#399: How To Approach Culture Differences

Global Medical Device Podcast · 20 Feb 2025 · 22m · Episode 399

What this episode covers

Olga Chashchina, founder of a MedTech startup in Paris with a team of nine nationalities, discusses managing cultural differences in global teams. Drawing on Erin Meyer’s book 'The Culture Map', she explains how high-context (Russian) and low-context (American) communication styles lead to misunderstandings regarding context provision and feedback. Chashchina highlights that healthcare is deeply cultural, affecting patient symptom expression and pain perception, and warns against assuming shared context even among speakers of the same language.

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • Oxide and Friends · 1h 27m

    Cultural Idiosyncrasies

    Bryan Cantrill, Adam Leventhal, and Steve Klabnik of Oxide Computer Company discuss the company's unique cultural idiosyncrasies, including Demo Fridays, recorded debugging sessions, and a no-meet Wednesday policy. They explain how these practices, born from remote work and pandemic constraints, foster transparency, psychological safety, and effective collaboration without formal performance reviews. The conversation highlights specific operational choices like RFDs (Requests for Discussion) and the decision to avoid engineering metrics, arguing that trust and positive feedback are more effective than quantitative measures.

The summary, chapters and topics are generated from the episode’s audio by this directory, not written by Global Medical Device Podcast. The episode itself belongs to its publisher.