Germany – Page 28 – understand-culture

Root Cause Analysis

Root cause analysis is a problem solving method which identifies the original cause of error, as opposed to simply addressing the symptoms.

Root cause analysis is critical in those areas in Germany where sustainability is important, where seemingly minor mistakes can lead to major damage, where error occurs time and again, especially in technical areas. Every type of quality analysis relies on root cause analysis.

If products are returned as defective, roots cause analysis is employed immediately. Each and every form of research and development works at the root level. Where more is required than treating symptoms, root cause analysis comes into play.

“Sitting out“

Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was often innaccurately portrayed as the master of Aussitzen (sitting out) by journalists and political elites alike. Instead of approaching a problem directly, it was said that he would wait until it would either resolve itself or people would lose interest in it.

But even with Kohl’s retirement from politics,“sitting out“ political issues supposedly has not gone out of style. At least according to Stern maganzine, which claims that Angela Merkel has become the new representative of this style of governing. As Wochenmagazin wrote in March 2010: “Angela Kohl – wait it out, weigh it out, sit it out. Chancellor Merkel reveals herself ever more strongly to be an adept pupil of the greatest sitter-outer Helmut Kohl”.

More accurate is that Kohl was and Merkel is a master of thinking things through, patience, and building consensus.

Führen im Auftrag – Quotes

“The mistakes of senior commanders are often rectified by the troops below.” Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), Prussian General, author of On War.

“In reality, the Germans owe their final victory to the enormous amount of independently-minded and innovative junior-officers in all positions all the way down to the very lowest ranks.” Russian General Woide on the Franco-Prussion War of 1870/71

“War demands iron discipline of troops and exceedingly tight coordination of forces. In the heat of battle, however, of highest importance are officers and soldiers trained to think and act independently and spontaneously.” Prussian officer training manual of 1906

“Führen mit Auftrag is an extraordinarily broad and involved term, which includes all-encompassing aspects of current doctrine concerning the essence of war, characteristics of leadership, tactics, the leadership of troops, the relationship of senior to junior officers to each other and to soldiers, as well as training and education. In addition, these aspects are formulated systematically in a way which allows them to both mutually support each other and to make them inseparable.” An American Officer (1987)

Führen mit Auftrag – Requirements

Führen mit Auftrag – very loosely translated as leading by mission – is the foundational leadership principle in the German armed forces, and has been since the early 1800s. It has the following nine requirements.

1. Training: Führen mit Auftrag requires well-trained troops who ideally have been fighting together over a longer period of time. Soldiers should be viewed as masters of their craft. This includes not only expertise in using their weapons, but moreso their overall behaviour when in battle.

2. Self-confidence and cohesion: The entire group must possess a high degree of self-confidence. Every member, from enlisted soldier to the highest ranking officer, must view themselves as an expert at what they do. The officers should be proud to lead such troops. They should identify themselves with their troops and not have an eye on their next promotion.

3. Acceptance: Officers should accept soldiers who take different approaches as long as the overall goal is reached. Officers should not get too involved on the tactical level, thus allowing soldiers to develop their skills. Too early, too much involvement on the tactical level frustrates self-leading soldiers.

4. Trust: Officers and soldiers need to trust each other. Officers cover for their soldiers when things go wrong. Mistakes are either not punished or at least not immediately. Common thinking and acting is critical. It is based on common training.

5. Information: Detailed information is important, especially explaining the strategic thinking behind individual missions. Soldiers need to understand the big picture, the broader context in which they are operating. Officers take seriously input provided by the tactical level, thereby encouraging soldiers to think and act independently.

6. Few orders: Commanding officers state only the mission, provide necessary resources and makes sure that participating organizations coordinate their activities. Everything else is left to the tactical level, which makes their own decisions about how to complete the mission. Leadership is decentralized.

7. Motivation: Commanders at the front know best the strengths and weaknesses of their troops, and can best judge the situation. Allowing for independent decision making and action strengthens motivation and morale among the troops. They identify more closely with the overall mission, view themselves as subjects and not objects to be commanded here and there.

8. Deviation from mission: If the situation on the ground has changed, it is expected of officers and their troops to make the necessary adjustments immediately, even without having informed their next level officer.

