Information: For a close collaborative effort between customer and supplier (consultant, vendor, etc.) to function effectively in the American business context a high level of communication between the two parties is essential.
Information flow is guaranteed via short-term feedback between customer and supplier during the entire business relationship. This allow customers to modify their requests depending on changing situations.
Capable consultants not only provide good advice, but they also denken mit, think with. With the client about solutions, ideas, approaches to implementation. Therein lies the added value. That is why consultants are paid. Mitdenken, thinking with, however, also means thinking independently, including correcting or contradicting the customer.
A good consultant is not an order taker. Instead she knows when to challenge the customer, when to point out what is best for the customer, even when the customer does not recognize it, believe it or want to hear it.
Criticism and critique are in general positive in the German culture. To accept criticism, though, is not easy for anyone. Criticism can be interpreted as disloyalty, even though constructive criticism is in many ways the highest degree of loyalty. Criticism points out dangers, identifies ways to optimize, helps to make difficult decisions.
Germans are a direct people, including how they communicate criticism. But they also see it as their duty, as their responsibility, to point out to their colleagues, boss or customer what does not or will not work. Discreet conversations under four eyes which address critical issues is what capable consultants do. These conversations are a sign of loyalty and trust.
Kritische Loyalität. Literally critical loyalty, or loyalty which voices criticism, which address critical topics.
Serve: The English term service implies graciousness, helpfulness and to a degree selflessness. To serve is to be humble. Serve stems from the Latin word servitium, which meant the condition of a slave. Service, at its roots, involves one person serving another or several. It is inherently personal.
The term service in the context of American business involves the notion of servitium: to respond to the needs of your customer, to serve that customer personally and individually. But service also anticipates compensation: payment, customer loyalty, growth of the business.
Service is both personal and commercial. They go hand-in-hand. Impersonal service seldom leads to commercial success. Personal service without fair compensation is servitude. And, indeed, some business relationships are so one-sided that the one serving feels more like a slave than a free person.
Personal: Of, relating to, or affecting a particular person; done in person without the intervention of another; carried on between individuals directly; relating to the person or body; relating to an individual or an individual’s character, conduct, motives, or private affairs often in an offensive manner; being rational and self-conscious; of, relating to, or constituting personal property; intended for private use or use by one person. From Latin persona.
Helpful: Of service or assistance, useful.
Selfless: Having no concern for self, unselfish.
Humble: Not proud or haughty, not arrogant or assertive; reflecting, expressing, or offered in a spirit of deference or submission; ranking low in a hierarchy or scale. From Latin humilis low, humble, from humus earth.
The U.S. tv series Seinfeld. Jerry, George and Elaine visit a new soup stand. Jerry explains that the owner is known as the Soup Nazi due to his insistence on a strict manner of behavior while placing an order, but his soups are so outstandingly delicious that the stand is constantly busy.
At the soup stand, George complains about not receiving bread with his meal. When he presses the issue, George’s order is taken away and his money returned. On a subsequent visit, George buys soup (with a warning that he is pushing his luck), but Elaine, having scoffed at Jerry’s advice on how to order, draws the Soup Nazi’s ire and is banned for a year.
Wait, stop ! We’ll let the video tell the rest of the story.
Why this now famous American TV series episode? In the context of German-American collaboration? And as it relates to the topic customer? Well, show it to any Americans working in the Germany-USA space and then ask them what it is like for them as the customer interacting with Germans as the supplier.
The German state of Baden-Württemberg boasts an unusually large number of local companies that have made it big on the global market. That’s in large part due to the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of its residents.
Made in Germany takes a look at how so many local companies have taken little-known products and turned them into export hits.
Listen carefully to what the head of Stahl says about training their people, retaining them at any cost, and giving them the freedom to constantly innovate. And most importantly, striving to go beyond customer needs.
Precisely because it is so important to Germans to work in an independent, self-managing way, and because they usually have a clear picture in their mind of what the end result should look like, it is critical that customer and supplier reach as high a level of consensus as possible about what is to be achieved and how. All too often, however, the supplier simply asks for an okay from the customer about certain details.
