Maybe I, as an American, like in any culture, have blinders on. Maybe, despite after more than twenty-five years in Germany, I still have a national-cultural blindspot.

Perhaps we in the U.S. are just as interested in norms and standards as in Germany. We seek them out, want them, want to force them onto reality, even onto other people. But I don’t think we do. 

Even if so, not as much as the Germans do. Perhaps the “rich and powerful” in the U.S. force their norms and standards on the “common people” in such a clever way that they don’t even notice it.

I do notice, however, time and again, in discussions with many Americans how much they resist gaining distance, separating themselves from a given situation, in order to get abstract, to recognize patterns, deeper lying drivers, even principles which are at play. 

They react to my questions as if they did not quite understand them, or never considered such questions, or wonder why in the world I would even ask them.

At first I thought “Ok, they simply don’t understand me intellectually” or “They clearly have never thought about these things before” or “Hmm, they have so little experience working with another culture that they have never made the contrast.” 

Maybe it’s something else. Maybe the Americans I have been speaking to think: “What strange questions. So theoretical. So far away from the situation on the ground, from reality.”

I think Americans quickly and rather matter of fact say to themselves – or to me – “Deductive. Inductive. Who cares? We’re in business to make money. And we do that by meeting the needs of our customers.”

They are saying in order words, our processes – how we do the work – aren’t deduced vertically from some principles. They are rooted in customer needs, in the free market, in competition with other companies. 

Everything we do – the what and the how – is oriented on our customers. The overarching fact – the reality of things – is the dynamic between customer and supplier. The market – all of those interactions – has the say, and not some principles floating up in the clouds.

I remain standing ten or fifteen minutes. I imagine as best I can a summer day back during one of those years. What was life like in any of the houses, the homes, in that neighborhood? Just around the corner is the Karthäuserplatz, a small square, where I lived from 1991-95. In a three-room apartment on the third floor. 

On the first two floors lived three sisters, all in their 80’s, never married. Born in the early 1910’s they would remember the last years of the First World War, and most certainly all too well the entire Second World War. I imagine what it was like for them. Did they have brothers? Did those men/boys fight, kill, die? Catholics in the German Rhineland.

I imagine, see the pictures move by in my mind‘s eye. Three brothers. Second World War. Wehrmacht. The one dies in the early days of the invasion of Poland in September 1939. The second survives the 1944 Ardennenoffensive – what Americans call the Battle of the Bulge – only to then die in Vienna in early 1945, not long before the end of the war. 

The third brother survives the war, including several years as a prisoner in Russia. Their mother (the father had died in 1918 on the Western Front of WWI) and the three sisters pick him up one summer day in 1949 upon his arrival in Bonn by train via Berlin. Within a year and a half he would die of gangrene.

I am fifty-five years old. All of my brothers – two older, two younger – are still alive. None of us has killed or been killed. My son, Daniel, was born in May 1998. His mother is German. He is a German-American boy, more German than American. A school project in History. The fourth grade. 

The children are asked to find in Bonn the evidence, indications, the signs that once, many centuries ago, the Romans had lived in what became Bonn. He and his mother take a long walking tour. Bonn is a small town. Daniel is excited. He soaks it all in. My son, by boy, is growing up in Germany. He is learning to think historically. He is learning to understand his present. He is being prepared to deal with the future.

So many people on the German side. Especially in central functions. Who have so much time on their hands. Producing so many powerpoint presentations. Conduct so many long-winded discussions. Going into such great detail.

The Americans call them bureaucrats, who create processes, in order to justify their jobs in the company. “Make work.” German bureaucracy is there, say Americans, “to feed the village.”

Germans and Americans come together to discuss their collaboration, including to discuss their processes. They don’t know each other, are wary of each other, want to defend and protect their work, how they work, demonstrate that their processes are effective.

In many cases – perhaps most – people are convinced that their processes are good, and that they live them. But many Americans have a cliché-view of the Germans. They strike the table with their fist and say: „We will do it this way and not that way!“ And German behavior can at times appear to support that cliché.

The truth is, German colleagues are also convinced that their approaches work. And why not? Unfortunately, many of them are not proficient enough in English, and they, too, are unsure of themselves, perhaps feel the need to force their point across, strongly, vehemently. I don’t have a problem with that. But, many Americans do: „totally inflexible Germans with their inflexible German processes.“

In addition to these tensions you have the fact that Germans tend not to document their processes. Often they refuse to do so. When they do document, however, the formulation is usually general, with little detail.

Why? For one, the written word in the German culture has a high degree of binding character. Germans are very reluctant to tie their hands via detailed processes and procedures which then obligate them to do their work in specific ways. Another reason is that many Germans don’t want to share their knowhow. They don’t want it to be transferrable.

