Half a Foreigner Visiting Finland

Half a Foreigner Visiting Finland

Moving to another country is an adventure. You leave everything familiar behind and start anew. This leap opens up your eyes to a new world. You learn about the culture and norms of your new home country. As years go by, you dig deeper into its mainstream culture and its subsets. You become familiar with the way of thinking in your new home country and start to understand it better. This series of posts is not that story. 

This is a story about looking at your country of birth through the eyes of a half a foreigner. This is a story about what may be holding Finnish companies back in the US markets.

I moved to the US in 2004. In the beginning, ties to my home country Finland were tight, which was easy as initially, I worked for a Finnish company. I spent my annual vacations there, catching up with people and everything that had happened during my absence. Years passed and life took many unexpected turns as life always does. As a result, one year I didn’t travel back. One year turned to two, then three. By the summer of 2021, six years had passed since my last visit. Pandemic or not, it was time to pay Finland a visit.

When the departure time approached, I grew a bit anxious. I knew the country had changed over the years but so had I. I didn’t know what to expect from my visit. I had been impacted by personal life events and learned how I deal with them the way American society encourages you to deal with them. My professional persona had been influenced by American business methods and values. I even looked at friendships differently than before.

It was clear to me that the 17 years I had lived in the US, with six long years completely without a visit to Finland, must have given me a different perspective of my country of birth. A unique perspective of an outsider, yet an insider who is familiar with all the quirks. As my passion is helping companies being more successful, I realized that this unique perspective could be useful for those companies who are trying to make an entry or operate better in the US market. 

I decided to dig deeper into the things that make us Finns. The norms, standards, and culture that Finns take as a given but for Americans may seem strange to the extent where those weird things hurt Finnish companies when trying to enter the US market. The result is a series of videos. Maybe even a cultural anthropologist can extract some interesting insight from them. If not, at least I had a ton of fun making them!

My sincere hope is that the blog series, videos, and whatever will follow, may be helpful to any company, Finnish or not, that wishes to enter or operate better in the US market.