Navigating Multicultural Teams: Lessons from Adform's Cultural Business Guide - with Charlotte Kure Juul

Welcome to Work in Progress , a podcast series where I pick the brain of thought leaders within the field of people and culture . My name is Pernille Brun and in these talks we explore the latest trends shaping the future of work and the evolving landscape of modern organizations . In this episode , I'm speaking with Charlotte Kure Juul , who is EVP slash CHRO at Adform . All right , Charlotte , welcome .

Or maybe you should say welcome to me , because we're sitting at Adform's office . This is where you work from , but you are a multicultural business and you have offices all over the world , as I understand it , so maybe you should start by telling me a little bit over the world , as I understand it . So maybe you should start by telling me a little bit about the setting where are we sitting and what's your position ? Okay , so Adform is a company with 700 people and I think we are currently in 29 countries , so it's very well distributed .

Headquarters is in Denmark , but it is actually not the biggest office . The biggest office is in Lithuania , where we have , I think , almost half of our people , and that also means that quite many of our offices are rather small , sometimes even down to two people . It also means that everyone , on a daily basis , talk to people everywhere else . Yes , my own team is in Lithuania , in Poland , in Denmark , in US , in India .

Probably forgot someone . Yes , so everyone has a very distributed team . Yes , that's how we work , right . Yeah , and how many people are you ?

in total In my team I think we are 32 . Okay , so I'm responsible for HR , for administration , for communication , and then I'm part of the executive leadership team and thus also part of making strategic decisions for the company Awesome . And what is it AdForm does or do as a business ? AdForm does digital advertising and basically you can see it a little bit as a stock exchange between people who want to have commercials posted somewhere have commercials posted somewhere .

So an example could be IKEA has been a client and then maybe on the Danish TV channel , tv2 . So making that match the connection , the connection , and it's a little bit of a bidding process going on , because sometimes it's more interesting to be online at certain times of day than other times . It's also important that you get in touch with the right people so that you don't advertise for , let's say , diapers for teenagers . The reason why I reached out to you and asked if you would be in this podcast episode was because I read on LinkedIn you announced that you had now made a cultural business guide , and I was curious to learn a little bit more about why you did that , Because a lot of people having multicultural teams maybe run workshops or do do diversity training and maybe you also do parts of that .

But what was your thinking and background for writing the guide and how do you use it . So it actually did start in the whole diversity discussion discussion , where we , so as every other company , we were also learning from the Me Too movement and so on and we discussed what to do , we decided to make it a little bit different than all these harassment policies coming up . So we decided to make a respect policy , taking the more positive standpoint in saying that if people respect each other , then we don't have these problems .

So the basis for everything is that respect . And then the cultural guide came from a starting point and saying sometimes when we bump into each other as colleagues , it's not intentional . Of course , sometimes it is and you have someone who's rude or behaving as an asshole or whatever , but that's quite rare . But quite often it is because people come from different backgrounds and they don't recognize that this is rude in a certain culture .

So that's where it came from , that we wanted to support that respect policy with something quite tangible to make people avoid these situations where they , without thinking about it , step on someone's toes and personally I've done that as well . I have many situations where it happened , because in Denmark , as you know , we can be quite sarcastic and sometimes we think we're super funny and then it bumps into other cultures where they take it seriously and they don't get that we say these things for fun and they take it serious and then they actually get offended or scared .

And one of the things I had to learn was that the combination of the Danish sarcasm together with my role at a very high level in the organization , I have to be super careful on what to do Because my Danish way of doing things I take for granted that we are always at eye level , that everyone are equal . That's my Danish culture . But then I suddenly have employees in India and that's just not the same . No , so you have a concrete example of you bumping into a situation there where you were misunderstood or what happened .

Yeah , it was actually three years ago . We started an office in Mumbai , India . First thing we did was that we hired the new managing director and then we wanted to set up the team . We wanted also to hire an HR person .

That has turned out to be quite difficult , because HR in India is relatively different from HR in Denmark or in Europe . And then we had many , many interviews . We even had an HR manager who stopped again very quickly and then in an online meeting I said to that managing director I said ha , you're scaring away all the HR people . And then and it was just a funny joke I thought I was super funny .

