Process – Page 5 – understand-culture

Processes provide clarity

Processes provide clarity. They allow employees to concentrate on core activities. They lead to cost reductions by identifying and eliminating unnecessary work steps. Thinking in terms of processes – how the work should be done – strengthens conscientious work and allows for quality control.

Well documented processes are critical for orienting new employees. Processes make transparent, make understandable, each and every segment of complex work methods. They are the basis for optimization, for reducing mistakes, for root cause analysis of systemic errors. All of these benefits lead to increased product quality. Work processes, however, must be understood and accepted by those doing the actual work.

In Germany it is critical that processes do not take on the character of laws, but instead remain guidelines. German workers expect a certain level of freedom in terms of how they perform their daily tasks. Processes should not become a kind of straightjacket.

Definition of processes

Ein Prozess ist ein Satz von in Wechselbeziehung oder Wechselwirkung stehenden Tätigkeiten, der Eingaben in Ergebnisse umwandelt. A process is a set of activities which are interrelated, interdependent, influence each other mutually, and turn inputs into results.

The Bavarian Ministry for Commerce defines a process as: „The sequence of all activities which are linked with each other and convert inputs – based on customer requirements, legal boundary conditions, market demands – into a desired outcome.“

Simply put, a process is a set of work steps, which are sequenced logically, that have a beginning and lead to a specific desired outcome.

Craftsmanship

America history is made up of waves of immigration, the earliest ones bringing with them and maintaining the deep European tradition of craftsmanship. That focus on how the work is done – imbedded in what later became processes and procedures – gave way, however, to Taylorism, mechanization, mass production, and eventually to the outsourcing of manufacturing to low-wage countries.

That tradition – the European medieval guilds – craftsmanship, caring about how the work is done – is being reintroduced to the United States via its current reindustrialization. German companies, for example, are not only increasing manufacturing capacity in the U.S., they are importing their methods for training skilled workers. European, more precisely, German craftsmanship is returning to America.

Importance of price: No business culture gladly admits that price is a critical success factor. The U.S. business and consumer sectors are both strongly influenced by price. Americans buy and sell more on price than on craftsmanship.

Methodology

German academic training focuses on methodology. The quality of results – whether in the natural sciences or in the humanities – is determined by the quality of methodology. German students are taught that the person applying the methodolgy, but not the methodology itself, is interchangeable:

“… the conclusions verifiable; the starting point and operating assumptions logical and understandable; the individual steps taken re-traceable; so that the same results are arrived at by anyone taking the same path of inquiry.”

The academic (scholar, scientist, inquirer) is fully detached from the topic substance, both in the execution of the inquiry and in the presentation of results. Message and messenger are kept separate.

Under the hood

German products focus on the technical. German advertising focuses on the technical. Cars are often presented without the driver, wristwatches without the wrist, newspapers without reader or author. Quality should speak for itself.

German tabloids may personalize the news by displaying large-format photos. Serious publications do not. Content should speak for itself. For Germans it is self-stated that a good product or service aims to serve people. A view under the hood of the car is, therefore, more persuasive than a happy face behind a steering wheel.

Unimportant who presents

Germans believe that it is unimportant who actually presents the arguments as long as the topic has been understood in both its depth and breadth, analyzed with stringent methods, leads to a logical and actionable conclusion, and is communicated in a structured and clear way. The presenter could be a junior member of the team.

Günter Jauch

Günter Jauch, moderator of the very popular German version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, is known for his dry, rational delivery and his uncanny ability to open up his quiz show guests with wit, irony and subject matter knowledge.

Derrick

Derrick – a Kriminalserie or detective show – remains to date the most successful of all German television shows. Its 281 episodes, filmed from 1973 until 1997, have been translated and shown in 102 countries. Derrick, the detective, is tall, slender, focused, sparing of words, analytical, unemotional. The show is all about his detective work, not about him.

TV News

German television news provides an example of how Germans separate message from messenger. News anchors present the news in an unemotional, correct, almost stiff way, maintaining an objective distance to the news. They sit behind the news desk, with the reports in their hand, read nonetheless from the teleprompter, show only discreet facial expression.

More recently, news achors will come out from behind the news desk and stand in front of a large screen. Although somewhat more informal, many continue to read from notes or at least hold the news report while using the teleprompter, making clear to their viewers: “This news is official. Not subjective. Not made up. Here it is in this official document.”

The branding approach of the German networks, especially the news departments, is based on substance, not personality. Topics, journalistic methods and form of presentation are far more important than the individuals presenting the news. The news presenters are interchangeable.

Der Tagesschau

Der Tagesschau – Germany’s most popular evening news. First from November 2020:

And 2010:

And on 9 Nov 1999, the tenth anniversary of the so-called Fall of the Berlin Wall:

Party and platform

German political conventions demonstrate clearly that in Germany, substance is more important than form. For decades the podium was set to the side, with the stage dominated by up to fifty party leaders sitting in three or four extended rows.

And although in recent years the podium has been moved front and center, the stage continues to be dominated by party leaders. The message is clear. The party and its political platform remain front and center.

German political parties also do their best to keep hidden their internal power struggles. Instead they are presented as debates over substance which should be resolved internally and speedily. The politicians involved are quick to state that the battle is not about themselves or political office, but about important issues of substance.