United States – Page 52 – understand-culture

The Office

The Office is an American comedy television series adapted from a British series of the same name. The series depicts the everyday lives of office employees in a branch of a fictional paper company.

The office’s manager, Michael Scott, constantly interrupts his workers in an attempt to inspire them and win their approval. His efforts usually fail in a humorous way. Although this is a comedy, the manager’s frequent attempts to keep updated on his employees’ work and interact with them personally is similar to actual office environments.

Face-time with management

A fascinating article in the New York Times about how a few major U.S. companies are handling the post-Covid work environment. Some employees are returning full-time to the office. Others are working exlusively, or almost excluisively from home. And many are splitting the time between office and home.

There are, of course, consequences for each choice. And in the U.S. some companies are concerned about reduced opportunities for those folks who are less present in the office. Why? Reduced face-time with management.

This is a clear statement about the nature of leadership in the U.S. business environment: Get face-time with your boss !

If you collaborate with Germans, ask them if less face-time with management would be a disadvantage or an advantage. And when you do, read to them, as best you can this, well-know, German figure of speech: “Gehe nicht zu Deinem Fürst, wenn Du nicht gerufen wirst.”

Phonetically: Gae nisht tsu die nem first, venn doo nisht gae-roofen veerst.

Strategy Consultants

The approaches used by strategy consultants – also known as management consultants – are advanced versions of those taught in business schools: data-driven analysis with some degree of attention given to the non-quantifiable human factor. The goal is the standardization of best practices within client companies, drawing also on insights gained from other clients.

The management consulting sector has grown dramatically since the 1930s, when the Glass-Steagall Banking Act was passed, limiting affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms. Management consulting grew out of the demand for advice on finance, strategy and organization. In 1980, only five consulting companies existed, and each had 1,000 consultants worldwide. By the 1990s, however, more than thirty firms entered the market each with at least 1,000 management consultants.

In 1993, McKinsey had 151 directors. This figure dramatically increased to 400 by 2009. From 1993 to 2004, McKinsey revenues more than doubled with 20 new offices and twice as many employees. McKinsey grew from 2,900 to 7,000 consultants scattered across 82 offices in more than 40 countries. In 1963, Boston Consulting Group had two consultants. By 1970 1980, 1990, 2000 BCG had 100, 249, 676, 2370 and 4800 consultants on its payroll respectively.

Disagree and commit

Number 25. From 37signals, the company behind the project management software called Basecamp. Classiv American thinking: think, debate, persuade … decide, then commit and support. One of the founders, Jason Fried, is a very interesting person.

Check with Colleagues and Manager

Agreements of substance and importance have effects, ramifications, influence on the work of others. And since Americans work in teams, many of them in several teams at any given time, they are not inclined to enter fully into an agreement until they have checked out what those effects might be.

Why invest additional time discussing the details of a potential agreement, if one or two aspects of it are counter to their other responsibilities? Instead, Americans will check with key colleagues in those organizations potentially influenced by the agreement. In many cases, they will also briefly discuss the case with their direct manager.

This approach is often mistakenly interpreted as a sign that many Americans are either incapable or unwilling to make decisions on their own, without having to run to their boss for permission.

American team leads ultimately carry all responsibility for what occurs within their organization, and are therefore keenly interested in what obligations their team members make in their – the team leader’s – names.

Common and Unoriginal

According to Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson, authors of the book Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage, American culture is solidarity-based – which means that it is based on creating a sense of equality and belonging. It is because of this that Americans seek to find a way to compliment each other for very basic things – to form bonds and a sense of belonging.

Additionally, in 1981, Nessa Wolfson published a study on the use of compliments in various cultures, and her assessment of American complimenting culture, where compliments are “as cheap as chips,” was that “the most striking feature of compliments in American English is their total lack of originality.”

Wolfson wrote that 23% of American compliments include the word “nice,” 20% include “good,” and 54% follow the pattern: “noun/phrase is/looks (really) adjective.”

Feedback frequency

German teams maintain long lines of communication. Feedback takes place in a formal setting, once or twice a year, according to the company‘s official internal process. Seldom do German team leads give team members spontaneous, informal feedback. Germans focus on the details of their work and less so on where they stand individually in the team at any given time.

„Excellent!”

In sports, positive feedback from your coach regarding your performance can be an important confidence booster. For professional athletes in the U.S. the way the media describes and pictures you can be almost as important to your career as your coach’s approval.

When listening to the commentator of a NBA game one will rarely hears an athlete’s performance described as fine or okay. Some people may think that this is an inflation of words such as excellent and great.

However, the use of such words may simply reflect the quality of the league. It is unclear were the cut off is when using superlatives and if the inflationary use of words such as great, amazing, or terrific has a negative effect on the American viewer of the game. The inflationary use of superlatives might also just be a way to express more optimistic and positive views of the world for which the Americans are known for.

Popup surveys

A Call Center sends an email to a customer they just served, asking for quick feedback on that service. Websites have popups which give users a chance to respond immediately to what they like and don‘t like. Social networking sites like Facebook have their little thumbs up and down symbols on every page.

Political parties, as well as companies, are constantly asking voters, or consumers, what they like, don‘t like, how they feel, what‘s good bad, up down, right wrong, left right. Marketing in America is too a large degree understood as finding out what people want.

Americans selling something – products, services, political messages – want to know as much as they can about their target groups. Target. It‘s a sign of American customer-orientation. Or, from the perspective of other cultures, customer overorientation.

It is also a sign for the very strong inclination of Americans to quantify human behavior, to use statistics and measurements in order to understand it. Finally, it is a sign of how much Americans value, or take seriously, unreflected impressions and opinions given just after someone has experienced a product, service or an interaction.

Grade inflation

It is getting more and more competitive to get into a prestigious university. One must be a straight A student with a high SAT score to even get into a prestigious public university, such as the University of Washington.

In 2012 the Seattle Times published an article which stated that the average GPA of incoming freshman at the University of Washington in fall 2011 was 3.75. This points out an interesting problem, which is the inflation of grades.

If students need to get better and better grades to get accepted to college, it will eventually devalue the GPA. Furthermore, it could create added stress for young students if they receive a grade that is not an A, such as an B or C. This type of grade inflation could influence the grading scale in a negative way.