Putting aside that most of us will not have the ability to travel the world, there is a lot to like in this piece by Harvard Business Review writer Gillian Morris.

Except it’s also depressing. She’s positive and pragmatic, she criticises American attitudes to getting something done compared to other places where people just do it but there is something more. Her core argument is that in America, people think you apply for jobs or you hire people to do things for you whereas everywhere else you go, you have to hustle.

I’ve little against hustling. Finding a way to do something, learning it, looking for the people you need, that’s all normal and that’s even great. There’s just a line somewhere in here that bothers me. Morris speaks of the need to, for instance, give someone your leather jacket in order to get them to recommend you. There’s quite a bit about having to bribe your way along though she doesn’t use that word.

She’s been around the world and I haven’t. She’s seen extremes and I’ve worked almost exclusively in the UK and the US, nowhere else. But I come away from this feeling she thinks America’s way ought to be right, is somehow ideal, yet we’d better toughen up and learn what it’s really like out there in the world.

Go have a read yourself, would you? Gillian Morris: Travelling the World Made Me a Better Entrepreneur, Harvard Business Review, 26 May 2015.