Product – Page 4 – understand-culture

Knowledge Society

Because Germany has few natural resources, its economy has had to produce high quality, high technology products and services.

In politics, economics and the media the Germans stress time and again the importance of maintaining a knowledge society, of education as its key resource. Germany‘s high standard of living, its high level of social welfare services, can only be financed if it can continue to develop and market high margin goods and services. The Germans stress, therefore, the need to produce generations of scientists and engineers.

There is consensus across the country on this point. Every chancellor, state governor, head of a major German company stresses time and again how critical it is to stay on the cutting edge of science, engineering, technology. Germany sees itself as the land of ideas, recognizes that its future depends on it producing breakthrough ideas.

When German engineers are bored

Engineering in Germany is prestigious. As a field of study it ranks among the most respected. Germany‘s economy, its sophisticated technical products, rely on an abundance of first-class engineers. More than 20% of all first-year university students major in a technical field.

No other European country has a higher percentage of engineers among the workforce than Germany. Nonetheless, industry and the media constantly warn of decreasing numbers of Germans willing to enter the engineering profession.

In order to attract more women to the engineering sciences, German schools and universities organize so-called Girls Day, hoping to fascinate young women with the prospects of a technical career. Engineers begin their careers with a yearly salary of roughly 45,000 Euros. Graduates in the humanities, in contrast, earn about 31,000 Euros per year.

Good old watering can

Gardena is located in Ulm, Germany. With approximately 420 million Euros in yearly revenues it is Europe’s leading maker of gardening tools. Owned by the Swedish Husqvarna-Group, Gardena was founded in 1961 by Eberhard Kastner und Werner Kress.

One of Gardena’s products is the Micro-Drip-System. The Gardena website says: “Water your yard the intelligent way!” Watering manually is hard work and it leads to “uneven results.”

The Micro-Drip-System is a great relief, “because you only need to turn on the water (faucet, spigot) or to give the command into the system’s on-board computer.”

“The system does the rest of the work itself.” Instead of watering too much or too little, the grass and plants get just the amount they need as determined by sensors which measure humidity and rainfall.

Gardena tools are so intelligent that they can decide themselves how much water is necessary for even and uniform growth. This also saves water.

Of course, the question remains if the proud homeowner would not prefer to demonstrate his or her gardening expertise by using the good old watering can.

Made in Germany

England in 1887 required all products imported from Germany to be labeled „Made in Germany.“ At the time German products were considered to be of substandard quality. Germany was a late-comer to the industrial revolution, much later than England. A famous German engineer admitted that German products were “cheap and nasty.”

Many were enraged, but it led to a national discussion and a quality offensive. At the beginning of the 20th Century, and especially in the post-World War II era, „Made in Germany“ took on a new meaning: high quality, newest technology. It became synonymous with West Germany‘s economic miracle of the 1950s.

The Germans recognized the importance of such a label, of the reputation of their products. They became particularly proud of their technical and economic achievements. Germans continue to view their products as having high quality, often as being the best in the world. From the early 1980s until recently Germany was the world‘s leading exporter.

The label “Made in Germany” is used less today than in the past, however. A minimum amount of a product’s parts must be produced in Germany before it can boast “Made in Germany.”

Modern German industrial and technology companies, however, have segmented their supply chains to include manufacturing sites and suppliers in many parts of the world. Nonetheless, the label “Made in Germany” remains a key, positive element in the self-understanding of every German.

Very proud of their automobiles

German cars vs. American cars. Germans are very proud of their automobiles.

Comments in YouTube: “Telling Germans how to make cars is like telling Italians how to make pizza.” … “To anyone saying that we Germans don‘t have any humour: We do actually! We laugh at French and American cars!”

“German: Uses the most advanced tech known to mankind to build the fastest, safest and over all best cars ever. American: slaps wheels and v8 on coffin.” … “Built in USA: Can do cool stunts in Hollywood movies. Built in Germany: Can do the same but on a real autobahn.”

Intelligent, not independent

Team member to team lead. Product to consumer. Could there be a link between those two relationships? Could it be that how a culture defines the relationship between team lead and team member is similar or analogous to the relationship between the consumer (B2C) or the customer (B2B) on the one side and the product on the other? Between the consumer and the electronic device like a computer, tablet smartphone, or between the customer and a complex production system?