When the details of collaboration need to be worked out, then colleagues from both sides sit down together and discuss them. Germans strive to work in integrated ways, including work processes. German customers and suppliers do their best to work as partners.
To clarify details is to address the how, whether it be a technical matter, how a given process is interpreted and lived, or how the organization is structured. Germans place great importance on clarifying as many details upfront as possible. They want to anticipate possible problems. Participating in and contributing to this upfront clarification process is critical to the success of customer-supplier relationships in Germany.
Abstimmen. Clarify, decide on, together; to decide based on voting; to bring things together, harmonize, agree on; to co-decide, to discuss with another person; to listen carefully and consider the other point of view, then find a joint solution; to establish consensus together.
Often German managers would rather complete a certain task themselves instead of passing it on to a team member. Many do repairs in their house, fix their cars, and some sit in their office at home until late into the night.
For those with limited financial resources, doing things yourself might be a question of economics. For others, there is a German reason: they often have a clear picture in their mind of how the final product should look. That they don‘t hand it off to a team member is not a sign of mistrust or lack of confidence.
Instead, Germans are skeptical that the other person will fully understand what is expected. By the time they have explained the task and how the final outcome should look, they most likely will have completed half of the work.
For the team member will create her own picture of the final product. Two pictures of what the work should look like. A dilemma for every customer-supplier relationship.
In 2009, author Neil Gaiman, who was born in England but has lived in the US since 1992, wrote a blogpost titled Entitlement Issues. In it he discusses a letter he received from a fan of the author George R R Martin, who complained that it seemed like Martin wasn’t spending enough time working on his latest novel.
Gaiman comments on how readers tend to think that, once they spend money on one of the books in a series, the author no longer has the right to do anything other than write the next one.
At one point he writes “you’re complaining about George doing other things than writing the books you want to read as if your buying the first book in the series was a contract with him: that you would hand over your ten dollars, and George for his part would spend every waking hour until the series was done, writing the rest of the books for you.”
The English-American author also attempts to convince readers that authors are not obligated to fulfill their readers’ every wish, saying, “George R R Martin is not your bitch.”
Communication with the customer about expectations is a primary role of American business. For example, a senior consultant at a major American strategy consulting firm described collaboration as an attribute that is “built into the very culture of our consulting firm.” New consultants are selected for their ability to understand and respond to the needs of their clients.
The website of a leading strategy consulting firm tells future clients that “custom solutions yield the greatest competitive advantage and value for our clients. We ground each solution in how our client’s organization actually works and in the client’s unique position in the marketplace.”
In order to understand the client’s unique situation and demands, the consultants work side-by-side with the client’s employees and listen to their concerns.
A report from the Center for the Study of Social Policy about customer service describes the complex interplay of factors involved in customer satisfaction. One finding of the report is: “Successful customer service companies listen to, understand, and respond—often in unique and creative ways—to the evolving needs and constantly shifting expectations of their customers.“
Auftrag. A command, instruction, order, to complete a task, job, assignment; to order a product or service; an obligation, a duty. An Auftrag is given by a manager or a customer. The Auftrag indicates that someone will do something for another. An Auftrag can be rejected. They can be legally binding. An employee can assign herself an Aufgabe, but not an Auftrag.
Aufträge (plural of Auftrag) are foundational to any economy. Whether it is involves one colleague answering the email of another or one company building a production site for another, Aufträge are the lifeblood of commercial activitiy.
An Auftrag is at its core a request from a customer. Taking on the Auftrag signals that one will complete it to the best of their ability. The details are set in a purchase order or in a contract.
German companies report time and again that their Auftragsbücher, order books, are full, but that they cannot fulfill all of them due to a shortage of trained personnel, often technicians and engineers. Taking on an Auftrag is no guarantee that one can complete it.
This also means a certain degree of risk for the Auftraggeber (Auftrag giver), the customer, that the supplier will not supply the end product on the agreed upon date, or at the expected level of quality. In many ways it is also unimportant who completes the task. In contrast to an Aufgabe, an Auftrag is impersonal, business-like, unemotional. The relationship is all about the execution of the job. No more, no less.
A self-identification with the task is secondary. Only the final results count. Is the Auftrag completed, rejected or not doable, then it automatically no longer exists.