Is it dysfunctional or is it just different?

What if curiosity — rather than a different framework — were the key to making sense of an unfamiliar working culture? I’m testing that idea in a very different setting: local politics in a rural French village.

A meeting of minds on the hillside close to our home in north-west France. Photo: Isabelle Andrews

I’ve swapped product management in London for French village life. As a product manager, I’ve been part of high-performing agile delivery teams, but I’ve also sometimes struggled to understand more traditional, project-based ways of working. The setting here is very different, yet the challenges of navigating complex systems and entrenched behaviours feel very familiar.

When we moved here from London three years ago, I wondered how we’d be received. Never having lived outside of a city before, I will admit to having had visions of whispering villagers and poison pen letters. So it was quite the surprise, just two years in, to be invited by the mayor to join his electoral list. And an even greater one to find myself on the municipal council this year — an elected team of 11 that takes decisions on behalf of the village’s 450 residents.

New team, new context

We’re a mixed bunch. Around half of us are new to the council, while others have worked alongside the mayor for the last 14 years. Our professional experience ranges from farming, social work and public administration to stone masonry, food and hospitality, and now product management. Our ages range from late 20s to early 60s. Some of us are new to the area, some have returned to the village after working elsewhere, some have never lived anywhere else. But we have all chosen to be here, and we all care deeply about what happens to this special little place and its residents.

Much of council business is about solving problems, maintaining services with diminishing resources, and supporting local residents and businesses through a time of palpable stress and pessimism — how do we make checking in on vulnerable or isolated residents systematic? How can we ensure the local spring doesn’t become contaminated again? How do we facilitate productive dialogue between local business owners? How do we continue to balance the needs of agriculture and tourism in a changing climate? All important issues in our context, and it’s a genuine privilege to be part of the team trying to figure them out.

That said, the council meetings are driving me crazy.

Meeting a culture through its meetings

Back in London I was a product manager, most recently in central government. I spent a lot of time thinking about meetings and how to create the conditions for good decisions, while endeavouring to get the most value from team members’ time, protecting their mental load and capacity to do the work that followed.

Council meetings here begin at 8:30pm — to allow for attendees to finish work and have dinner beforehand. Fair enough. It also means I have time to do any advance reading so I’m not coming at new and complex information cold — something I find difficult (even more so late in the evening, in an echoey room and in my second language). As someone still learning the idiosyncrasies of French administration, I am very much in listening mode. I want to be certain I understand what we’re really deciding, who is affected and how much of something is already a fait accompli. So while I don’t tend to hold court, I sometimes ask for a bit of context.

But when the answers have led to minutes-long explanations, which in turn have prompted other side conversations, I’ve found myself feeling frustrated and longing for the good meeting etiquette I had become accustomed to in my old life.

Here, when nobody is on the clock, and everyone has already “finished their day’s work”, there seems to be less pressure to prioritise, move on once a decision has been reached or close down an unhelpful side conversation, and talking across each other is commonplace. As a result, meetings regularly continue past 11pm — at which point, bottles and glasses appear so that we can have a drink to finish the meeting officially. Happily the drive back home just before midnight takes only a few minutes.

Looking at the meeting norms differently

I still find a lot of this baffling. But recently I have been taking a step back and considering whether it’s all bad. In the professional settings I knew in the UK, talking over someone was usually considered discourteous. Here, and I think in France more generally, I’ve come to understand that interruption can signal interest and engagement in what someone else is saying. I still find it difficult to follow, and deeply problematic as a practice. But I’m learning not to confuse “different from what I’m used to” with “deliberately disrespectful”.

I’m also trying hard not to conflate unfamiliarity and dysfunction. Some of what I experience as disorder may be serving purposes I can’t yet see: maintaining relationships, allowing people to establish their position or making space for concerns that a tightly managed agenda might exclude.

And as for ending each meeting with a drink, as much as it’s the last thing I feel like when we’ve spent the last three hours debating local application of sanitation regulations, I’ve noticed that even when there have been disagreements during the meeting itself, bringing out the glasses signals that we can put these aside and come together as neighbours.

An experiment in curiosity

That doesn’t mean the meetings are working well; I frequently leave mentally exhausted. But I have started to think about what it is I’d actuallywant to change, and what might be lost if it did all change. I’m experiencing what many people feel when they enter unfamiliar organisational cultures. And I’m simply doing something I’ve coached others to do (and have even written about), but have needed some time to do myself: choose curiosity over judgement.

So I’m embarking on an experiment.

What is the one small thing I can do to try and change my own experience of these meetings? It might be asking one better question, noticing one pattern, sharing one observation, testing one small change myself, just to see what happens next.

Adjusting to an unfamiliar environment?

If you’re doing the hard work of adapting to an unfamiliar environment at work or life (or both), or are feeling stuck more generally in a product role and this resonates, I’d love to hear from you in comments or via DM. Or you can arrange a free initial chat with me about coaching to see if I can help.