9. Situation analysis: Officers and soldiers at all levels are expected to constantly reassess the situation. What is our overall mission? What are we expected to achieve? Has the situation changed in any way which requires of us to modify our approach? If so, in what way and when?

Vorstandsvorsitzender and Vorstand

Germans companies have a Vorstand, or managing board. The Vorstandsvorsitzender is the head of the Vorstand, but not in the sense of a CEO, rather as a primus inter pares or first among equals. The CEO-principle is an Anglo-American construct.

German law governing publicly traded companies requires the naming of a Vorstand or managing board, but not of a Vorstandsvorsitzender. §77/78 AktG expects joint management and joint representation of the company. German law does not recognize the title of Vorstandsvorsitzender, chairman or head of the managing board or CEO. The law can, however, be interpreted to accept a company internal set-up allowing for a Vorstandsvorsitzender.

BMW: The formation of a managing board and its compensation – The managing board consists of several people and has a Vorsitzenden. Company governance directives define the cooperation within the managing board, in particular the roles and responsibilities of the various departments or divisions as represented by their individual board member.

BASF: The managing board. §7 Members. Members of the managing board are selected and deselected by the supervisory board. The managing board has at least two members. The supervisory board can name further managing board members. The supervisory board can select a managing board member to be the Vorsitzender, as well as another to be the Vice-Vorsitzender.

ThyssenKrupp: §3 – Vorsitzender of the managing board. The Vorsitzender is responsible for coordinating all of the areas represented in the managing board, and maintaining a cohesive approach to reaching the goals set by the managing board. The Vorsitzender can at any time request information from other managing board members pertaining to their area of the company. The Vorsitzender should be informed at the earliest possible time about any important decisions made by the other members of the managing board.

German Kleinstaaterei

Klein, small. Staaterei, many states. From roughly 1650 until 1850 Germany consisted of some 350 independent states, most very small, with only a few kingdoms such as Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony. The Kaiser had little direct power over this patchwork of states. His influence was reduced to that of a moderator.

While England and France were well advanced in becoming unified centralized states, Germany remained a country of loosely affiliated independent territories. And although many of these territories developed their own modern governmental bodies, there was little progress made to coordinate or integrate them at the national level.

One of the causes of the German Kleinstaaterei was the German tradition of inheritance which divided up possessions among all male heirs, and not the just the oldest. This led to more and smaller states. Complicating matters was the tradition of dividing up the inheritance equally. This led to the creation of non-contiguous states with en- and exclaves.

Although two large states were formed – Prussia led by the Hohenzollern dynasty and Austria-Hungary led by the Hapsburg dynasty – both had non-contiguous territories which made it difficult for Germany to consolidate as a nation-state similar to England and France.

The German Bund – created after the Napoleonic Wars – reduced the Kleinstaaterei to just under 40 independent states. But it wasn‘t until 1871 when Germany finally became a nation-state in the modern sense after Prussia defeated France and declared itself a Reich. In the years before the Franco-Prussian War, Prussia had consolidated most of the German states via war.

Mother of Invention

‘Not macht erfinderisch’ or “necessity is the mother of invention”. Not – necessity – forces one to become creative, to work in a disciplined way, to draw on resources carefully. Process oriented thinking is the logical response to working with limited resources. One could say “necessity is the mother of processes”.

The most popular kind of food in Germany is the potato. Imported from Latin America at the end of the 1700s in response to severely limited food supplies in Germany, the potato was a perfect fit: has high nutritional content, grows in poor soil, is resilient in erratic climates.

It was the Prussian king who had heard about the oddly shaped vegetable. At first the German people did not respond to the potato, even though hunger had become widespread. The king decided to appeal to the inclination of his subjects to challenge authority.

Fences were built around the potato fields, guards were posted. The people became curious. It didn’t take long for the first thieves to recognize the value and versatility of the potato. Today’s German cuisine could not exist without that once strange object from a far away land.

Parliamentary Democracy

In a parliamentary democracy the government is created out of and by the parliament. It is dependent on the support of the parliamentary party factions. The government, created by a majority coalition in the parliament, can also be deposed via a vote of Mißtrauen, mistrust. On the one side this gives the parliament a high degree of control over the government. On the other, however, the government can only govern by passing laws, which in turn requires strict discipline among the coalition parties in the parliament.

The presidential system is a different approach to democratic government. It‘s government – or administration, the executive branch of government – is elected directly by the people, and is therefore independent of the legislative branch, the Congress (Senate, House).

