Germany – Page 6 – understand-culture

Freie Universität and Fragestellung

Frage, question. Stellung from the verb stellen, to put or place. Fragestellung.

It was 1990. I was a graduated student at the Freie Universität in Berlin, then West Berlin. The Wall still existed. As did West and East Germany, the Soviet Union, and many other places, people and things which have since gone.

The course was on international relations. Cold War. No mid-term or final exam, instead a paper, Hausarbeit, typically 25-30 pages in length, requiring some fairly solid research. By mid-semester each of us had our topic.

Every third or fourth meeting the professor’s assistant – a brilliant Ph.D. candidate who then went on to receive his own professorship – addressed each of us one by one about the progress we were making.

„What is your Fragestellung?“

I recall very vividly the intensity of the meeting. He would ask time and again – politely, but relentlessly – “Wie lautet Ihre Fragestellung?”, what question we were putting, placing, asking, addressing. Again and again. Fragestellung.

It seemed as if we spent more time discussing our Fragestellung than getting into the topic. It fascinated more than bothered me. His intensity was true, honest, determined, most importantly well-meaning. He was pushing us to get clear, to be clear-minded.

Jack missed the point

“But wait, if it is true that German decision making processes strive to save resources – time, budgets, material, manpower – why do the Germans have compared to us (Americans) far more employees for the same work?”

This is a question often posed. Takeovers, mergers, joint ventures, cross-Atlantic projects. So many questions to be clarified. So many details. Germans and Americans. Who does what, how, when, why and with which resources?

An especially sensitive question is “who?”, who will do what work. Will jobs be reduced or increased? Or transferred from one side of the Atlantic to other? Skepticism, mistrust, wariness can spread through organizations. Interestingly, the Germans often ask the same question about the Americans: “Why do they need so many people to do the work we do with far fewer?”

Growth, job opportunities, wealth creation

Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, once referred to the German multinational company Siemens as an overblown employment agency. Perhaps that statement had some truth to it. Then, but not today. Siemens is trim, fit, focused and profitable.

Welch’s negative statement asks a deeper, more fundamental question: What is the purpose of an enterprise, of a company? For some it is to increase shareholder value. For others it is to serve its customers as effectively as possible. For others it is to take care of its employees, their families, their communities. Perhaps the correct answer is a combination of each.

It would be too simple to state that continental European companies are more socially conscious than companies in the Anglo-American economies. Growth, job opportunities, wealth creation also serve the needs of families and communities.

Maybe the difference is that Germans seldom refer to employees as resources. The term ‘Human Resources’ in German is Personal, analogous to Personnel, a term still used in many American companies. Personnel. Personal. From Latin personale, English personal.

Time. Budgets. Material. Those are resources. From the German perspective people are persons and not resources.

Father Kelly

Words. We use them to communicate. They are all that we have. When working across cultures we use English. American English. British English. And so on. But also the English spoken by non-native English speakers. In fact, that English is spoken by more people than those who speak native English.

1998. Federal elections in Germany. Chancellor Kohl recommended to a young Member of the Bundestag in his party to invite Father Kelly (name changed) to Bonn in order to talk about educational reform in the American university system.

Chancellor Kohl and Father Kelly had become acquaintances. Kelly, President of a major American and Catholic university located in Washington D.C., had done his Ph.D. in Theology in Germany. He was fluent in German. The Chancellor, also a Catholic, was very well-versed in both church history and theology. He was also quite well-connected with Rome.

University reform had become an important issue in German domestic politics. Federal elections were just around the corner. Father Kelly’s office gets a phone call. “Would the university president be willing to participate in a hearing in the Bundestag?”

The Bundestag is the German Parliament. And Parliament is analogous to Congress. Father Kelly’s chief of staff made the connection: a hearing in the Bundestag is like a hearing in the House or in the Senate. The Chancellor is inviting via the parliamentary group? “Yes, certainly. Father Kelly would be honored.”

Documents are sent back and forth per email. In English. It all seems to match up, but with a few question marks. A week before his scheduled flight to Bonn, it begins to occur to Father Kelly that the “hearing” he has been invited to as a very high-level subject area expert does not quite sound like one he would participate in across town in a Senate office building.

Words aren’t words

A phone call is made from Father Kelly’s office to the Bundestag seeking clarification without success. Father Kelly makes the flight from Washington to Bonn. The “hearing” in the Bundestag turns out to be a half-day meeting with a handful of young members of the Chancellor’s party who are focused on the issue and seeking expert input from across the Atlantic.

The “hearing” did not take place in the Bundestag. There was no large committee room. No panel of Bundestag Members from the various parties asking Father Kelly well-researched questions about how American universities approach the educational challenges of the future.

Nor did Kohl’s party schedule any other meetings for Father Kelly, neither with the press, nor with the presidents of nearby universities such as Bonn and Cologne, nor with German Secretary of Education or at least with his Undersecretary. Nothing.

Father Kelly flew from Washington to Bonn to speak with very junior members of the Bundestag for no more than half a day, then flew back to Washington. A terrible waste of time, and money, for Father Kelly and the university he is the president of.

Hearing isn’t hearing. Words aren’t words.

“Are the Germans holding back?“

Americans and Germans decide to integrate processes. Process harmonization is the term used. A common experience.

First look at and become familiar with the other side’s processes, procedures, etc. The Americans hand over their binders. Many of them. Long. Detailed. The Germans hand over theirs. Not as many. Not as long. Not as detailed. The Americans wonder where the rest is. “Are the Germans holding back? Not revealing? Playing politics?“

Another misperception. Not as many. Not as long. Not as detailed. In fact. The reason once revealed by a German engineer in the middle of the tension. “We do our best not to write down what we do and how we do it.” And why? “Because if it is written down in a process or a procedure, we are bound to doing it exactly in that way. We want to maintain our freedom and autonomy to choose situationally how we work.“

We Germans protect our knowledge

Is that the only reason? What about protecting your knowledge? He smiles discreetly. Not clever. Not sneaky. But conceding. “Yes. We Germans protect our knowledge as best we can. Not only companies, but also individual employees.” So, if it is documented well, then others can do it, also. Right? „Ja.”

There is a third reason. Who wants to take the time to document how an individual, a department, a division works? Drudgery. By the time all of those activities, all of that work, in all of its complexity has been documented, modifications have already taken place. It’s like painting San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge. Once you’ve completed the job, you have to begin all over again.