United States – Page 16 – understand-culture

Searing

Searing: Very hot; marked by extreme intensity, harshness, or emotional power.

The United States is an immigrant country. More accurately stated: a younger, more recent immigrant country. For the history of mankind is the history of man moving, settling, then picking up and moving again.

There were and are reasons for why people moved and continue to move to the United States. Many seek greater freedom of thought, of religion, of way of life. Economic opportunity was/is certainly a motivation for many, if not most. And there are those who wanted to break out of the inflexible structures of their native country.

The immigrant experience is searing. It is of great emotional intensity, forming who we are as individuals, families, ethnic communities, and as a nation. The stories, the emotions, the choices made are passed down from generation to generation.

Oddly, but understandably, an American of German descent will say: “I’m German,” meaning, “My ethnic heritage is German,” in a deeper sense, “My national cultural hard-wiring is American and German,” just as it is for others: American and Italian, American and Irish, and Vietnamese, and Mexican, and Polish, and so on.

A searing experience. People left behind all that they knew. Language, culture, traditions, friends and relatives. The risks were both high and not entirely known. The immigrant experience leads to a complex relationship with what was once home. For people take their culture with them. National culture changes only slowly and painfully.

Immigrants admire, respect, long for their home. But they also leave it behind, in some ways they reject it. Americans have always seen America as the New World. Not just a new settlement, a new country. But a new world, as if mankind were starting afresh, anew. It is a part of the American self-understanding to believe that you can strike out on a new path, question old ways, methods, traditions.

Realistic for Americans means that the present is a starting point to the future, a new starting point towards a new future, possibly different and better than the past. Yes, the present is the result of the past, but not locked into a pre-determined, unalterable trajectory. The past, therefore, has less relevance. There is less need to explain how the present was arrived at.

Whereas for Germans realistic means “keeping your feet on the ground,” maintaining a sober view of the situation, not deviating too much from known ways; “knowing where you come from.” For Americans realistic means developing a vision, imagining new possibilities, stretching beyond, reaching for more and greater things.

“… an idiot could lead”

“I’m looking for companies which an idiot could lead.” Warren Buffett. May 2015.

Buffett is an American investor, businessman and philanthropist. With an estimated $72.7 billion he is estimated to be the third-wealthiest person in the world.

The majority of that wealth is in Berkshire-Hathaway, the investment firm he founded and leads. Stocks in Berkshire are the most expensive in the world.

His formula for successful investing: He looks to buy stocks in companies that are so successful that an idiot could run them. For sooner or later one will. Buffett has a few basic rules. One is investing in companies whose business model is immediately and intuitively understood.

Ten Slides

Imagine the same task given to ten different Americans, in ten different companies, in ten different business sectors. A thousand people. They’re asked to use a maximum of ten slides in a presentation in order to persuade an audience of fellow Americans about the virtues and value of their product, service, idea, concept, recommendation.

On average, how many slides would the Americans use to explain the present (current situation), the past (how the present was arrived at), and the future (the desired situation)?

“a tremendous whack”

“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.” This statement is attributed to Winston Churchill, whose mother was an American.

“Make an Englishman shit”

This is also a reason why it is anecdotes, if well told and timed, are enormously persuasive in the American cultural context. For Americans anecdotes are empirical. They are reality experienced, the opposite of theory, which is often seen as abstract and unrealistic, separated from reality.

An anecdote says: “I know what I’m talking about. I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. This is no theory, it’s reality!” Any American politician, for example, speaking in their legislative district or in the media about a difficult issue, such as the war in Iraq, will come across as especially convincing if they can claim to have visited that region.

Like aphorisms, anecdotes transport deeper-lying wisdom. Isn’t that what the Bible – Old and New Testament – does via one story after the other, communicate the deepest-felt, and therefore most complex, beliefs of a people, of Jews and Christians?

Isn’t story-telling the highest, the most sophisticated, form of activating (speaking to) the human imagination? Truly persuasive communicators in the U.S. plan very carefully when they draw on anecdotes. This is why we all listen so carefully when our grandparents tell their stories. They have the years of human experience.

The historians are in agreement. That Abraham Lincoln was the most masterful storytellers in American history. It has been written that he could hold audiences for up to four hours at a time.

Business Storytelling

Business Storytelling for Dummies. Author Karen Dietz. What does amazon(dot)com say about the book in order to promote it?

Learn to: translate data, facts, and figures into rich, captivating messages; harness the power of good storytelling to influence and motivate employees; effectively convey messages to buyers and funders; connect with your audience and drive your business to new heights; use storytelling to influence people and move them to action

Use stories to tap into their imaginations and translate sterile facts and stagnant case studies into exciting concepts they can identify with.

“Mark your man”

Typing “close the sale” in amazon.com led to 282,687 book titles. That tells us how much Americans in sales focus on that one aspect of a customer-supplier relationship. Typical titles are:

Secrets of Closing the Sale. Sales, The Science of Selling! Changing the Sales Conversation. Sales: How to Master the Art of Selling. Close the Deal! The Art of Closing the Sales!

“how to close the sale” led to 3.67 billion hits in Google. Selling in the U.S. is critical to success. Many Americans work in sales. They all have to know how to “close the sale” (or they go hungry).

Overqualification

According to a recent study, almost half of all employed Americans with college degrees are overqualified for their jobs. In 2010, 15% of taxi drivers had bachelor’s degrees, compared to 1% in 1970, and 25% of retail sales clerks had bachelor’s degrees, compared to 5% in 1970.

In fact, U.S. overqualification has become such a large problem that in 2013, The Globalist published an article titled “The U.S. Overqualification Crisis: Why the United States is looking to Germany for answers on higher education.”

Now, many degree programs encourage American students to avoid doctorates and/or other certifications because having these will make it harder for the students to find jobs. Engineers are warned not to get certified as Professional Engineers (PEs,) because companies typically hire only a handful of licensed PEs, but hire many more unlicensed engineers.

American employers have several reasons why they avoid hiring people who are overqualified for a position. Some of their biggest reasons include:

Higher salary expectations – someone with more qualifications is likely to expect to be paid more money.

Promotion expectations – someone with more qualifications might accept a job that’s “beneath them” only because they expect to be promoted quickly to a job that’s more deserving of their higher skills.

Upstaging – someone who has more qualifications and/or experience than their boss might have difficulty following orders.

Short term – someone who is overqualified is likely to lose interest in their position, and won’t stay for very long.

“Whaddya say, Ray?”

Observe how a very intelligent young man by the name of Harry Sonneborn persuades Ray Croc to fundamentally change his business model re: McDonald’s.

The Lords of Strategy

Written in 2010 by Walter Kiechel, former managing editor at Fortune magazine and editorial director of Harvard Business Publishing, best-selling The Lords of Strategy describes the history of ideas in the field of management strategy over the past forty years through the rise of the strategy consulting firms McKinsey, BCG and Bain, as well as notable business schools.

A reviewer – Jeffrey Swystun – wrote on amazon.com that Kiechel “sees the best strategy consultants as objective intellectuals who see patterns of evidence and put them through conceptual frameworks to produce pragmatic insights“.