Why I LOVE Americans!
… and what Canadians could learn from them.
Photo Attribuiton: Thomas Hawk
WE Canadians could learn a great deal from our good neighbours to the south. I have had this discussion with countless people over the past few years. Last week it was our lunch time conversation and everyone was definitely on the same page. Americans are much easier to do business with than Canadians.
Why is that?
IMHO “Our good friends to the south have fostered a business culture that is not afraid to make a decision”. This culture of decisiveness is based on two key attributes;
1) The ability to decide (wow making a decision by deciding … cool)
2) Not afraid to say yes or more importantly no.
I think the first attribute is largely a function of that remarkable American characteristic of risk taking. Making a decision means taking a risk and deciding to do something. Decisiveness and risk taking are admirable. Canadians much prefer to reflect on what a decision might feel like.
I have heard it said that saying no can actually be more respectful than yes in many instances. If you are not going to do business with someone just tell them NO and as a good Canadian politely why not. Honest/direct trumps politically correct/dithering every time in my book.
Would I like to see Canadians acting more like Americans … in terms of decisiveness and getting stuff done abso-posi-lutely. Perhaps the Canadian US productivity gap is directly correlated to doing versus dithering coefficient.
Ian Graham
There are some caveats to the productivity gap — for example, I read in The Economist a few years ago that most productivity measurements reward inefficiency in service industries (where the output measured is hours worked rather than units produced). If it takes twice as long to process a patient in the US healthcare system (intake, record-keeping, insurance claims, etc.), then that gets counted as being twice as productive, even though the true output — a patient helped — remains the same.
As for the bigger question, I think you make some important points, but it’s important not to oversimplify: Americans and Canadians can both be risk-averse in different ways. American businesses tend to go bigger because they have to — incorporating in the US is an expensive proposition (including minimum corporate taxes in many states), and employee benefits like health insurance cost a lot. Unlike Canadians, most Americans I’ve met are very averse to starting a 1-2 person home business for those reasons, and tend to prefer working for — or (in rarer cases) starting — bigger companies. You’re less likely to find streets full of affluent, self-employed people working at home like you do in Ottawa.
Canadians, on the other hand, tend to be more risk-averse about making large investments. We’re happy to start small businesses, but don’t really want to put our necks on the block to grow huge companies rapidly with outside investment and venture capital, despite the fact that starting a large company is (for the most part) cheaper and less regulation-bound than in the US. For that, I’ll blame our dirigiste government culture — our system of government grants and subsidies creates a culture of dependency in business and the arts that virtually guarantees mediocrity. The best thing the federal and provincial governments could do for Canadian business would be to stop trying to help it with grants and tax credits, and let us learn to ride without training wheels. Then, maybe, in 10-20 years you’ll be blogging about how much better Canadian companies are at taking on risk.
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You wouldn’t like the Japanese. Apparently in a business relationship it is not acceptable to say no. At most you vary your enthusiasm and give what has been described to me as “different levels of yes”.
I’m skeptical of these claims.
They may be true but I’d want to see the measures used as one comment above seems to have indicated.
What I can say is, the US has the advantages of scale over Canada. I don’t think Americans are “better” per se. They may be.
I’ve worked with some Americans before. I don’t recall seeing obvious signs that the US teams I worked with were better or more decisive than the Canadian ones. (I didn’t see obvious signs that they were worse either). It goes without saying that, over the years, I’ve worked with some excellent engineers/computer scientists or team from the US but I’ve also worked with excellent engineers from off the top of my head, the UK, Germany China, India, France and of course Canada.
What I have noticed in Ottawa is that a lot of American companies here only seem to hire new grads. I think this is great if you are a new grad but less impressive if you are an experienced worker.
I’ve heard a lot of teams in the US only do requirements and offshore everything else. I think that is likely short sighted and I don’t see how the US can keep its engineering domination taking this approach.
Perhaps, given the number of Canadian companies that are being bought by American ones these days, you are sucking up.
Don’t get me wrong, the US is a great country and they certainly have introduced lots of innovation, I love USA, travel there often but your article seems to simply throw in a bunch of stereotypes.
re George
I couldn’t count the number of times in the last year that people have said exactly that “it is easier to do business in the US than Canada”. I also know that many of the companies working here get there first customers in the US rather than in the home town or country.
I have interviewed founders of software start-ups that don’t even try to do business with the Canadian government because it is too difficult for the little guys. CATA has lead the charge on a new initiative CICP (Canadian Innovation Commercialization Program) that is a step in the right direction and good for medium size business but far to complex and involved for a company of less than 25 or even 50 people.
There is a distinct difference IMHO between Canadian and American business culture. My preference is for the American style.
Ian
Hi
Rather curious what experience you’ve had with “American” and “Canadian” business cultures? What sort of work did you do and where?
I’m not a manager, but I don’t think I noticed this difference you are talking about.
Hi Ian
Ignore the previous comment; I hadn’t noticed that my other comment succeeded.
” have interviewed founders of software start-ups that don’t even try to do business with the Canadian government because it is too difficult for the little guys”
This is interesting but that sounds like a matter of government policy rather than “business culture”. I’m curious what sort of obstacles they faced.
Terry Mathews rather seems to have loved the research grants available in Canada and he used them to found a large number of start ups. He also liked Canadian Engineers and the ability of Canadian Engineers to get things done. Admittedly, he did some of his development in the US as well.
“CATA has lead the charge on a new initiative CICP (Canadian Innovation Commercialization Program) that is a step in the right direction and good for medium size business but far to complex and involved for a company of less than 25 or even 50 people”
This is partially nice to hear!!! Sadly, in terms of job growth, we need more start ups. I don’t think we need start ups that do business with the Canadian government tho. We need start ups that export.
Thanks for clarifying!!!
George
.
As mentioned, this is a recurrent theme of entrepreneurs and start-ups I chat with (on a daily basis) and there is without a doubt unanimity in the relative ease in doing business with US companies compared to at home in Canada. In fact I was just chatting with someone about it this morning. Most companies I know typically do business in the US before winning customers in Canada.
Why? I am speculating that it is cultural differences and have seen enough dots to plot a reasonable distribution. Keeping in mind this is a small business perspective rather than large enterprise.