Then afterwards I learned from his manager , who is my colleague , that he got super scared and he thought like , okay , if HR is against you , then your job is at stake . And so he got super scared and I simply had to spend the time calling him and say I'm very , very sorry . This was just a bad joke . I very much respect what you do , I totally believe that you're doing your best , and so on .

But I had to say it out loud , yeah , yeah , Because in his interpretation my joke was quite serious . And how did you learn that ? How did you find out that he was actually offended and got ? scared Because I was lucky enough that he felt comfortable enough saying it to his manager .

Yes , who is ? Danish . Yes , and didn't have any trouble coming back to me and say , oh , something went wrong here . What happened ?

right . So you kind of had a little bit of a security in the system to make sure that it would be raised when things like that arise . But you can say when you work online with people who are many thousand kilometers away , you don't always see that . No , maybe you don't even discover that it happened .

Right , yeah , and then you will just have people starting to act in weird ways or potentially leaving the organization because they think they have a rude HR director . Yes , no , but that could be the consequence , right , exactly . So you had experienced it on your own . And then you said some of these problems that can arise when we have many diverse backgrounds working together in a day-to-day business .

Did you have any surveys showing you that things were difficult in certain parts of the organization , or was it just something you wanted to prevent , or what was the need ? So we have a ? pretty good overview of I call it the happiness of our organization , because we do pulse surveys every month and we follow up quite tightly . So it did not come from a starting point of we have a big problem , but it did come from that starting point of the whole Me Too movement and I wanted to prevent things from happening .

So that's also why our policy includes things around how we will handle in case there's a situation because , things will happen . It's a big organization . It's still growing . Things will happen .

We know that organization . It's still growing . Things will happen . We know that .

So let's be prepared for that . And then , instead of just looking at the numbers and all the problems , let's discuss what can we do to prevent things ? And again , coming from that positive mindset , in the way that I very much believe that Most people come to work they want to do the right thing , they want to be good colleagues , they want to perform , they want to make good decisions , and then sometimes they bump into , they don't make good decisions or they do something to offend others .

But the more we understand each other . So this is only one out of many things we do to enable teamwork . So we have the cultural guide , which is also a dialogue tool . In my opinion , it's something that we can put out in teams and then we can take discussions .

And we have made little exercises to make with teams where you basically stand on a line . So one of I did it in Czech Republic right before Christmas , where we actually had a conflict between some people from the local culture and then there was someone from a different culture there , and not all the trouble was related to that , but some of it may have been Because , especially on feedback , these cultures were just so different . Right , and I see it all the time . One of my best colleagues is from UK and whenever he gives feedback it's very subtle , so it's very much like you have to read between the lines , and as a Dane , I don't read between the lines , so that means I take for granted that if you are unhappy with something , you tell me and if you don't say anything , that's because you're happy .

And I actually had . When we were preparing for some workshops around this , we had a situation with I have an employee in Poland and she has done a lot of the work on this cultural guide , so we had a workshop for 30 people and then we were preparing the workshop and then I was like but do you want to be the facilitator or should I ? And we sort of never got to a conclusion until we were standing there and then I suddenly discovered it was because , in her mindset , I was at a high level .

It was my job to make the decision . Yes . And I came from the other angle saying okay , if she really wants to , I don't want to push her to do this facilitation . She was not that experienced in facilitating and I don't want to push her , so I think she will let me know if she wanted to do it .

So we were sort of both waiting for each other , and this is just an example of how this really impacts collaboration , because we both had the good intentions . She had the intention of being respectful to the more senior person I had the intention of respecting if it was too much for her . Interesting , yeah . And how did you then find out that what was actually going on ?

Was that part of the tools from the guide , or To some degree . Yes , because then at the end I simply asked her and I put words on it . I said I don't really get , because I cannot really get the feeling for if you want to do it or not . And then I simply said I don't want to push you , but I will allow you and I don't have to take all the what do you call ?

it . Facilitation parts . No I don't have to take it , and I also want you to shine and show the work you have done . But if you feel a little bit uncomfortable doing that , I will step up and I will do it right .

