Jemandem reinen Wein einschenken. To serve someone pure wine.
This expression originates from the Middle Ages, when innkeepers added various ingredients to their wine (e.g. sulphur, acetic clay, water, etc.) and sold it as wine. In this way, the innkeeper could make even more out of the limited supply of wine. Only if he poured real wine, as he claimed, was he telling the truth.
Mandate. Latin mandatum, task, job, order to do something for another; to represent another legally; an elected office to represent the voters.
A mandate is a broadly defined task where the service provider – consultant, attorney, architect, subject area expert – advises the client. The business relationship is not made up of small, individual tasks.
Instead, the service provider – the person who has been granted the mandate – serves, represents, and advises the client in a complex area involving many different kinds of issues and interactions.
Attorneys represent their clients in legal matters. Political office holders represent their voters. A mandate obligates the adviser to act in the interest of the client even without the client‘s expressed permission.
To serve the customer is to deliver what the customer has ordered. No more, no less. Quickly. Precisely. Fulfilling the order. Full. Filled. Unless asked, a waiter does not discuss with the customers the wisdom of their choice from the menu.
To consult the customer is to enter into the decision making process, to co-discuss, to co-think. To discuss with, think with. Perhaps initially just as a sounding board. Then later as a provider of information, input, advice. At the highest level, acting independently, but in the spirit of the customer’s wishes.
Stages. From order-taker all the way to co-thinker and co-decider. Grades. Gradations. Graduation. Gradual. From serving to partnering with. And there is a fine line between each phase, at each transition.
If the lines are identified, understood and managed (walked carefully), the collaborator is graduated, “makes the grade.” If misidentified, misunderstood, therefore mismanaged, the collaborator is not graduated. The business relationship might be terminated.
A big source of misunderstanding between Americans and Germans, rarely made explicit, is about whether business should inherently be customer-centric, supplier-centric, or somehow balanced, as our fourth column in this series explains.
Germans and Americans alike will of course say they care about their customers. But they associated different meanings with that notion. And that often leads to misunderstandings and frustration. American providers of business services proudly offer exactly that: a service. By contrast, German providers view their proposition less as a service and more as a consultation. The difference is subtle, but consequential.
If to consult is to provide advice, then that advice might, perhaps should, include what the customer needs to hear, but does not want to hear. A fine line. How to walk it? To withhold that advice could mean to underserve, or even damage, the customer. To provide that advice, however, could damage the relationship.
If true friends are those who tell you what you need to hear, but surely you do not want to hear, at the risk of damaging or destroying the friendship, aren’t true suppliers-vendors-consultants those who do the same?
Comments: “As a german i can say, this is so funny i will laugh about it later after work between 17:00 and 17:22 on my way home” … “I tested it and couldnt find any humor here – greetings from germany” … “He says words that are longer than most of your sentences.” … “Stay serious my friends, fun is inefficient” that was ironically one of the funniest moments.”
Manufacturing automobiles is based on complex production processes. Chassis are formed out of high tensile steel, which are then fitted and painted. Each and every step in the process is made up of smaller, more exact process steps.
All of this cannot work without those involved following processes. Operating on checklists will not lead to road-worthy automobiles.
German cars are known worldwide for their quality, possibly the best in the world. Could that technical quality be based on the quality of processes? Could the strict adherence to well-defined processes be a key to success?
Germans. Augenhöhe. More consult than serve. Ok, fine. American customers can work with the German approach. Maybe even work better, if the approach is understood by both sides and is applied carefully.
But even if so, it can look and feel to the American customer as if the tail is wagging the dog. The customer is the dog. The German supplier-vendor-consultant is the tail. Germans don’t want to be the tail. Who does? But the American customer is clearly the dog. And that dog doesn’t want to be wagged by its tail, German or any other culture.
Germans – both management and employees – strive to work independently, on their own, with as little supervision as possible. Most importantly, Germans expect of themselves and each other a high degree of mitdenken, of thinking with.
Mitdenken not only reduces the need for management oversight – it also means that management need not get too involved in the details of the work on the tactical level, the how. But can German management fully rely on their employees to do their work in the best interest of the company? Germans answer this questions indirectly with a yes.
Whenever cases are uncovered where Germans employers use technology to monitor their employees’ behaviour and/or performance, there is immediate and loud protest not only from those employees, but from the German public in general.
For Germans, to self-manage, to work independently, means a high level of trust between employer and employee, between team lead and team. For Germans, the permission to work in an independent fashion is a sign of recognition, of ability and trustworthiness.
For German employees, it is a clear sign of recognition when they are given a task to complete on their own. They are proud to take on the task, proud of their ability, regardless of whether management voices praise or offers any kind of monetary benefit.
Through the ability to work independently, to need little management supervision, German employees see themselves less as Diener, those who serve, and more as Berater, as collaborating almost as partners with their manager.
Duden, the German dictionary, defines abweichen as: to change direction; to be different, to differentiate.
Synonyms are: differ, deviate, vary, veer, depart, stray, drift, digress, swerve, aberrate. But also to be at variance, to go rogue.