But analogous not in the sense that employees are tools, objects, inhuman – although certainly there are managers, organizations, companies who indeed treat their employees as means to an end. More in the sense that it is expected that the employee, the team member, get the job done, make work and life easier for management, for fellow employees, for internal or external customers.

In the American product philosophy, how intelligent should a product be: kitchen oven, washer, automobile, computers and their software, technologies which utilize forms of artificial intelligence? Intelligent in the sense of independent, of the user?

Just as the American team lead reserves the right to go from the strategic level down to the tactical in order to manage or even implement (player-coach), so too the American consumer (B2C) or customer (B2B) wants a product which can be managed, controlled, directed, steered, run.

See the print advertisements, including large banners for example in airports, stating „Company X runs SAP.“ Enterprise software, highly complex, but at the service, at the disposal, of the client.

Americans want intelligent products, yes, but not independent of purpose. And the user determines the purpose, not the product itself.

Prussian Reforms

Much of what is Germany has its roots in the Prussian reforms of the early 19th Century. Napoleon‘s rapid defeat of Prussia in 1806/07 led to a deep-dive analysis of what went wrong, of what required reform. The Germans radically changed their agricultural system, their business laws, their military training, and most importantly their system of education.

Public eduction for all was introduced. The universities adopted the Humboldt education philosophy, which stressed free and independent inquiry and teaching. Knowledge quickly became the foundation of a modern Prussian economy and state, in many ways for contemporary Germany.

The Prussian Reforms also addressed state institutions. A system of professional civil servants and a bureaucracy was instituted. Bureaucracy then stood for efficiency and professionalism. The tax laws were simplified and made transparent. The state should function more efficiently and become a motor for positive change.

Germany today remains a rather bureaucratic country, with its scores of civil servants, rules and laws. It is a country where one simply cannot do as one pleases. From the perspective of other societies this is a limitation on freedom. Germans, though, view it as a sign of security and stability. Doing things the right way, punctuality, reliability, predictability, following the rules, bureaucracy. Germany has a 200 year history of these. They are who the Germans are as a people.

German efficiency

Germany is known for producing high-quality goods, but did you know that the Germans rarely work overtime and usually leave the office at 5PM?

This video cites four reasons for why the Germans are very efficient in what they do. It’s a bit simplified, but it their core the messages are accurate.

One clearly false statement is that for Germans the path to the goal is of secondary importance. In Germany the process used to reach a goal is seen as one side of the coin, with the other side being the outcome

The voice is computer-generated, but clear. The statements about Japanese business culture are not relevant for us, at least not yet on UC.

Wunderwerk

“Buy yourself a flatscreen tv!” was the advice given by one German graduate student to the other, after the latter struggled to carry his old television – Röhrenfernseher or cathode ray tube television – up several flights of stairs to his new, smallish, apartment. The old tv is, indeed, just that. Twenty years. It belonged to his grandmother, then to his parents.

This Wunderwerk deutscher Ingenieurskunst – wonder work of German engineering – a term once used ironically by a tv repairman – was built by a renowned German electronics company. Siemens. It continues to work flawlessly.

When the Röhrenfernseher – literally tube far see-er – some day gives up the ghost, it will be replaced by a flatscreen tv. But because the age-old German belief in not throwing anything out which still works applies to this truly durable German household appliance, it could see a few more schweißtreibende Umzüge – sweat-inducing apartment moves.

Crazy Germans!

“March to our own beat”

WordPress software powers 70 million websites. Just about half of the biggest blogs in the world run on WordPress. Automattic – owner of WordPress – is not your typical Silicon Valley Web start-up.

“We march a little to our own beat, and sometimes it’s out of sync with Silicon Valley — and that’s been to our advantage and disadvantage,” co-head Toni Schneider said.

“We don’t get sucked into the latest thing, while some of our competitors are distracted by the latest shiny object. The disadvantage is sometimes we’re against the grain of what everyone else is excited about, and people ask ‘Why don’t you have x yet?’ — but we go at our own pace.”

Another way that Automattic is unusual is its extraordinarily low rate of staff changeover. It currently has 106 employees — and it has only ever hired 118 people.

Automattic was founded by Matt Mullenweg. From Houston. An American with a German background.