Yes , so the thing you can do is when you take it out , when you talk about it explicitly , then it becomes easy , and that's what we hope the guide will do for our teams , right ? So tell us a little bit more about the guide . How does it look ? What does it compose of ?

So it basically comes from Aaron Meyer and some work that was done , I think from INSEAD in 2014 . And we adapted it to AdForm and maybe also updated a little bit from our reality . Yes , because AdTech is quite a young industry , so that also means that the people working there are rather young and and maybe some of the work that was done in 2014 was a little bit old culture . Yes , so as an example , when , when we showed it to our people in india , they said , yeah , this is true , but that's the old ind culture , that's not the modern Indian culture in tech industry .

So what we've done is we have taken the guide and we have taken out . I think normally the full work has eight dimensions or seven From Aaron Meyer's culture map . Yes , but we have only selected five because we also wanted to make it manageable . And then we simply took all the countries where we have an office , and then we said what does this look like in Australia ?

So now I'm sitting here with Australia , right ? So how is communication done in Australia ? So that's one of the dimensions , yeah . Communication yes , yeah .

Another one is feedback style . How do you give feedback ? Is it direct or is it indirect ? Between the lines yes , decision making who makes the decisions ?

Yes , how do you build trust ? Does the trust in Denmark comes from ? Let's do some work together and now I trust that you are capable . Yes , let's do some work together and now I trust that you are capable .

Yes , in India , as an example , we start with let's make a good relationship and then let's see what we can do together , right , yeah , so we start from different angles , and the last one is perception of time yes , where we can see that with some countries , it's also very different . Yeah . So , you have those five dimensions that you can use as a dialogue tool . That here we actually do .

Also from research see that there are some differences between cultures , yes and then you could use that as a starting point for a dialogue . Yes , and then we can take it down and say but of course , individuals can be different , but let's talk about what does it look like ? Yes , are we different here ? Are we the same ?

Are we bumping into any trouble ? So one of the things that often happens is , if there's a very different perception of time , then the Danes and the Dutch people and the German people say why is this person not showing up on time ? And the German people say why is this person not showing up on time ? And for someone from India , just within the same hour , is showing up on time right ?

No , but it's just a very different perception and different habits , and , having traveled a lot in India , I also understand why . Because you would never know whether it would take you an hour or three hours to get to the office . It's impossible and there's nothing you can do . So of course , they need to have a different perception of time , but we need to collaborate .

And we also need to ensure that we have a balance , so it doesn't become a dictatorship from one of the cultures , exactly . But then there are , of course , also things that we say , but this is the way we do things in that form . So I think it's also an important starting point that you don't just make a cultural guide that has to do with geographical differences , but the starting point actually needs to be who are you as a company ? What is the strong culture ?

you have and that you would like to nurture and see grow . So the cultural guide consists of chapters , or what we could call it , from the different offices in the different locations and then explaining the dimensions seen from that perspective , and then you compare it to what you want to see as a culture . And then we sometimes use that cultural map with teams to basically say okay , we have people from four different geographies here or countries . Where are we the same ?

Where are we different ? If we're the same , maybe we have a tendency to only see the world in one way . If we're very different , we might bump into conflict . And are we doing that ?

Or is this person actually different ? So we have done exercises also where we put people on a line and then say okay for feedback , those who do this , they stand over here , those who do that and then we have asked them to say what do people do in your country and also , what do you prefer ? And that is a very good starting point for a dialogue about how do we give feedback in this team . Yes , right , and it's not out of disrespect If I do it this way .

This is just what I was habituated into , or that is usual for our culture , or for me personally . And so you mentioned the Czech Republic . You did a workshop there . Was that based on some of the exercises from ?

the cultural guide yes , it was . Can you give an example of what happened there ? So that was very much on perception of time , where there was really a frustration that some employees didn't show up on time for meetings , they didn't give the information on time , and then others were like but this is what we have agreed on , this is when we started the meeting and that generated frustration from both sides . Right , yes , so it basically created the foundation for them to talk about it from a third eye perspective .

