View from Silicon Valley

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I recently passed a milestone at terrifying speed; a year working in San Francisco has flashed past in the blink of an eye. That day, my team asked me what had surprised me the most about relocating here. It was interesting to reflect on the preconceptions I arrived with, and what the reality is. I thought I’d share a couple of these and, hopefully, they’ll offer some insights into the cultural differences between UK and US clients or agencies.

Preconception 1: In the home state of Hollywood, storytelling will be a more important strength to develop as a researcher than in the UK. 

Reality: Wrong! The truth is that clients and agencies here feel much more academic than their British counterparts. Of course, communicating research in a persuasive, compelling way is a huge priority in whichever market you travel, but there’s a big difference in what you are expected to demonstrate. It’s much more common in the US to have to show your workings in a presentation – to explain to a stakeholder why you’re using a five-point, instead of a seven-point, Likert scale, or to go into the specifics of your sample design. In the UK, we’re usually trained to avoid detail like that, and to dial up the narrative and creativity instead. 

Similarly, it’s common in the UK for our industry to shy away from the ‘R’ word, and to call ourselves ‘insight managers’, ‘consumer experience strategists’, and all manner of synonyms… anything but ‘researchers’. That encourages us to aspire to tell stories in a very different way, almost like brand strategists or creatives. In the US, research managers are expected to epitomise academic rigour before anything else, and that comes through in every presentation I see here. There’s no right or wrong way to build a presentation or introduce your profession, of course, but I admire how practitioners in the US are still proud to call themselves researchers.

Preconception 2: Californian cheerfulness will make small talk and networking around meetings easier than in stoic, polite British offices.

Reality: Nope. The American and British approaches to conversations at work are complete opposites. In London, you’d rarely talk to a stranger in the street or while buying a morning coffee. Indeed, the very idea of talking to someone on the tube seems heretical. Yet, at work, we Brits are surprisingly big on small talk. Think about how many times you’ve started an email with ‘hope you’re well’ or ‘hope you had a great weekend’ – or talked about the weather or holidays for 10 minutes before a meeting. 

From my experience in client or agency settings here, those social norms are often reversed in the US. Members of the public are incredibly friendly – true to the Californian stereotype – and people will make conversation with you in all sorts of places, so I’d expected that to carry on through to the office. Not so. American workplaces are task- rather than relationship-oriented. British clients and agencies require some degree of relationship building before they get to business, but that’s not the case here. Meetings get straight to it, with little, or no, conversation beforehand, and emails are direct – blunt, even. That was a big surprise to me and took a while to get used to, but it made me reflect on years of working with American clients and see them in a new light. It’s something to admire, too; meetings are shorter and more effective, and I’ve learned a lot from their directness. 

So, the takeaway (aside from that I’m often/always wrong with my cultural assumptions) is: the next time you win an American client, or find yourself working with a US-based team, flex your methodological muscles in presentations, flaunt your research pedigree proudly, and be direct, honest and save all the small talk for the coffee break. That’s the American way. But don’t expect to ever get used to the date format. 

Matt Taylor is consumer insight lead at Twitter