The Fall of 1981. My first time in Germany. Blaubeuren, a small town in Swabia. South of Stuttgart. I had signed up for a ten-week intensive course in German at the Goethe Institute. Grundstufe III (Base Level 3). My German back then weak, my memories of Blaubeuren today strong. I will never forget the very first impressions of Germany. The coolness and almost sweetness of the early morning air. The damp lawns and fields. The intense autumn colors of the foliage in a town nestled in the Swabian Alb. The schoolchildren hustling off to school.

The fascinating, yet mysterious, Benedictine Monastery from the 11th Century. The Blautopf (literally blue pot or kettle), a large natural pool of deeply dark water giving access to a complex network of waterways under the hills surrounding Blaubeuren, with its age-old legends of mystery. The Swabian dialect of the region, a version of German I could only rarely understand. The wonderful baked goods I enjoyed each and every day after lunch.

Important in Germany is not to stick out too much. Is it because they don’t want to make others envious? Or because one should demonstrate how to maintain balance, not get a “big head”? Or demonstrate a proper balance between individualism and belonging to a group, whose help one may need at any time?

Keep the subjective and personal to a minimum

Whether giving presentations in grammar school, in high school or at the university level Germans train, practice and stress over and over again objectivity: stick to the facts, no emotions, avoid gaps in your argumentation, be so comprehensive that hardly any questions are necessary in the question and answer part after your presentation.

You see it in German resumés (curriculum vitae). Factual. Unemotional. Objective. No holes in the educational and professional background. Anticipate all the questions a potential employer might ask. Subjective and personal information is kept to a bare minimum. Adding things such as interests or hobbies is a new trend, imported from the U.S. and not a part of the German logic.

The history of Germany, as well as the historical consciousness of the German people, continue to impress and attract me. Today, just as strongly as a quarter century ago. You need only to go into a bookstore in Germany. Their books are not only solid, well bound and have great covers. The Germans have a very special relationship to books. There are always many older and newer publications about history, about their history. For those Germans who want to know their history there will never be a shortage of opportunities.

Every city in Germany, large and small, has museums in which history, but not only theirs, is told, is kept alive and relevant. In my early years in Berlin and Bonn I was astounded by how many fascinating and well-made documentary films were shown on German television. There was never a day without at least one in the evening. The German language is worth learning if only to read their books, to visit their museums, and to watch their documentaries. Although not a documentary, but one with the look and feel of one, was Heimat.

It was the summer of 1992. I watched episode for episode of Heimat. My eyes were glued to the television, my mind racing to understand every word, to pick up on as many nuances as possible. What an opportunity for me to gain insight in Germany of that time period, between the world wars. Time and again I had to turn to my German wife to get the meaning of this or that word, for the dialogue was in the dialect of that region of Germany, the Hunsrück, along the Moselle River, between Trier and Koblenz. After every episode I was in a kind of trance, reflecting about what I had just taken in.

The history of another people

Then another time. I was in the car. Driving through Bonn. Evening. I turned on the radio. Deutschlandfunk. A book review was being read. It was about the immediate post-war years in then West Germany. The first sentences grabbed my attention. They flowed: complex, clear, rich, full of substance, critical, analytical, yet elegant. That feeling had come back, from when I was a student at Georgetown. History. German History. The history of another people. In another part of the world. And when I read the books by John Lukacs. Trance.

The reader continued. I was captured, drove further, but as if on a soft cloud just a few inches above the road. I think of the many war memorials in Germany. When I walk or ride my bicycle down the hill from the Venusberg in Bonn to the former government quarter on the Rhine, I pass through Kessenich where there is such a memorial. It’s round, cement, encircling a lovely oak tree. Six pillars about eight feet high. Plenty of space between them to step in and out. The tops of all eight crowned – or held together – by a cement ring providing the tree with space to stretch out its branches. Just below the top each of the eight the face in cement of a German soldier with the iconic German steel helmet from the World War I.

Chiseled into the pillars, from the top to just about the bottom, are the names of the men who died in the two world wars. Six pillars, three sides each. Longs lists. Names. Of men, and boys, from that part of Bonn, from the neighborhood. Yes, boys, many no older than seventeen or eighteen years old. Sad. Especially sad for me, as one of five Magee boys, to read the same last names. Meyer. Schmitz. Leyendecker. Two, three, sometimes four of the same last names. Brothers. Cousins. Imagine the deep, deep sadness of the mothers and fathers who saw their boys go off to war only to kill and be killed. 1914. 1915. 1916. 1917. 1918. Four long years for an entire continent. Then on the other sides of the pillars. 1939. 1940. 1941. 1942. 1943. 1944. 1945. Many of the same names. The sons and nephews of those fallen between 1914 and 1918. The Germans suffered, too.