Yes . Rather than you did that and I did that . Yes , yeah . Awesome , that's a nice way of using it .

Yes , so what else is in the guide ? That's a nice way of using it . Yes , so what else is in the guide ? So there's this kind of explanation of what might be from your cultural background and then also some ideas of what you want to see .

So what we put in is for each of the dimensions that we also took in , what can go wrong , okay , what normally goes wrong . Interesting when you see one of these dimensions . Right , yeah , and it's quite common , right , that when you have a very direct feedback culture , it very often goes wrong that people see you as rude if they come from a different culture and the other way around , that people feel that you don't speak up and they don't get the message . If you sort of wrap your feedback in a very nice way and yeah , yeah , okay .

And so how long is the guide ? How many pages ? Oh , how many pages ? I think so .

Basically it has an introduction of a few pages and then it has one page per country . Okay , so I think 30 pages , 30 pages , all in all , right , do people read it ? It's not intended that they read it from one end to the other . It's more like so if you would go travel to Copenhagen and you had TripAdvisor , and then you would go say , and now I want a restaurant .

So that's more how you should see it , because I don't expect anyone to be able to say this is how they do in Australia . I don't think that makes sense . But if I have a meeting with someone from Australia and it's a new colleague maybe , or even a client , then it could be before the meeting . Maybe I read and say , okay , so I have the guide on .

This is what the Australians look like , and then I know my own profile and style . And then I can say , okay , we are very different on communication or we're very much the same . So let me just be careful and the intention is not that we decide that one way is better than the other , because I think when you work in an international company with people from so many different countries , you have to meet Somewhere . You have to meet somewhere , right ?

So what is your advice ? Is it then to meta-communicate , for instance , like you did , about what's going on and what you are perceiving that we might misunderstand each other here , because I want you to facilitate this , but I don't want to push you . And there the answer , kind of , was you bringing it up at that level where you could speak about it . Yeah , and I think that always makes it easier .

Right , and the hope with the cultural guide is basically to make that dialogue easier . Yes , because it is difficult , and especially if you talk with someone who is at a different level than yourself or very remotely right or very remotely right . I can see that , just because of my role and I'm part of the executive leadership team there are things people don't dare to say to me . Yes , so having a tool that makes it a little bit easier and I need to be aware .

So I think it's also a personal thing that we will teach our leaders to say , okay , I have , because I'm more senior , I have to be aware that people from Poland , people from India , will take everything I say quite seriously yes yes , and so I need to be really careful on what I say and I have to stop being sarcastic on what I say . And I have to stop being sarcastic , maybe in certain surroundings , especially with people who are much younger than myself . Yes , exactly .

So you said that this is just one tool in the toolbox , or all the different initiatives you have around culture at AdForm , and so I guess it supplements your employee handbook and other initiatives you have . What else are you doing to mitigate conflicts but also help people work well together across backgrounds and cultures ? So we are doing quite many things . So we have I think you could say in HR we have quite many things on the shelves and we always try to say what's the problem and then what's the right solution here , and that we can only discover when we have the dialogue with the manager and say what are they struggling with ?

Or what's the ambition ? What do they want to do even better ? Or what's the ambition , what do they want to do even better ? We also do assessments of people's personalities , because team roles is a different angle on the same thing basically , but that's a more personal aspect .

That also works when people are just different , because they're different people and we can talk about what are the different roles they prefer to take , because you can say sometimes the cultural clashes are not geographical , because if you have a salesperson and a software developer , you definitely also have a big clash in culture , right , yeah , so in my opinion , you need to have quite many different tools in the toolbox so that you can take out the right tool for the situation , what we do to keep track of how things are going in different parts of the organization .

We use this pulse survey that we do every month and actually for the cultural guide and the respect policy , we actually added a question now which basically says do I feel we have a respectful culture in that form ? And then the intent is that , if , if results show something , we will come out and we will have the dialogue with the team and say , okay , what's going on's going on . Is there anything we can do to help you ? Yes , so , and then it might be a workshop on culture , but it might also be a workshop on team differences or it might even be conflict management .

