Four ways to get the research explained in person.
Why it is needed
Colleagues in different countries work together every day, and nobody has ever explained to them how the other side thinks.
So when something goes wrong they use the explanations they have. He is difficult. They are slow. They over-promise and under-deliver. Nobody over there is managing this properly.
Those explanations feel accurate, but they are usually wrong, and because they are about people rather than about patterns they make the next meeting worse than the last one.
The differences are not mysterious. They can be researched and explained. How agreements are understood, how feedback is given, how decisions get made, how planning works. Each one operates differently in different countries, for reasons that can be explained.
Once a person has heard the explanation, the colleague stops being difficult and becomes predictable.
Where this comes from
In 1999 I was at Siemens in Munich, helping to integrate Westinghouse. I began by running training for German and American colleagues, ten core topics covering how each side thinks and works.
The training went well. Then line management came to me with a request. “We are hearing good things, John. Can you help our teams directly? They are struggling to collaborate.” So I built a second format, which I called a Policy Workshop. Background interviews, analysis, a designed agenda, and two days off-site with the team.
Then they came back again. “These are going well too. Can you do the same on the German side, or on the American side, where there is no intercultural issue at all?” So I did, and it worked there too.
The four services below came out of those years. Over the two decades since, the clients have included German DAX30 and American Fortune 25 companies.
1. Training
I come to your location and teach, in sessions of about ninety minutes, at least four a day, over one to three weeks. Fifteen core topics are offered several times during the visit. People sign up for the sessions they need and that fit their calendar. Some attend three, some attend twelve, some all fifteen.
The format is closer to a university lecture than to a training course. The participants are engineers, scientists, project leads, and managers, most of them with graduate degrees. I explain, they question, we discuss in depth. There is a handout so people can follow and keep what they heard.
The fifteen topics are Agreements, Communication, Conflict, Customer, Decision-Making, Feedback, Information, Leadership, Motivation, Negotiation, Persuasion, Planning, Processes, Products and Services.
You provide a room, a whiteboard, printed handouts and refreshments. Low tech. High learn.
2. Seminars
The same material for one group rather than an open room. A team, a department, a management level. Fewer people, less lecture, more working through the situations they are actually in. Customized to your particular needs.
3. Coaching
One to one, usually with a leader working across cultures, or with someone whose organization is not performing and who does not yet know why. Regular conversations over months rather than a single engagement.
4. Policy Workshops
For a team that is genuinely stuck. It begins with background interviews, held individually and in confidence. I analyze what I heard, design an agenda around the real issues, discuss with the team-lead, then run the workshop.
Two days. The first establishes what they are actually disconnected on, which is rarely what they think. The second takes the next step, which is deciding how they want to work together from here.
The team does the work. I structure it so that the difficult things get said, addressed and then resolved.
I take these on selectively.
What I teach, and what I do not
Germany and the United States are researched, with evidence behind every statement, and they are the limit of what I will stand in a room and explain.
UC covers sixty-three further countries with AI-assisted research, marked as such on the site. Your people can reach that material through the site and the advisor. I do not teach it live, because it has not been researched to the same standard.
If your people come from several countries and work in one, that one country is the common factor. They are all reading the same colleagues. I can teach Germany and the United States.
How I charge
One day rate. It applies to seminars, coaching and Policy Workshops alike. Where something is billed by the hour it is that rate divided by eight. For a Policy Workshop I bill all the time the work takes, with an estimate for each stage before anything begins.
Training is the exception, because the room is open and the numbers are not fixed. There it is one rate per participant in each session, with a minimum for the visit. The rate is the same whatever the numbers, and it is not negotiated.
Travel time is billed at half rate, charged once for the visit. Flights, hotel, meals and car are billed at cost, within your own travel policy.
The rate is in the quote, once I know what we are doing.
Back to About.