How to be more Danish

Imagine yourself 6 billions of ants walking around in a small space. They are walking in groups in a hurry to be in time at a spot at a certain time. Some of them are carrying special leaves from certain trees and are valued higher as a member in their community because of this. This sounds silly for us looking at them from above. They spend time in groups and in each group the patterns are important. Everyone must follow the stream, otherwise you´ll not be accepted. When you go down into one small group of one little percent of this huge amount of ants they have their own language and their own traditions even if they are a small part of the big scenario of billions of insects. If one of the ants communicate a little differently from the rest of the group they are valued a lesser member of the group than the rest. They have to work harder and better to achieve the same status as the rest. When you look at the whole picture and have all those billions of ants walking around in groups you don´t understand why this little group can take it so dead seriously following the pattern in different ways. If you convert this picture into humans and their ways of living there is one thing for us Swedes to consider. We are rated high in the world as diplomats and employees. We are always very dedicated to our work and reliable. But there are some things I think we should consider in all of this. I am not saying that all Swedes follow this stream but we have a way of value members higher if they are alike and are doing like the rest.

When you dive into this community of time tables, status, values, languages and look around you, you can see that everyone is chasing that leaf or that language or whatever. I think for us Swedes it would be good to see everything from above once in a while. Perhaps we could loosen up a little bit and don´t take everything so seriously. Swedes have lots of good talents but we also have some we should get rid off. One of them is planing so much in details and be so deternminded in following our plan. We ought to reconsider our plan everyday and be more flexible. The world is moving faster and there is not time for timetables. I thing we ought to do more like the Danish. They are more relaxed at least from my experiences. They must be doing something right cause you are seeing danish companies everywhere and they are managing to go from one success to another. I have heard many Swedes being annoyed of the Danish when they are changing their plans and look at the time table as something flexible. Perhaps this is a good thing. At least for us Swedes to learn. Some people seem to want to follow a time table, a budget, a prognosis or whatever when the most important task should be to get higher profit or be happier. Don´t you think?

Have a nice weekend
Anna