The Social Network (2010). Chronicling the creation of Facebook, this film shows Mark Zuckerberg’s shifting relationships and agreements with co-founders and early partners. The story is marked by frequent renegotiation, legal disputes, and Zuckerberg’s readiness to change or exit agreements as the business evolves, reflecting the American logic of flexibility and ongoing negotiation.
as circumstances change
Suits. This legal drama centers on contract negotiations, mergers, and business deals. Characters are in constant communication, often renegotiating or exiting agreements as circumstances change. The show highlights how American business culture values strategic flexibility and clear, actionable terms over deep contextual or relational commitments.
External Factors
Follow-up is the most common – and commonly accepted – form of checking a colleague’s reliability. In many cases, however, external factors determine whether an agreement can be fulfilled precisely. The parties to the agreement may have little to no influence on them.
The higher level agreement with the customer – whether internal or external – may have changed. This, in turn, changes all related activities down into the organization. Budgets and or resources can change, affecting what is possible. Management can alter priorities at short notice. Then there are factors unrelated to business: a colleague might become ill.
Follow-up allows the agreement parties to react to change. The faster, the better.
Conditional Yes
Commitments are, by definition, conditional due to factors beyond the control of the parties to an agreement. Next-level management may change their priorities. The customer could modify their requirements. Available resources – people, time, budgets – are often redeployed on short notice.
Caveat: is a warning or proviso of specific stipulations, conditions or limitations. In law, a caveat is a notice that certain actions may not be taken without informing the person who gave the notice. “Caveat” originates in the mid 16th century and is derived from Latin, literally from “let a person beware.”
Contingency: Event (as an emergency that may, but is not certain to occur); trying to provide for every contingency; something liable to happen as an adjunct to or result of something else. From Latin contingent-, contingens: to have contact with, befall, from com- + tangere to touch; first Known Use: 14th century.
Litigation
Given their litigation-heavy culture, it may seem ironic that Americans are so quick to say yes to an agreement. After all, saying yes and then not following through should make it easier for the one party to file a lawsuit.
However, the reality is the opposite. By having a culturally soft yes Americans make it more difficult for others to successfully sue them. In the U.S. it takes far more than a simple yes to indicate an oral agreement, which offers Americans protection from legal claims.
Gianni vs. Russell Supreme Court of Pennsylvania 1924 – Gianni, who owned a small store, claimed that his landlord told him that he could have the exclusive right to sell drinks in the building.
The landlord then rented another space in the building to a company that sold drinks, and Gianni attempted to sue. However, because Gianni had entered into a written lease, and there was no mention of this right in the lease, the oral contract was said to be nonexistent.
Power Entertainment Inc. v. National Football League Properties, Inc., United States Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit, 1998 – the plaintiff and defendant orally agreed that Power Entertainment would take over a licensing agreement between the NFL Properties and another company in exchange for Power Entertainment assuming the $800,000 debt between the two original companies. However, after the debt was paid, NFL Properties did not transfer the license, and the oral contract was found to be invalid.
Additionally, oral agreements in the US are sometimes called handshake deals. Although an actual handshake isn’t necessary to make the agreement binding, this still shows that it takes more than a ‘yes’ to enter into an agreement.
Iteration
The term iteration has become common within American companies: to communicate several or many communications, back and forth, between two or more parties, in which information is exchanged, decisions made, activities (action items or more simply actions) agreed to.
Merriam-Webster online defines iteration as a procedure in which repetition of a sequence of operations yields results successively closer to a desired result.
Americans iterate, some intensely so. It allows them to maintain flexibility, to ensure information flow, to discriminate between what is important and unimportant, to reduce risk. Like any strength, however, it can be inflationary: too much communication, too little action.
Instead of front-loading an agreement with in-depth discussion about the details, Americans iterate.
Need-to-know
In the Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms of the U.S. Dept. of Defense need-to-know is a criterion used in security procedures. It requires the custodians of classified information to establish, prior to disclosure, that the intended recipient indeed must have access to the information in order to perform his or her official duties.
Streaming: An act or instance of flowing; relating to or being the transfer of data (as audio or video material) in a continuous stream specifically for immediate processing or playback; first known usage 1980; online video streaming such as Megaupload, Pirate Bay; audio streaming such as Grooveshark, Pandora and Sogza.
The American parties to an agreement are in constant communication with each other, streaming relevant information as they receive it. There is no need to front-load the agreement with the details.
One of the most critical success factors in the U.S. business is speed. Parties to an agreement are more interested in getting started on carrying out an agreement than in defining and discussing its details.
Program Updates
The earliest practical form of programming is generally considered to have been done by Joseph Jaquard in France in 1804. Jaquard designed a loom that would perform certain tasks when the appropriate punched cards were fed through a reading device.
Since 1804, programming has become much more commonplace, and new computer programs are produced every day. In order to keep up with the competition, most software companies will begin selling programs long before they’re perfect, only to release updates and newer versions as the programmers correct flaws and add new features.
Anyone who waits until their program is perfect to market it will find that their program is obsolete when it finally goes on sale.
Yes Men
Yes-man: a person who agrees with everything that is said; especially one who endorses or supports without criticism every opinion or proposal of an associate or superior. First known use in 1912 by Freeman Tilden in Century Magazine.
In 1993, the American Economic Association published an article demonstrating how subjective performance evaluations, one of the popular methods of giving employees feedback and determining such things as pay raises, incentivized employees to become Yes Men.
The article also argued that because of the tendency to create Yes Men, these programs should be avoided. Nevertheless, subjective performance evaluations are still commonly used in American businesses. In fact, Yes Men are so common in American culture that in 2008 Warner Brothers released the British/American film Yes Man.
This film follows the life of Carl Allen, a very negative person who decides to change his life by answering “Yes!” to every opportunity, request, or invitation that presents itself to him, something which, despite a few mishaps, ultimately increases the quality of Allen’s life.