Americans learn at a very early age, in grammar school, that intelligence is the ability to simplify complexity, to break it down into segments, in order to understand and deal with it. Americans are pragmatic. Knowledge has true value when you can do something with it. Knowledge is of no value if it is not actionable. In English composition in school young Americans learn to construct short, clear and logical sentences. This is the pattern, the foundation, for just about all forms of written communication.

I remember all too well an at first surprisingly – but earned – poor grade I received for a paper I wrote on the Prussian King, Frederick the Great. I was a student of History at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. It was the Fall semester of 1980, my senior year, the last of four years. It was a beautiful October day, warm and sunny. Indian Summer. I attended a two semester course on German History, the beginning of my fascination with Germany. I simply could not get enough of it, about Germany and the Germans, articles, books, including Gerhard Ritter’s classic.

Apparently my fascination and excitement got away from me. I produced a ten-page paper of complicated confusion – unstructured and unclear. My professor, Michael Foley, one of the greats at Georgetown, took a knife to it. Red all over it. His commentary at the end: “Magee, what kind of nonsense is this. You write like a German!” 

Professor Foley most surely did not mean that Germans can’t think, read or write. As an historian he was quite aware that the German people had produced many of the greatest historians of the modern era, and that the methods of historians originated in Germany. Instead he wanted to convey: “Dear John, first get clarity on what it is you wish to communicate. Then do so in simple, clear and straightforward sentences.”

Keep it simple, stupid!

And he was right! It is part of the American national cultural hard-wiring to believe (and say) that one has truly understood something if and when they can communicate it. “If you can’t explain it, you don’t understand it.” It’s an assumption which every American operates on: “If you can’t explain it to the average Joe, you don’t understand it.” It’s considered a high art form in the U.S. to be able to explain complex matters to the “man on the street.” It’s been said many times that Konrad Adenauer was a master of this art form.

I understood this about Adenauer many years later, during research on my Master‘s thesis about the disagreements between the Kennedy and Adenauer administrations during the Second Berlin Crisis, 1961-63. Through my studies I had become quite familiar with Chancellor Adenauer. His extraordinary ability to communicate with the “average Joe” was particularly effective in the early post-War years in West Germany. During one of the great national debates in the Bundestag about West German foreign policy Adenauer contrasts starkly his policy to that of the opposition Social Democrats by shouting: “Und wir wählen die Freiheit!” (We choose freedom!).

In the U.S. business context people speak of KISS: ‘Keep it simple, stupid!’ There, again, is the American logic about how to deal with complexity: “If you are truly intelligent, then you know how to make it simple, so that simple folks can understand it.” Perhaps this has to do with democracy and market economics. For what use is it to politicians to formulate complex arguments which are not understood by voters? Is it any different with companies marketing their products and services?

Story-telling activates the human imagination

This is also a reason why it is anecdotes, if well-told and -timed, are enormously persuasive in the American cultural context. For Americans anecdotes are empirical. They are reality experienced, the opposite of theory, which is often seen as abstract and unrealistic, separated from reality. An anecdote says: “I know what I’m talking about. I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. This is no theory, it’s reality!” Any American politician, for example, speaking in their legislative district or in the media about a difficult issue, such as the war in Iraq, will come across as especially convincing if they can claim to have visited that region.

Like aphorisms, anecdotes transport deeper-lying wisdom. Isn’t that what the Bible – Old and New Testament – does via one story after the other, communicate the deepest-felt, and therefore most complex, beliefs of a people, of Jews and Christians? Isn’t story-telling the highest, the most sophisticated, form of activating (speaking) to human imagination? Truly persuasive communicators in the U.S. plan very carefully when they draw on anecdotes. This is why we all listen so carefully when our grandparents tell their stories. They have the years of human experience.

Political advertisements of every kind must pass the objectivity test in Germany. The Germans expect substance and convincing arguments. And although the private and personal is seeping more and more into German politics, due to the influence of American politics, politicians in Germany are still identified directly with the stands they take on specific issues. They represent the political platforms of their respective parties.