Yes . So we never know before we dig into further details . What's actually going on ? No , no Great , and so the reason why I asked you if people read it is that we've heard or gotten the feedback , sometimes within P&C and HR , that we write all these you know , nice brochures or guides and no one reads them and they're just there on the shelves .

So what were you thinking when you started out the dialogue around creating or crafting this guide and how was it received in the organization when you told about it . So when we launched it , there was actually a quite positive feedback from the employees . They were quite excited about it , because it is difficult to work in an international organization you do bump into things sometimes and having a tool for making that easier , they thought it was helpful . But I think it also builds on a general principle we have in HR and AdForm , which is keep it simple , never , ever , make it something that's super complicated and that ends up on the shelf .

And then there is another aspect , which is we need leaders who can drive the things we want to drive , and that is why we have actually spent the past four years investing quite a lot of time and energy in educating our leaders so they really understand it's their job . It's their job to make sure the team is that people are collaborating in the team and delivering . It's their job to ensure that the way this team works is also working together with a team from another department , and that mindset we have spent three , four years building .

Okay , and I think we've come to a point where I really trust that no manager in AdForm would avoid saying that this is my job , okay . And then , of course , they can be at different competency levels . Some are newer than others , and so on , of course , but they know exactly what job . That is their job .

It's not up to HR to do anything about it , but you provide the tools and the methodologies and , of course , you can assist with workshops , it sounds like as well . Yeah , and then we also steal a little bit from marketing , in the sense that when we develop these tools , we see it also as we need to do a marketing campaign . So we need to train the managers , we need to ensure that we communicate , not just by sending out one email and then doing like this , but really massaging it in communicating in different ways , making sure also that I always have the executive leadership team behind it .

So I would rather not do something than having something that my manager is not fully supportive of . So I think that's also an aspect that's really important , because if it becomes an HR project and an HR baby , it will probably end up on the shelf . Yeah , so , okay . So having that buy-in from everyone around you , including the CEO and you actually , before we even started recording this episode , said something about the fact that it's not called a cultural diversity handbook , which I thought in the beginning .

It's called a cultural business guide . Yes , and what's the difference there ? Why did that matter ? And it's actually the same with our respect policy .

It came from saying we are an ambitious company . To achieve the goals we have , the ambitions we have , we need high performance . High performance only comes from strong teams . In a very complex world , Strong teams only come from people who work well together and respect each other .

So that's why it's a business guide . It's not for you to go traveling to Turkey and then having a nice time over dinner and understanding people better . And it's also not about do I give a handshake or not . It's about dimensions that are very relevant in day-to-day collaboration and business .

It sounds like yeah , so you do better business when you collaborate better together . So it's through that lens you look at it . Wise , yeah , I like it . So the whole beginning of our talk today was very much about how you came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to write this guide , and I forgot to ask you in the beginning .

So , working with multicultural teams and people from different backgrounds , it sounds like there might be misunderstandings , there might be trouble , there might be problems . What are the ups of it ? What are the pros of having a multicultural workforce ? So I think I've been working with people from everywhere in the world since 2007 .

And I cannot go back to only work with people from Denmark , because it's so inspiring to have your perception of the world challenged . And let me give you an example . And the first time I was traveling to Malaysia , then I went to this little market and there was a little art exhibition and then there was this picture showing the three seasons and I was like , but there are four seasons and what I really discovered was that even the things you really take for granted are not the same in different parts of the world , and that really shows me how even the smallest things we take for granted are just different , and I think it's so inspiring .

Yes , and then I'm also like really curious and the opportunity of working with people from everywhere in the world . And the opportunity of working with people from everywhere in the world and it's not about when you travel as a tourist to different countries . You sort of see the glittery surface right . When you work with people , you also get to understand how are things really working for real in this country ?

