Information – Page 4 – understand-culture

How the Thirty Years war affected Germany

The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was a brutal conflict that saw most major European powers use Germany as a battleground to sort out their assorted dynastic, religious, economic and territorial issues. The toll this took on the country was massive, and reverberated for long after; let’s take a look at some of the damage it did.

The Thirty Years War has earned a reputation for being a particularly nasty conflict: unlike most wars of the day, and arguably no wars until the 20th century, it saw massive civilian casualties, with parts of Germany losing more than half of their population. It’s estimated that of a German population of about 20 million in 1600, by 1650 only about 13 million were alive.

Thirty Years War

This episode of Ten Minute History (like a documentary, only shorter) covers the outbreak of the Bohemian Revolt which was what would eventually spiral out of control into the Thirty Years’ War.

The revolt was crushed fairly quickly but sparked intervention by Denmark, who didn’t do too well, and later Sweden who did very well. Both of these were aided by France who decided to get directly involved in 1635.

By 1648 the Holy Roman Empire lay in ruins, with Austria and Spain struggling to pay for the war and rebuild the Habsburg Empire. This war saw the rise of Sweden and France but most importantly saw the foundations of modern diplomacy built.

Federalism in Germany: Small states are annoying! Glad we have them!

December 2018. 16 school systems, 16 police forces, 16 constitutional courts: German federalism often seems inefficient and outdated, most recently with the digital pact. A look at history shows what makes small states so valuable – at least when they don’t degenerate.

It seems bizarre: the federal government wants to give the states five billion euros to digitize schools – and only then should the Basic Law be changed. The mediation committee is called, a coalition is in dispute – and all because Germany is a federal state.

The constitutionally enshrined division of Germany into federal states was born out of historical experience, has grown over a long time and also shows some signs of use, almost 70 years after the Basic Law came into force.

Inside Outside

Americans make less of a distinction between their core team and teams in ever wider organisational concentric circles. They believe that information fundamentally belongs to the entire company.

How Americans are helping each other through the coronavirus

People across the United States are taking steps to help one another amid the coronavirus pandemic.

From companies donating masks and ventilators to hospitals, to everyday people helping their neighbors, there are countless examples of people trying to do the right thing during an extraordinarily difficult time.

The Hill is keeping track of them here.

Breaking down silos

A successful organization often encourages collaboration across its various departments. However, the concept of organizational silos can hinder interaction and communication amongst these groups.

Understanding silos and the steps you can take to break down these barriers can help organizations and employees thrive. In this article, we discuss the importance of breaking down silos within an organization and offer steps and tips to conduct this process.

Bavarians

Bavarians (Bavarian: Boarn, Standard German: Baiern) are an ethnographic group of Germans of the Bavaria region, a state within Germany. The group’s dialect or speech is known as the Bavarian language, native to Altbayern (“Old Bavaria”), roughly the territory of the Electorate of Bavaria in the 17th century.

Like the neighboring Austrians, Bavarians are traditionally Catholic. In much of Altbayern, membership in the Catholic Church remains above 70%, and the center-right Christian Social Union in Bavaria (successor of the Bavarian People’s Party of 1919–1933) has traditionally been the strongest party in the Landtag, and also the party of all Ministers-President of Bavaria since 1946, with the single exception of Wilhelm Hoegner, 1954–1957.

The 12 Habits Of Highly Collaborative Organizations

When it comes to the future of work and collaboration I’ve worked with and researched hundreds of companies. Collaboration is indeed a top priority for many business leaders but knowing what makes organizations successful can be a tricky thing.

After all no two companies are like and their strategies and technologies can be quite different. In addition collaboration initiatives come from different departments with different budgets, they have different uses cases and corporate cultures, and different approaches, goals, and measures of success.

So if there is so much variety here then how do we know what makes organizations successful? The answer lies in chess.

Bavaria: tradition in danger

Günther Hochhäuser is a passionate marksman who fights to maintain the traditions of his homeland, Upper Bavaria. The Christian Social Union, who has been in power here for decades, could get a drubbing in upcoming elections — to Hochhäuser’s dismay.

Marksmen’s clubs stand for everything Bavaria is famous for: folk costumes, cultural lore and tradition. Their chairmen include illustrious public figures, such as former Pope Benedict and Prince Max, Duke in Bavaria.

Marksman Günther Hochhäuser says “We are a pillar of strength.” But that pillar looks to be on increasingly shaky ground. Bavaria and even the seemingly timeless Inn-Chiemgau shooting club are being overtaken by the tides of change. Until recently, voting for the conservative CSU party was a given.

But recent polls say that the CSU will suffer big losses in the upcoming state elections. Many Bavarians are angry that German interior minister Horst Seehofer, a member of the CSU, recently came close to bringing down the country’s governing coalition. Axel Rowohlt reports.

Making collaboration across functions a reality

Fast-changing global markets put a premium on simplifying processes radically and breaking through silos.

Companies have long struggled to break down silos and boost cross-functional collaboration—but the challenge is getting more acute. The speed of market change requires a more rapid adaptation of products and services, while customers increasingly expect an organization to present them with a single face.

Even well-established multinationals routinely fail to manage operations end to end. The result: interactions with customers are sluggish; complex, customized products are hard to create on time and on budget; and blocked lines of communication make new sales and distribution channels difficult to navigate.

The basic principles for improving performance—imposing stretch targets from the center, empowering cross-functional teams, standardizing processes, tightening up execution—are mostly familiar. But making these things happen is a different matter. In many companies, ownership of processes and information is fragmented and zealously guarded, roles are designed around parochial requirements, and the resulting internal complexity hinders sorely needed cross-business collaboration.

What’s more, in our experience, companies that apply traditional solutions (such as lean and business-process reengineering) either exhaust their managers with efforts to rework every process across business units or, by contrast, focus too narrowly within functions.

Our observations of 25 companies in a wide range of industries in Europe, Asia, and North America have led us to conclude that perspiration is as important as inspiration in addressing these challenges.

Here’s the story of how two companies launched new approaches successfully. One needed to focus narrowly to fix a critical process that compromised its core business. The other, swamped by the complexity of its processes, required a broad-based transformation.