Political party conventions in Germany are held once or twice a year. Their purpose is not to nominate candidates before elections, but instead to debate and formulate policy. At the conventions the stage is dominated by the party, with up to three or four rows of ten to fifteen seats per row occupied by the party elite. Until recently the speaker’s podium was to the side. And even though it has been moved to the center, the thirty to fifty colleagues occupying the stage send a clear signal: “Sure, we have different speakers during the convention. But make no mistake, the party comes first, the individuals politicians and office-holders come second!”

In the summer of 1996, while a political adviser to the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group in Bonn, I attended the Republican National Convention in San Diego. My job was to accompany and assist Peter Hintze (then Secretary General of the CDU), Jürgen Chrobog (then German ambassador to the U.S.) and Ruprecht Polenz (then Member of the Foreign Relations Committee). Bob Dole and Jack Kemp were nominated, then in the general election beaten badly by Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

“Blow by blow” 

Along with meetings with leading Republicans, Peter Hintze was especially interested in observing the details of the convention. Part of his job was organizing and preparing the CDU conventions for Chancellor Helmut Kohl. It is well known that American party conventions serve the primary purpose of presenting to voters a high level of unity, in terms of the “ticket” and the substance of the party’s platform. Political debate does not take place, and certainly not in full view of the American public. Germany is different. The conventions are televised from start to finish. And the Germans debate, openly, directly, harshly. The German public can follow it “blow by blow” by television or radio.

The great sensation of that 1996 Republican National Convention was Colin Powell’s speech. Many had hoped that he would be their party’s candidate. Immediately after his 1992 election, Clinton asked Powell to be his Secretary of State, hoping to prevent a Powell-candidacy four years later. Powell had declined respectfully. The arena in San Diego, fifteen thousand strong, exploded in applause when General Powell walked on stage, in civilian clothes, and proceeded to speak directly to the hearts and minds of the American people. From his heart and with great intensity.

Like any and every truly persuasive speaker in the American context Powell used anecdotes, figures of speech and several brief, but very personal stories to convey his message. He wanted to move the people emotionally. Hintze and Chrobog turned to me time and again asking for an explanation of these stories. “Was meint er damit?” (What does he mean? What is he trying to say?) The atmosphere in the convention center was electrifying.

Sitting behind the two Germans, and due to the noise level, which had even surprised me, I had to stick my head forward between theirs and literally scream my responses to their questions. It was clear to all three Germans – Hintze, Chrobog, Polenz – that the convention, and General Powell’s speech, were all about emotions.

It was in the summer. A three-day seminar in Gelsenkirchen. A German multinational company. Design engineers. Germans and Americans. Capable people. Willing people. But working in an atmosphere of collaboration and competition.

I had never been to Gelsenkirchen. I wasn’t very familiar with the Ruhr Area at all. What a historically important area of Germany! Its industrialization, its modernity, is unimaginable without Ruhr coal and steel. Americans learn about the Ruhr Area in documentary films about the Second World War, about how the Western Allies moved across the Rhine to encircle the Ruhr, “the industrial heartland of Germany.”

If you’re an American from a large city you can imagine. If you’re from Pittsburgh or from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania or from a coal and steel region in Ohio you can imagine the Ruhr Area even better. The Ruhr areas of the U.S., with countless immigrant families working in the mines and factories. Families from Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia and other European and Eastern European countries. The same kinds of families reside in Germany’s Ruhr.

Until today I’m not sure which I enjoyed more, the seminar or the tour we did at the end of its first day. Summer days in Germany are long, much longer than on the East Coast of the U.S. where I grew up. Day one of the seminar. 6 p.m. we were finished. It had been a long day.

I push and pull the participants along as firmly or softly as need be. I am demanding. Think, reflect, discuss, debate, and decide. These seminars are not intellectual exercises. They’re concrete, specific, work-relevant. Decisions are made, rules of engagement hammered out. Except for during the breaks, there is not a moment to daydream or get distracted. At the end of each day everyone, including me, is exhausted.

Take care of and honor their history.

The tour was exhilarating. NRW (Northrheine Westphalia, the state Gelsenkirchen is located in), Germany as a country, and the Germans as a people take care of and honor their history. Most of the coal mines have been closed. Coal is not NRW’s future. They know that. But they keep their history alive. We hopped on rented bicycles. Eighteen of us. Rode a little over half an hour through fields, wooded areas, over a stream.

