at how people act in certain ways, Dr. Rapaille shows how to look past the content of what people say and into the structure, principally in 3 categories: our biological structure, dictated by our DNA; our individual structure which defines our identity; and our culture (language, art, habitat, history etc) which defines us as a group. This concept aligns closely with what Richard Dawkins writes in `The Selfish Gene' - something I found interesting given Dawkins comes from the biological and Darwinian science camp rather than that of social science and anthropology.

COMMENT

I found the latter chapters of the book lost their appeal for me - perhaps because I understand the American culture and other Nations' perception of this culture less well than I think I do. However, I was genuinely struck by a few of the earlier `Culture Codes'. First and foremost, the reality that when we are asked `What do you do', we understand the question as `What job do you do', or essentially `What is your purpose'. Dr. Rapaille's suggestion therefore that the Culture Code for WORK is WHO YOU ARE had great resonance for me. Equally the suggestion that the code for MONEY is PROOF of who you are is pretty revealing. To go outside the world of work, I really liked the perspective given by the Culture Code for FAT being CHECKING OUT. Dr. Rapaille offers some great insight and it is well worth reading the first part of the book if not all of it.

Although the writer mainly does his (extremely highly paid) work for marketing and advertising purposes, the book gives an unusually deep insight into the underlying meanings of certain concepts for various cultures.

Based on the learning of the particular culture as constructed in early childhood, he defines (for instance) what the word "love" means to several different cultures - and backs up his claims. He says that to the Americans (an adolescent culture) "love" really means "false expectation"; that in France "love" and pleasure are intertwined; the Italians expect love to contain strong dimensions of pleasure, beauty and (above all) fun (and that for them true love is maternal love); and for the Japanese (an older culture) love is a "temporary disease".

Most of what he says resonates as true (I have lived for more than a decade each in Western Europe, America and Japan). [...]. I'd love to read more on this subject by this author.