There are two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?

The quote from David Foster Wallace above is as short an allegory on culture as they come. We don’t notice it until we are thrust in a different environment or meet creatures who interact with it in different ways. Say in part two of the quote, these young fish eventually meet a turtle swimming the other way. The turtle which splits its time between land and sea may be able to illustrate more clearly that it isn’t just water that can be different: that even that their medium of existence isn’t the only media that sustains life.

But that’s provided that the turtle can speak a common language and convey such a point with the young fish in the first place without any misunderstanding. The Culture Map, is the name of a book from INSEAD professor Erin Meyer, where she illustrates how miscommunication can occur so easily and unintentionally across cultures in the corporate context. In the book, she provides a framework for plotting how cultures differ along 8 different dimensions, replete with the mapping of the larger and globally prominent countries’ culture in each dimension.

I chanced upon the book at a Kinokuniya outlet in Shinjuku last month, perched on the bestseller shelf in the English section. Strange enough, for a presumable bestseller there weren’t any quotes from major literary figures or awards or time spent on bestseller lists. But the title was captivating and sure enough, I found myself reading the book cover-to-cover. Twice.

It’s a masterclass in cross-cultural communication and crystallizes what many a left-brained colleague would dismiss as ether. But it’s ether that translates to very tangible consequences when deals fall apart because of a mutual lack of trust and understanding. The book itself is also a consultant’s dream, with a strong foundation of frameworks while being laden with many thought-provoking anecdotes of faux pas and lessons learned from Erin and her seminar participants. For those who are looking for concrete tips, the book gives them in spades from how a presentation should be structured to content that should be contained in emails.

It’s a breezy read which would certainly help those who cannot read the air. For a summary of the key takeaways of this book, I recommend reading this post from LinkedIn.

As the book presents as a disclaimer, the position of a culture on the map is just one aspect that should be considered in interpreting and crafting communications. After all, the plotting of a single point on the spectrum for each dimension is a simplification, and was derived as the mean of a population of responses from each surveyed culture. Within each culture, there is a range which is considered appropriate. This takes into the account the other aspect: differences in people’s personalities. According to the book, taking these two into account will allow for effective communication.

To that, I would like to add a third layer: discounting for foreigners. Which is to say that natives tend to be more tolerant of cultural foibles from foreigners in day-to-day interactions. I believe it isn’t something which is mentioned in the book because it would arguably dilute its value: is there a need to really absorb the lessons and tips if the get-out-of-jail-free card can be easily played?

But it is a phenomenon which has played out in my time here in Japan at least. Or it could also be unique to Japan, or my position as a Singaporean in Japan. Or that there really isn’t any time to be doing nemawashi and getting everyone’s consensus before proceeding in consulting when what matters a lot more is getting quality output to the client by pressing deadlines.

Qualifiers aside, what this means is that I am constantly being “forgiven” for not conforming to the same social expectations, including those in communications. Like turning down requests directly instead of implying that “this would be difficult…”. And being able to get more time to think by asking my counterpart to repeat the question innocuously . And also why I have colleagues who will beckon me to interface with difficult clients because I am held to a different standard of delicacy, or lackthereof. The very same refusal or prevarication would have been interpreted as an offense from my Japanese or highly-naturalized co-workers.

Amongs the foreign expat community here, this is called playing the gaijin card. The downside of doing so all the time is that one inadvertently gets excluded from ever being part of the “in-group”. But I have never ever thought of myself as Japanese, or even wanted to be Japanese. What I have wanted is to be able to speak the language and understand a way of life that is different from my own. All while respecting this place and its people while adhering to my beliefs.

In short, to be the older fish that can tell how Japanese waters differ from Singaporean ones. To know that there are different waters out there in the world and to be able to swim just fine in many of them.