Germany. United States. Agreements.
Steven works in Atlanta, Anna in Stuttgart. They’re colleagues in engineering who know of each other, but not well. Steven has a new task: FastTrack, a high-profile development project. He needs to gather valuable data from the most important recent projects company-wide, as soon as possible. Anna had worked on one of exactly those projects.
Steven sends Anna an email in telegraph style, asking her to send any and all analysis and data that could be relevant for FastTrack.
Anna reads it but isn’t sure what to do with it. It is very brief, has almost no background, and is kind of rude. She decides not to react, thinking: if Steven is serious, he’ll write again with more information.
Steven follows up by email the next day. Anna responds that she received the first email, is busy, and will get to it next week. Steven is annoyed. He calls and leaves a message. The next day Anna listens to the voicemail but ignores it, thinking: he’ll just have to be patient.
Meanwhile Steven’s team lead, Craig Smith, asks about his progress. Steven is getting nervous. He waits a day, then calls again. A colleague takes the message. Anna reads that Steven has called, wonders why this man is so pushy, and emails back that she’ll get to it next week. Steven grabs his phone the moment her email appears and calls her.
The first call. They make small talk. Steven mentions Craig Smith, his boss, and Mary Miller, the senior vice-president for innovation. Then he asks for Anna’s help. Anna says she’s very busy, will get to it late next week, and asks for background information. Steven wants to explain FastTrack on the phone.
Anna interrupts: “Send me the project charter.” Steven: “I can email what I have, but it’s incomplete. Anna, I’m under time pressure.” Anna tells him to send what he has, she’ll read it, and get back to him. She thinks: he needs to do his homework before he can expect me to do the work for him.
The next morning he sends bits and pieces about FastTrack. That afternoon he bumps into Mary Miller, who asks how it’s going. He hints at German slowness. She offers her support if he needs it.
Annoyed, but interested. The next week, late on a Wednesday, Anna finally gets to Steven’s email. She sees immediately that it was thrown together hastily. It takes her an hour just to put the material into logical order. Can you believe this? She emails: “Too much information. Send the project charter. And please state simply what you need.”
Steven reads it and thinks: She doesn’t know what to send me? That’s why I sent her the background! He writes back: “Because we don’t know your project from last year, it’s hard for me to know what results you produced. I was hoping you’d figure that out. Can we discuss tomorrow by phone?”
Anna reads it at lunch and realizes he’ll keep following up until he gets what he needs. And FastTrack does sound interesting. She wants to help, so she schedules a call.
The second call actually goes well. Steven explains FastTrack. Anna: “Okay, now I understand. Give me a week or so.” Steven thanks her, then tries to schedule a third call to keep her focused. Anna is reluctant: “Let’s first see how far I get,” thinking again how impatient he is.
Steven tries to pin her down: “Friday at 2 p.m. your time?” Anna: “I’ll send you an email Thursday. Please, a bit more patience.” Steven mentions the time pressure again, and drops the names Craig Smith and Mary Miller once more. He wants Anna to feel the urgency.
Anna keeps her word. She re-reads the project documents, talks to colleagues, and wants to go deeper to send something genuinely valuable. She emails: “Got my head back into the project. We have really good data for FastTrack. I want to put more time into it. Will get back to you next week.”
Steven is in a staff meeting with Craig Smith, reading the email under the table. Oh no. Another week. This is insanely slow. Smith asks about status. Steven takes a breath: “Good progress on the U.S. side. Slower on the German side. I’m pushing, but I have to be careful not to lose their cooperation.” Smith: “Stay persistent. If you need help, I can go up the chain of command.”
Steven fires back to Anna: “Great, thanks. Can we discuss now?” Anna: “No time. Husband and I are sitting down to dinner. Please wait till next week. It’ll be worth it.” Steven, very nervous now: “Pressure increasing here. Need to talk tomorrow as planned.” Anna: “Tomorrow won’t work. How about Tuesday?” Steven: “Out of office Monday to Wednesday. Please, can we talk over the weekend?”