The United States is the most prominent example of the presidential system. There are also democratic forms of government which have aspects of both the parliamentary and presidential systems, such as France.

Germany is a classic parliamentary democracy. With one exception, federal elections have never produced a party with an absolute majority. Governments are always based on a coalition of two parties, who elect a chancellor to form a government. The chancellor then, in close negotiation with the coalition partners, chooses members for the cabinet. Traditionally these are the most powerful leaders of the coalition parties in the largest German states. They are power brokers in their own right and are considered to be capable of replacing the chancellor at any time.

Since all laws must be passed by a majority of the parliament, the government and its majority coalition in the parliament must work closely together. Any failure to pass a law is a clear signal of a possible break in the coalition.

Should the government, however, misuse its power over and against its colleagues in the parliament, the parliament can at any time dissolve the government via a vote of mistrust, which in turn leads to new elections. The government, should it not have the necessary support of parliament, has the same power to dissolve the parliament and force new elections.

In this sense, the chancellor‘s power is based on close cooperation not only with those cabinet members with their own independent political power base, but also with the influential factions in the parliament. The German chancellor is in the cabinet a primus inter pares, a first among equals.

Home is where the WIFI is

“I wonder if Germans think their WiFi-issues are a global thing”. That’s how one of my friends from the USA recently expressed his opinion towards the WIFI situation in Germany. They alluded to the impossibility to find free public WIFI in big German cities.

No wonder, since you can even find free mobile internet in the middle of the Israeli desert, in Estonian forests, on top of lonely Georgian mountains and along the highways in California. However, you won’t be able to find it in German pedestrian areas.

One reason for this lack of WiFi access is a legal situation. The provider of the free Wlan is legally responsible for the inevitable misbehavior of the users; the so-called “Stoererhaftung” (liability for disturbance).

But there is more behind it: The term “Neuland” (unknown territory) circulated a while ago, used by Angela Merkel at a meeting with President Obama, in context with the Internet. However, she did by no means mean the invention “Internet” itself, but rather figuratively the Internet as legal terrain.

The existing German legal status is just not sufficient to regulate the Internet, which is a contradiction in itself. Simultaneously, legislation works slowly and thus is even less able to keep up with such rapid changes.

Therefore, the basic dilemma becomes clear: Many Germans (The German institutions, for one) appreciate changes to be clear, regulated and with obvious roles and responsibilities. And in the event of doubt with distinct legal liability.

In general, changes are usually dealt with slowly but thoughtfully. Thus, if this attitude applies to an uncontrollable and rapidly spreading phenomena such as the Internet, conflict naturally develops.

German reservation does not solve such conflicts until an explicit and waterproof regulation has been found. But, this manner leads to satisfactory results of the changing process most of the time because „gut Ding will Weile haben“ (“Good things are worth waiting for“).

More with Less

“Get more done with less.” An intelligent use of resources also aims to maintain balance. Germans try to avoid ‘heading down the wrong path’, especially ‘betting everything on one hand’. Instead, they try to view an individual decision in the broader context of factors and resources. Achieving more with less is a defensive approach.

Decision making latitude. Germans do their best to maintain broad latitude in their decision making, whether it be in companies, families or the government at all levels. They want to make decisions freely, not be forced to make them.

Germans strive to keep as many options open as possible, knowing well that every decision leads to action, which in turn draws on valuable resources: time, budgets, material, manpower. And because revising decisions further depletes resources, Germans try to make the right decision from the start.

Thrifty. The German people are thrifty. The national debt per person is far lower than in Europe’s southern countries and clearly lower than in the U.S.. Private household debt is considered to be a character weakness, of poor planning, an inability to manage a budget. State agencies stand ready at any time to advise German citizens on how to get their personal finances in order.

Exact calculation. Germans are known to calculate ‘with a sharp pencil’. Whether it be the mother of a family, the Chief Financial Officer of a German small-to-medium sized company or a civil servant in the local tax office, the Germans calculate precisely what costs how much, when, with what affect on the overall budget.

Germans speak of the schwäbische Hausfrau, the Swabian mother and head of the household. Swabians are known within German for being especially thrifty. They are the model for financial conservatism, for avoiding non-essentials, for holding on to their money, for saving.