OP/ED: Business culture kills
By Mona Mattei
A couple of years ago a friend and I were talking business and she said to me, “I’m American and I run my business the American way, not Canadian.” She was referring to the kill or be killed business culture of the United States. It’s hard to imagine that just by crossing the 49th parallel that the entrepreneurial spirit takes a different form. But when you start shopping around for pricing and customer service, it’s hard to understand the reasons for the significant difference between our countries. There truly is a cultural difference in how we run our businesses.
The United States (US) was built on the ideal that in their country you can rise to the heights of riches through hard work and business smarts. The American dream includes making sure you come out on top no matter how you get there. But what the culture has created is a very competitive business market that provides almost everything you could want at a good price. If not, just shop around - there's plenty of businesses offering the same product. While that culture doesn’t always equate to fair wages and good work environments, it does create a marketplace that is hard to beat.
The Canadian entrepreneurial approach is much more concerned with worry about whether or not we’re competing with our neighbour, and being sensitive to the community. It results in a more cautious approach to stocking shelves, and pricing. I must admit I find the customer service in most large businesses in Canada top notch, while in the US I have had my share of attitude from employees of big stores. But overall, Canadian stores just can’t (or won’t) offer pricing that keeps their customers home. And in the age of the Internet, this is leading to serious hemorrhaging of economic dollars.
Even savvy shoppers and small business owners wanting to support their local economy have a hard time keeping their dollars home in this market. Just this week our group of websites investigated buying a product locally, even at a slightly higher price, versus sourcing it through the net. With a price difference of over $600 for the same number of the same product how can you buy local? But the local business didn’t seem to mind if they got the business and that is exactly the Canadian way.
Canadian businesses are kind and caring. They’ll be happy to direct you to where you can get the product just down the street. That speaks to the business culture of sharing, not winning. We just are not cutthroat enough to win. It’s very Canadian to be okay with making enough money to be happy and share the wealth with our neighbour business. In fact we can even be made to feel guilty about not sharing the wealth.
Perhaps that is at the crux of our dilemmas in succeeding in competition with others. While it is very nice to care about each other, it doesn’t create the volume of sales that we need to survive at lower prices, and there lies the problem with being able to be competitive. Large companies know this and that’s why they succeed where our small businesses can’t.
Where would I rather do business though? In Canada where we care more about our employees and our neighbours than the almighty dollar.