For Anna this is simply too much. Why can’t he calm down and trust that I’ll get it done? Does he want quality results, or just some data thrown over the wall? She writes back: “Be a bit more patient. As a good German, I like to do my tasks properly. And I try to spend my weekends with my husband and children.”
Steven thinks: Good German? Slow German. Over-analytical German. Bureaucratic German.
The email. Steven decides to ask his boss for help. “I may need you. The German side is dragging its feet.” Craig Smith: “Should I call or email?” Steven gets the address of Dr. Klaus Habermas, Smith’s counterpart in Germany at the same level, and drafts an email from Smith to Habermas asking for better cooperation.
Habermas reads it. He’s worked with Americans and senses what’s happening — they like to escalate up the hierarchy to apply pressure. Annoyed, he forwards it to several people, including Anna. She immediately suspects Steven, and she is not amused. She emails her own boss: “You know how impatient the Americans can be. They’ll get solid data from me. They just have to be patient.”
What a shame. From there it went from bad to worse. On top of it, Anna’s manager asked her to help another team with unexpected technical problems. Now she had even less time for Steven.
In the end, Anna did send data. But it was neither comprehensive nor deep, and it lacked the insightful analysis Anna was known for. All of that takes time.
From Anna’s side, Steven was sloppy, his constant follow-up got on her nerves, and it signaled he had no confidence in her. The Smith-to-Habermas email was very poor form — professionals don’t do that. From Steven’s side, Anna could have sent partial results so he could show progress, could have asked what level of detail he needed, and her response time was terrible. She had no sense of urgency.
It was a missed opportunity for both. Anna had become genuinely interested in FastTrack and wanted to help. Steven would have gotten first-rate data and analysis. Anna lost too — had she continued, she’d have gained Steven, Craig Smith, and Mary Miller as allies across the company. And FastTrack got less than it needed.
Neither Steven nor Anna did anything wrong by their own culture’s rules. Both did everything wrong by the other’s. And neither could see it.
What went wrong
Context. At the start, Anna couldn’t tell what Steven wanted — his request didn’t give her enough to go on. Before Germans enter an agreement, they expect a significant amount of context. Americans need less to get started, and reserve the right to adjust as they learn more.
Deliverables. When Steven did send fuller information, Anna found it poorly prepared and had to systematize it herself. Germans expect a deliverable to be complete, so the receiver can act on it immediately. Americans are comfortable with partial deliverables, as long as they’re fast, relevant, and actionable.
Follow-up. Steven’s constant follow-up annoyed Anna. It gave her no time to consider, and implied he thought her unreliable. In Germany, follow-up is rare — once an agreement is made, even a preliminary one, both sides expect it to hold. In the US, follow-up is the agreement — it maintains momentum, signals urgency, and flags changes quickly.
Escalation. Anna read Steven’s name-dropping, and then the email up the hierarchy, as crude and unprofessional pressure. Steven only meant to convey how much pressure he was under.
Yes and no. Despite the friction, Anna had said yes — she found the project important and had much to contribute. Steven never understood her signals. And Anna never realized he had misunderstood them.
What did it cost?
The company will never see an invoice for this. But consider what it lost — and only you can put real numbers to your own version of it.
The project. Anna could have contributed first-rate data and analysis to a high-profile project. FastTrack got a thin fraction of that. What is that lost contribution worth?
The time. Steven and Anna each poured hours into a collaboration that failed. What did those wasted hours cost, at their level?
The future. Two capable people who were willing to work across the Atlantic now each expect the other side to be difficult. What does that reluctance cost, across every future project they touch?
The pattern. Now count the Steven-and-Anna situations already unfolding in your own company — American and German colleagues unable to agree on whether and how to help each other. What do they cost in a year, when they underperform or quietly fail?
Back to Three Reasons.