Culture is relative, not absolute

Meyer's foundational correction to popular cultural stereotyping is that every trait on her eight scales only means something in comparison to another culture — there's no such thing as being simply "direct" or "indirect" in an absolute sense. Germans look extremely direct next to the Japanese, but noticeably indirect next to the Dutch, who rank as one of the most blunt cultures in Meyer's data.

This matters practically because a manager who has only learned "Culture X is very direct" from a generic guidebook will misjudge every interaction that doesn't involve Culture X specifically — the useful information isn't the absolute position, it's the gap between two specific cultures on a specific scale, since that gap is where actual misunderstanding occurs.

Meyer illustrates this with managers who prepared for working with one nationality using advice actually calibrated for a totally different comparison point, and were blindsided because the real friction showed up on a different scale, or in a different direction, than they'd been warned about.

One-line takeaway: don't ask "is this culture direct," ask "how does this culture compare to mine, specifically, on this specific dimension."