Sean Percival - Working with Norwegians: The guide to work culture in Norway

Working

with Norwegians

SEAN PERCIVAL

Copyright 2021 Percival Publishing

ISBN: 9788269237900

3rd Edition - EBook - Norway

www.workingwithnorwegians.com

Author: Sean Percival

Cover Art: Aliaksei Lapin
Back C over P hoto: Magnus R. Nordstrand

Percival Publishing
Skoglyveien 1b

1560 Larkollen, NORWAY
www.percivalpublishing.com

WELCOME TO NORWAY

NORWEGIAN VALUES AT WORK

The Law of Jante in business

Working to live, not living to work

Corporate Ethics

Being competitive in sports VS. being competitive in business

WORKING IN NORWAY

Inside a Norwegian office

Corporate hierarchy

How not to appear too loud

Making business contracts in a shy country

Meeting room culture best practices

Coffee and the foods of Norwegian business

ETIQUETTE, GIFTING AND MIXING BUSINESS

WITH PLEASURE

Using titles and first names

Whos paying for dinner?

Dressing for success

Norwegian drinking culture and Julebord

Sleeping with Norwegians

DEALMAKING IN NORWAY

Building trust

How Norwegians manage risk

How to operate on Norwegian time

Negotiating techniques

Contracts and the fine print

The art (and power) of the handshake

WHY NORWAY? A CLOSING

TYPICAL NORWEGIANS YOULL MEET IN THE WORKPLACE

GLOSSARY OF NORWEGIAN WORK TERMS

This book is your guidebook to the work culture in Norway. Here youll find unique insights into the way Norwegians and Scandinavians do business. It is a foreigners view packed with tips and tricks so that foreigners and Norwegians can be better at doing business together.

Its the perfect book for:

Expats

For foreigners living and working in Norway.

Love Refugees

Are you recently moved to Norway for love? Youre going to need a guide (and a lot of wool!).

Norwegians

For Norwegians to better understand multicultural work environments.

Corporations

As a welcome guide to new international staff working in Norway.

Gifts

The perfect gift for anyone doing business in Norway.

Sean Percival is an American venture capitalist and author who should have also been successful in Norway by all accounts. However, he failed to expand a leading Silicon Valley venture fund into the Norwegian market. This was primarily due to his lack of understanding of how the Norwegian business culture differed from his own. Inspired by this failure, he collected the lessons he learned into this helpful guide. He is passionate about contributing to and fostering more collaborative business relationships in Norway.

Through his work in the Norwegian startup ecosystem these past few years, he has interacted with Norwegian businesses of all sizes and across every primary national industrial sector. Before that, he was a Vice President with Myspace and worked for several leading startups in America. His experience has shown him that businesses benefit significantly from cultural diversity and that multicultural companies are more competitive, more creative, and even have more fun.

Disclaimer for Norwegian Readers:

As an American author, Sean is likely to brag excessively in a format you might not be used to. This is one of the ways our cultures are different.

This is a phrase I often heard as I started to do business in Norway. At first, I didnt quite understand the saying, perhaps taking it too literally.

Yes, Im here, and thanks, I do feel welcome, I would think to myself.

Over time I would come to understand that these three simple words best captured the Norwegian experience for a foreigner like myself. For us, things are just a little different here.

Lets go jump in that freezing cold fjord!

Welcome to Norway!

Its Friday so we must make tacos!

Welcome to Norway!

A popular Norwegian TV station once broadcast an entire eight-hour train ride. It was watched by millions of Norwegians.

Welcome to Norway!

Yes, Norwegians are unique, proud, and incredibly special. The country has a rich history that includes many periods of hard times well before the good times the modern Norwegian enjoys today. This history has shaped the way Norwegian society operates. If you were to look at just about any world report on the status of the various countries, it would appear that despite some peculiar ways of doing things, everything is working very well in Norway.

The country is incredibly strong, financially, and even emotionally! Norway was in fact recently voted the happiest country in the world, even though absolutely no one ever smiles here. That might due to the one thing Ive personally learned about happiness during my time in Norway: here happiness is more about being content, not overly happy or excited, just content. Youre content with your job, it provides a good living. Youre content with your government, they take good care of the people and can be trusted. Youre content with the bus showing up on time, as it does pretty much every time. Things in Norway just work well, and the people are generally very satisfied with life here. Its almost as if each person in the entire country, in becoming equal to everyone else, has entered into a super high functioning homogeneous blob. A very good-looking blob of course. This is Scandinavia after all.

One could go on and on about all the positives of life in Norway. But this book isnt an attempt to try to sell you on the country. Chances are if youre reading this youre already here. Either youre a foreigner adapting to the Scandinavian lifestyle, or youre a Norwegian yourself, curious to get a sneak peek at how outsiders perceive you. Thankfully, youre both in the right place.

This book is instead a collection of stories and observations Ive made over the years working with Norwegians. My hope is that through them, we can better understand each other and be more successful in business. Experience however has shown me that when it comes to working with Norwegians, this is not always so easy. So let this book serve as a guide from the point of view of my experience.

That experience started with my first visit to Norway, a trip that was both a mix of business and pleasure. When my feet first hit the ground here I felt something new. There was a calmness in the air together with the sometimes brutally cold weather. There was a different motion, a different flow to the city and the people that occupy it. And, like well-designed Scandinavian furniture, it was intoxicating to look at. I couldnt get enough of it really.

That first night I was incredibly lucky to have a friendly Norwegian host me for a home-cooked dinner. This was something that was fairly common in the business cultures I came from a new business contact comes to your city for the first time so naturally you want them to feel welcome. At the time I didnt know just how rare such an invitation is in Norway, but I could tell that the way I was treated was special. Thank you, Stina, for being both an amazing and not-so-typical Norwegian.

However, in typical Norwegian style, that night went on for a long time: very, very late into the night. Lots of great food but even more drinks this was my first experience with the aggressive Norwegian drinking culture. Before I knew it, the sun was rising, and I was stumbling home the best I could. I threw myself on the couch and fired off a text message to my boss back in America. I was incredibly excited (drunk) about the culture and business opportunities I saw in Norway: