United States – Page 51 – understand-culture

“value to your manager”

This is a comment on a Wall Street Journal article vom March 17, 2025 entitled: “Job Seekers Hit Wall of Salary Deflation – The salary bump that people who switch jobs used to command has vanished.”

“Going for the money as the big motivator for a job has not been the best personal career choice. Location and challenging work are much better career decision criteria. Constantly providing extra value to your manager and your manager’s managers is always a strong career strategy.”

If you ask most Americans who they work for, they will name their immediate boss. If you ask a German they will name their company. If you ask that German to be more specific they will name the division. Ask further and they will say the department. Rarely would they name their immediate boss or anyone in management.

All-Employee Meeting

The All-Employee Meeting – also called All-Hands or Town Hall Meeting – is an effective and important forum American management uses to communicate directly with their entire organization. Its goal is not so much to go into the details of the organization‘s strategy, but instead to lay out its broad lines.

The AEM also allows for a question and answer period which gives both management and employees a forum to spontaneously address topics of particular concern. In addition, the AEM serves the purpose of motivating the team to work harder, faster, smarter.

Communications Technology

Twenty years ago American football coaches would communicate the plays they wanted executed by sending it in with a player substitute. After that they tried using hand signals. For several years now they simply speak via communications technology directly with their key players.

Basketball coaches have no need for any communications technology. They stand directly on the side of the court within speaking distance from the action. Baseball managers continue to use hand signals.

The American military places extraordinarily high value on the development and usage of any and all technology which shorten, improves, quickens the communication between commanders and commanded. Combat helmets are outfitted with cameras and radio communication allowing for direct, one-to-one communication with each and every soldier.

It is said that the President of the United States can speak at any time, from any location, with any armed forces pilot in the sky. The 2012 raid on Osama bin Laden‘s compound was watched by the president and his national security team from the White House situation room.

Email Overload

Recent advances in technology have shortened the already very short lines of communication maintained in American business. According to a study done by American University in Washington, D.C. “a typical manager receives hundreds of emails a day, and that consumes a substantial amount of work hours.”

In response to this trend, companies such as PriceWaterhouseCooper have created internal rules restricting email on holidays and non-business hours. A survey by the Society for Human Resources Management states that one in four companies have created similar rules.

In the U.S. business environment, managers expect to be kept informed of even small developments in projects under their supervision. In practice this means that managers are often cc’ed on routine emails relating to the „nuts and bolts“ of a project, even if the content of the email does not require input from the manager. This practice is done to ensure that the manager has situational awareness of his team members’ work.

The Madman and the Bomb

The scene from the White House south lawn on August 9, 1974, is vivid in the nation’s memory. That morning, President Richard Nixon famously boarded Marine One for the final time, put on a wide grin and fired off a final double-V to the assembled crowd.

But one of the most interesting aspects of that day is what didn’t happen on the south lawn: Even though Nixon had more than two hours left in his tenure, the most critical tool of the modern presidency had already been taken away from him. He never noticed it, but the nuclear “football” didn’t travel with him as he boarded the helicopter, and later, Air Force One for his flight back to California.

Moreover, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger recalled years later that in the final days of the Nixon presidency he had issued an unprecedented set of orders: If the president gave any nuclear launch order, military commanders should check with either him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger before executing them.

Schlesinger feared that the president, who seemed depressed and was drinking heavily, might order Armageddon. Nixon himself had stoked official fears during a meeting with congressmen during which he reportedly said,

“I can go in my office and pick up a telephone, and in 25 minutes, millions of people will be dead.” Senator Alan Cranston had phoned Schlesinger, warning about “the need for keeping a berserk president from plunging us into a holocaust.”

Baseball and pitch-calling

Steve Krah of the Elkhart Truth (newspaper in Indiana) wrote online: „More and more, catchers at the college and high school levels are seen peeking — or even staring — in the dugout to get the sign from a coach.

While some programs let their pitchers and catchers manage their own games, many others — especially NCAA Division I schools — take that off the battery mates’ plates.

Notre Dame pitching coach Chuck Ristano calls nearly every pitch as well as pick-off tosses and pitch-outs and sets the defense for the Irish.

`I want (the pitcher and catcher) to have some element of ownership in the game, but the reality is we have access to a lot more information than the kids do (like tendency and hitter spray charts),’ Ristano said. `We just want them to focus on executing their pitch.`’

Notre Dame employs a numbers system that is flashed to the catcher, who then consults a wristband chart that suggests which pitch and part of the strike zone to throw the pitch.“

Four Areas

Buzzword: an important-sounding, usually technical word or phrase often of little meaning used chiefly to impress laymen; a voguish word or phrase.

Leadership. A buzzword. Not only management books, seminars and trainings profess their teaching of leadership skills. Universities, high schools and even some elementary schools have gotten into the act. Grouped under the heading of leadership is an array of topics, from communication to decision making to conflict resolution to business ethics. Leadership has become an umbrella-term for almost any skill considered to be critical to success.

But, we’re interested in the core meaning of leadership. In the specific, daily interaction between leader and led, between team lead and members. Even more specific, we want to understand how team lead and member together manage the line between strategy (the what) and tactics (the how).

To get a sense for the shared inner logic of that fundamental interaction in a given society, one needs to understand it in at least four areas essential to any functioning society: How a society defends itself (military); How a society organizes itself (government); How a society feeds itself (business); and how a society teaches and practices interactions analogous to each of those three areas (sports).

If a given society is stable, if it is flourishing, there will be a common leadership logic in each of those four areas. How could it be any other way? Can a well-functioning, stable, successful society have one leadership logic in the military sphere and another in the political or commercial sphere? Isn’t what a society teaches its young men and women in sports representative with how that society functions (or should function)?

We compare. The relationship between officer and soldier. Offizier und Soldat. Between president and cabinet. Kanzlerin und Kabinett. Between CEO and CFO, COO, CIO, etc. Vorstandsvorsitzender und Vorstandskollegen. Coach and player. Trainer und Spieler.

MBWA

Management by walking around (MBWA) was an idea made popular by the 1982 book „In Search of Excellence“ (Tom Peters, Robert Waterman) emphasizing the need for senior-level management get back in touch, or to be in closer touch, with their organizations.

MBWA recommended unscheduled visits by managers to their teams, in their operations, in order to ask questions, offer support, and to answer questions „at the ground level.“

Although thought by many readers of the book to be something new, MBWA, like so many other business management fads in the U.S., has been practiced by Americans in leadership positions for many generations.

How a society feeds itself

How a society fundamentally defines the everyday working relationship between leader and led – between two levels of hierarchy – is imbedded in how that society feeds itself. In companies engaged in commerce.

If that working relationship does not function well, if it fails, not only is the respective project in jeopardy, the ability of companies to meet the needs of their customers is at risk. Defining and managing the line between strategy and tactics is in the business context critical to the profitability of every team within every commercial enterprise.

The American business tradition in practice involves a close working relationship between leader and led, between team lead and team.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of an American company, for example, is the leader of the company. He or she manages directly the other managing board members, such as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), the Chief Operations Officer (COO).

Lincoln visits troops

President Abraham Lincoln was know for making unscheduled visits to Union officers and troops. Successful American leaders never lose touch with their people. Conversely, capable team members find ways to remain in constant communication with their team lead and other important members of management.