United States – Page 70 – understand-culture

Process procedure

Process: Progress, advance; something going on; a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead toward a particular result; a series of actions or operations conducing to an end; the whole course of proceedings in a legal action. Middle English proces, from Anglo-French procés, from Latin processus.

Procedure: A particular way of accomplishing something or of acting; a series of steps followed in a regular definite order; a set of instructions for a computer that has a name by which it can be called into action; a traditional or established way of doing things. French procédure.

Process or procedure: Americans define a procedure simply as a subset of a process. A procedure describes how one executes a specific task within a process. Again, the what and the how are spelled out clearly. American procedures typically have the following elements: purpose and application, individual steps, parties responsible, and the documentation, so that the individual actions taken can be accessed at a later time.

Americans draw a clear line between a process and a procedure. A process describes broadly what an organization, group, small team or individual team member needs to do. A procedure describes not only a specific task within that overall process, but also how that task is to be executed.

An American procedure can be formulated broadly or narrowly. A broad formulation allows for some interpretation and creativity in executing a procedure. A narrow procedure description seeks to avoid interpretation. One should stick to the procedure strictly.

William Edwards Deming

William Edwards Deming (1900-1993) was an American statistician and physicist, as well as a pioneer in the field of quality management. In the 1940’s he developed the process-oriented perspective of business activities, which were later introduced into various tutorials on quality management.

However, for many years Deming’s discoveries received very little attention in the U.S. Not so in Japan. There his insights were of great interest to leading industry managers. Why? The explanation given is that in the U.S. a maximization of production volume was the primary focus of industry following the worldwide reduction of production capacity following WWII.

This was possible to do without problem in the un-damaged USA. War-torn Japan, however, had limited resources for production, which pulled the optimization of processes into the foreground.

Deming’s story is initially a comparison between the U.S. and Japan. Yet the reasons why Japan’s industries became so process-oriented surely provide insight as to how Germany became to be so process-focused as well.

Listen to the first 3.5 minutes of Steve Jobs:

Adam Smith and the division of labor

Adam Smith’s understanding of a process – in the sense of division of labor – can be read in his famous statement about how a pin is producted:

”One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head: to make the head requires two or three distinct operations: to put it on is a particular business, to whiten the pins is another … and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which in some manufactories are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometime perform two or three of them.”

Optimum pairings

In one episode of the American television show Community, when eight people have to divide into partners, they first divide without considering any variables or long-term consequences. Shortly afterwards, however, they are so annoyed with their imperfectly chosen lab partners, that they decide to find a way to be in their optimum pairings.

This leads to them spending all night, and most of the following day, trying to decide what those optimum pairings are. They try several different systems to find new partners, including dividing by hair-color/gender/race, old/young, highest/lowest GPAs, and finally by rating each other then pairing the most popular with the least popular, etc.

After a failed attempt to implement the rating system, the 8 people succumb to fighting, angry at each other for the rankings they received. Finally, more than 12 hours after beginning the optimization process, the characters realize that their class is about to start, but none of them have done their work.

They go to class, and the teacher is so angry with them for not doing their work, and not even knowing who their partners are, that he forces 7 out of the 8 “partners” to all share one set of lab equipment, while the rest of the class no longer has to share.

Rules are made to be broken

In America, refusing to deviate from the rules is often perceived as negative behavior. There is a popular saying which states that “rules are made to be broken.” American General Douglas MacArthur famously expanded on this phrase and said “Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind.”

Sam Walton, the founder of the Wal-Mart chain (which became the largest corporation in the world in 2002), wrote in his autobiography that the most important rule in business is to break all of the rules. He also gave preference to rule-breakers when hiring employees, as he considered them superior workers to their rule-following counterparts.

Many of the best known American scientists and engineers were also rule-breakers. Bill Gates broke the rules with his innovative software, Henry Ford with his moving assembly line and welfare capitalism, and the Wright brothers with their fixed wing aircraft, just to name a few.

“Way to go, Sue!”

Customer reviews can make or break a company in the USA. Especially now that the internet gives customers a way to instantly compliment or complain about service (and to make sure that their opinion is available for anyone to see) one good or bad review can drastically change the number of customers a company has.

In 2012, after Brandon Cook from New Hampshire posted a Facebook story about a Panera manager named Sue making a special order of clam chowder for his grandmother (and giving her a free box of cookies as well), the store became much more popular. Several people who would not otherwise have eaten at this restaurant went there, and commented about it online. Some of the Facebook comments that people made were:

Cyrus Twirpwhirler My family is eating at Panera tonight because of this story. Way to go Sue and Panera!

Snow Casey That is so cool, I’m a customer already, but I like them even more now.

Daniel Julian that is so cool!!! Have to visit Panera soon.

Skeptical of deductive thinking

Americans are inherently skeptical of theory, theoretical thinking, and deductive approaches. They are empirical. For Americans „seeing is believing.“ Experience is real, factual, hard data. Experence informs. Americans prefer to build their processes from the bottom up, from „how the work is actually done.“

Process improvement: Americans asked to improve a process will imbed themselves in the inner workings of the team and the processes they use. They observe what does and does not work, what increases or decreases value, what is worth doing. They will then propose improvements, discuss these with the users of the process, then test, implement, improve upon. American process improvement is specific and experience based. It is not general and theory based.

Broad vs. Narrow: Americans distinguish between a narrow and broad process pragmatically. If the concrete actions to be taken are insufficiently spelled out in a process or a procedure, that process or procedure is not narrow enough. They are, in other words, too broad. If, on the other hand, a process or procedure demands too many deliverables, it is too narrow, focussed, inflexible.

Too many deliverables means too much time and too many man-hours are necessary without resulting in any clear value-added for the end-customer. Americans differentiate stringently between valuable and invaluable processes and steps in a process. Processes and procedures can be balanced or imbalanced. Balanced ones lead to a value-added ratio between work and results. Unbalanced processes and procedures are inefficient, costly, slow and cumbersome. They destroy value.

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.

Empirical

Inductive: Latin inducere, from in + ducere to lead. To induce means to: move by persuasion or influence; call forth, effect; cause the formation of. Inductive reasoning begins with observing particulars.

Should the particulars indicate a pattern, a conclusion might be drawn or inferred. The particular is the starting point. To infer means: to derive as a conclusion from facts or premise; guess, surmise; involve as a normal outcome of thought; point out, indicate, suggest, hint.

Deductive: Latin deducere, to lead away, from de- + ducere to lead. To deduce means to: infer from a general principle; trace the course of. Deductive reasoning draws a conclusion about particulars based on general or universal premises. The general is the starting point. A premise is something assumed or taken for granted, presupposed, believed.

Empirical: Originating in or based on observation or experience; relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory; capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment. Latin empiricus, from Greek empeirikos, doctor relying on experience alone, from empeiria experience.

Inductive American science

Murray Gell-Mann, a theoretical particle physicist who won the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics, used the specific measurements of multiple particles with varying masses to induce the existence of quarks, half of the known elementary particles – the foundation of all matter, and what he called the eightfold way, a generalization of particle symmetries, which was able to predict the masses of yet undiscovered particles.

Linus Pauling, a chemist who is the only person to win two unshared Nobel Prizes, for chemistry in 1954 and peace in 1962, charted particular chemical bond angles and distances at Caltech following his fellowship. He then used these specific charts to formulate generalizations about atomic arrangements in crystals.