So , because my next question was why does that matter on a business level , that you get to know , for instance , that there are three seasons in Malaysia , apparently , and not four and stuff . So this challenge of your own perception how does that influence the way we do business and does it matter ? No , but you can say when you work together on a project , it does matter how you do things . And I think a more low , practical thing is we have a tendency in Denmark to look at the calendar and say this is Christmas , this is Easter , this is , and during summer everybody is on vacation , right ?

So let's make all the milestones and deadlines in March . Fitting that schedule . And then we don't take into consideration that , potentially in China and India , what about Diwali ? What about Chinese New Year ?

And then we put important deadlines right on top of their biggest celebrations in life . So , and by looking at three seasons , you get this awareness . By looking at the cultural guide , you get this awareness that things are different . Yes , and that can , because it's not very respectful to put so .

So imagine someone put a deadline on the 25th of december for you , right , yeah , you would find that really difficult right and maybe even offending yes , yes but we do the same all the time if we're not aware . Yes , so that's why . So it's about respect and awareness and then creating the conditions for better work , of course , in collaboration . But to me it also sounds a little bit like when you have these different perspectives and your experiences and I can see how you lighten up when we talk about it your own curiosity is sparked and that might also influence the way you work and the offerings for the business and how we see our products .

Yes , I guess yes and maybe qualify them and you can say also when . When our people go out and meet the clients . Clients can also be very diverse , right , yep ? And even though you work in a certain country , in most countries you will bump into other companies where people are working all over the world , right , yes ?

So training that muscle of working with people , respecting people and understanding different perspectives it's just healthy in a business that people are trained for that yes , and , and it also makes me think that you can maybe even look at it from the perspective of um , making the products better because of the imaginative power of it could be different . So so this , what could be ? And , and when you bump into a problem and it's like , oh , we're stuck , no , it's because we're only doing it one way .

There are many other ways we could do it . This is maybe also what it opens up for . And it also opens up for so . If you have clients all over the world a little thing like what are the working hours in different parts of the world it can be very helpful to have someone in a different time zone who are willing to work .

It can also be helpful to have someone who is not concerned about working on Christmas Eve because they have a different religion . Yes , and it's not a sacrifice for them to work on Christmas Eve because it's not a national holiday anyway . Exactly so . It helps us get unstuck , in a way right .

Yeah , I actually never thought about it that way before . It's interesting , so to really implement things like this , implement things like this . So first of all , you need the leaders to also train that muscle themselves , and then it's also a really good idea to have a team in my case , it's the business partners who also get it and can help right , because most often it's when it's difficult that we need the help right , and someone who is a little bit extra trained in understanding these aspects can be helpful Great .

So to do it like a preventive measure and train up your own team and have them try it out first , maybe yeah , and then make sure the leaders are on board and understand it and get why that is not just another tool but actually the foundation . It's like when marketing you don't see that commercial from BMW once . Right , you see it so many times and then eventually it ends up in something you might want to buy . And it's the same with HR things .

In my opinion , we need to ensure , and I think often at least I've experienced in HR it's like oh , we did send out the email , we put it on the internet and now all is good . No , it's not . No . So there are many things you can choose to focus on in your position , and how come you chose this lens and this part ?

I know that you have many other things on your plate , of course , but this is a particular interest to you . It seems like . How come ? No , but you can say so .

When I came to AdForm that was a little bit more than four years ago there were so many things we needed to do , and then we started building the foundation , cleaning up the different processes . In my opinion , the most important part was actually to build a leadership mindset all over the organization . It was also to create a communication platform , so an intranet we also needed to build , and then there was a lot of training that needed to happen project management and so on .

So it's building on top on things . So I just think we came to that point and then , combined also with the trends in the market of all this talk about harassment , and I really felt that that's the wrong perspective . If we talk about harassment , that's what we see in every corner . If we have long legal documents listing all the things you're not allowed to do , I don't think it's helpful .

So I wanted to make it helpful . And that means I wanted to change the perspective into something . Let's talk about what we should do , not that we should not do . So that's where it came from , oh .

I love that , so this was a great way of ending it , in my opinion . Thank you so much , Charlotte . It's been a pleasure speaking with you today . Thank you , You've been listening to the Work in Progress podcast on people and culture .

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