“Headquarters in Germany wants us to run our business, but they don’t empower us to do so. Frustration in the U.S. is significant: ‘Why am I in this team if our German colleagues are always negative about new ideas we propose?’ We Americans collaborate differently than Germans. When tasked with a job, we’re allowed to go and dig into it, then come back with recommendations, as a team. Do the Germans respect us? What do they value? We never get anything back from them and when we do it’s always challenging questions. So we Americans sometimes ask ourselves: ‘Why are we here?’ How can we convince headquarters in Germany to truly empower us?”
Let go a bit of control
“There are a lot of benefits to doing product development regionally. But our colleagues in Germany are not open to that. Nothing is made in U.S. We buy internally from Asia or Europe. Why? The German fear of letting go. We had no other choice but to find a source in the U.S. Under the radar, of course. How can we convince our German colleagues to let go a bit of control?”
Micromanagement
“We Germans in the team like and respect our American team-lead. However, she wants to be involved in the details our work. She is micromanaging us and we don’t like it. We hear the same complaint from German colleagues in other teams led by an American. What’s going on here?”
Reluctant to make decisions
“Our American colleagues appear to be reluctant to make decisions on their own. Either they will not make a decision or if they do, they will do so only on the condition that they get the final sign-off from their boss. Why is this so?”