The air had begun to cool. We rode to one of the coal mines which had been transformed into a museum. We hopped off our bikes, listened to a short, but fascinating talk given by our tour guide, then stepped into the time machine. On the one side I am right in the thick of things, in the relations between my people (Americans) and the people whose language, history, culture and way of life I am living and studying.

I mean literally the relations, those things which are very personal. How Americans and Germans make and follow through on agreements, how they set up and manage organizations, how they lead and wish to be led, how they try to get out of their own skin in order to get into the skin of their colleagues from the other side of the Atlantic.

Our history. Not past. Not over.

Cooperation means to understand the other perspective as clearly as possible, to stand in the other person‘s shoes. We all know how difficult that is. And how disconcerting it can be, especially if and when we realize that the other perspective is clearer, more true, than our own. For that realization can have real consequences, and not always positive for one’s own self.

It can be difficult, hard, painful. My job is to show them the way and to accompany them. Not as if I had all the answers. I don’t. Not as if I was somehow disconnected, not involved. I sense and live the intensity and complexity just as much as my clients do. I show the way and accompany because I’ve been living the challenges and complexities for many years, and am convinced that Germans and Americans can achieve more together, not only as engineers (back then in Gelsenkirchen), but as human beings.

So, on the one side I am right in the thick of things in the relations. On the other side, our tour, the time machine, which takes us back in time, helps us to understand who we are and how we’ve come to be who we are. This is our past, our history. And it is not past. It is not over.

Breadth and depth means gathering, analyzing and presenting alot of information. The semester papers at the Freie Universität Berlin were really long. One submitted by a graduate student was over eight-five pages! 

The longest one I had ever written at Georgetown University was twenty, which back in 1980 was not considered short. My German Master’s thesis was one-hundred and twenty. Some doctoral theses in Germany go well beyond five-hundred pages. An American Ph.D. advisor would most likely not even accept such a tome.

It’s not much different in German print media. Even if you were to remove the advertising, weekly magazines here are very long. Who has the time to read all of that material? Over a five-year period I read Die ZEIT. A first-class weekly newspaper on politics, business, culture, and the arts. 

But the length of the articles was simply too much. To Americans the Germans are simply too long-winded. TV and radio segments are long and detailed. The interactions among guests on talk shows can be painfully long, differentiating, minute. Yes, German books are excellent. But it would be equally excellent to leave out all irrelevant content.

Everyday interactions among the people are not much different. If you get lost in an American city and ask a stranger for directions, the response is typically brief. Often the person gives practical and effective advice: “Go three blocks down, turn right, cross over Main Street, then ask another person how to continue from there.” 

That’s perfect! No need to listen to a long-winded speech. Nor to remember it. Saves time. Saves brain-power. You simply ask the next person a few minutes later. It also reduces the risk of mistakes. Germans are very helpful. But when they give long, detailed answers to relatively simple questions, I think: “My goodness, am I the stupid one or does this perfectly nice person not consider what a guy from out of town can possible remember?”

Rigor means mastering a craft, physically and mentally

If the approach taken is systematic – in the sense of “everything is connected to everything else” – then there is no alternative to gathering information in breadth and depth, in order to analyze all of the decision-making possibilities.

And all of this information should be from objective sources. Objectivity. This is another roter Faden (literally red thread, or common theme) in German thinking. A red thread in the topics Persuasion, Leadership, Process Philosophy and Conflict Resolution. 

My impression is that Germans see information primarily as data. And data should be scientific. Measurable, quantifiable, independent of intuition. To gather information in depth and breadth means to gather facts in depth and breadth.

And, in order to analyze those facts in a competent way you need the right analytical tools. Another area of contention between Germans and Americans in their collaboration. For tools are the manifestation of how people, disciplines (i.e. engineering, marketing), companies, and cultures, fundamentally think. 

You can get a sense of the work performed by a carpenter, a machine-tool maker, a baker, an architect, of a thinker of any kind, by looking at their tools. In Germany rigor is a key to quality and to success. Quality has to do with processes. And processes have to do with tools. Many tools. And they are fine, as in precise. Precision. For all processes are work processes. And work is supported by physical and mental tools. Rigor, therefore, means mastering a craft, physically and mentally.