This is not so much about “information is power”, but far more about job-security. And then, of course, they see very little value in taking the time to carefully and clearly write things down. Their thinking is: Institutional knowledge is there. Folks know what they are supposed to do, when, how and why.

And, Germans develop competences differently than Americans. First learn, then do. They work in specific areas for a longer period of time, developing deep-dive knowledge and experience. And they get a sense for the what other departments close to theirs do. 

Depth and breadth. Continuity and consistency. Kaminaufstieg – move up within the smokestack or the silo – is the term they use. They build expertise, become experts. And experts, Germans would say, don’t need document how the work is done. They have it in their heads.

Documented or not documented, either way it remains a mystery to Americans when Germans “stick to the letter of the law” (process discipline) and when they permit themselves to ignore the process (process deviation). 

On the one side stubborn, dogmatic Germans and their inflexible processes. On the other, little to no process documentation, and doing things they way they simply want to. And when they do deviate from the process they may not even bother informing their boss. Very confusing.

An attempt to cure all ills, is the impression many Americans get of German processes. From their perspective, Germans try to apply processes in areas where only common sense and good judgement work. „Processes can‘t substitute for people“ is a common statement one hears from Americans in German companies. Much of what people in companies do simply cannot be objectified. Continuous process modification, from the American perspective, produces far more internal agitation than it does any kind of value.

Frustration was high, very high. It was about the bid process. A German multinational with a large presence in the United States. Plant construction. Big plants. Complex. Customers in a multitude of countries. The bid process, too, is complex. All of the key topics come together: market, customers, product portfolio, price, competition, etc. And the key disciplines come together: engineering, supply chain, project management, finance, risk, etc.

An offering is formulated. If they get the contract, the project runs over several years. Tremendous depth of detail. If the complexity is not grasped, nothing but problems during the entire project. Lose a lot of money. If the complexity is understood, the project is executable. Earn lots of money.

No good decision without a good decision making process

There is a process for bidding on projects. The problem is, the processes on either side of the Atlantic look different. From my point of view, no surprise. Americans and Germans have different approaches to the topics, to the disciplines. At its core, the bid process is a decision making process. And as such it is only to a certain degree technical. The baseline analysis is done. Engineers. Engineering methods. IT tools. The results: numbers. Processes are critical here. Science does its work.

But after that it‘s all about judgement. Experience, intuition, common sense. Everything comes together in the big meeting. The boss with her direct reports, the heads of the disciplines. Interdisciplinary, as they say. They discuss intensely, long, often in great detail, open, focused. Key parameters are looked at from every possible angle. The boss drills down with her questions. The experts respond to the best of their ability, and based on their calculations.

Far more than a brainstorm, they look for ways to handle the tough questions. Back and forth, up and around, combine, separate. More art than science. Bids are formulated not generated. The big meeting is not a factory. No place for a process here. The task is far too complex.

And so it went for years, actually generations. It‘s how Americans make decisions. The big meeting. I had heard about it. Then I was allowed to sit in, like a fly on the wall. German headquarters wanted to change the bidding process. Make it more German. Process harmonization. The Americans were not amused. The big meeting.

It was fascinating. It went as I had anticipated. I felt at home, understood its inner logic. The German colleagues do it differently, much differently. They move along a process, from beginning to end. No big meeting. The topics are addressed in a crisp, brief, focused manner, like knocking off the topics in a routine meeting. Not all that much interaction among the participants. Everything based on facts and analysis, and the process. Objectified in the spirit of: „Good decisions are the result of good decision making processes.“

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.

„So macht man das nicht“ – that’s not the way one does that. „Wir machen es nicht so“ – that’s not the way we do it. „Das ist nicht richtig so“ – that’s not right. „Das ist falsch, wie Sie es machen“ – you’re doing that wrong. „Ach, Sie gehen so amerikanisch vor“ – ach, you’re taking such an American approach. These sentences I’ve heard many times. Of course, it could have been that I did most things in the wrong way.

So many times I have had the impression that in the German context there is the right way to do something and the wrong way. Implied in such thinking is that there is only one truly right way. All other ways are wrong.

I don’t understand much philosophy, but my impression is that Germans develop their ways of doing things deductively, from generally accepted principles. Kant, Hegel, and all of those great German philosophers, wanted to explain human existence – break the code, so to speak – so that people (individuals) know what to think and what to do.

They put together systems which are incredibly complex, all-encompassing, which explain all sorts of human interactions and interconnections. Rather German: complicated, hardly understandable, nonetheless intricate, impressive, somehow wonderful. Yet, more than somewhat abstract, distanced from everyday experience.

Not egotistical, much more collectivistic

The German “that’s not how one does it” comes from above, from on high, not dictated downwards, but more as if it were simply a given, based on some irrefutable logic. The tone of the statement is always as if there was really nothing, or at the most very little, to discuss. 

Not “I want it done in this way” or “I know best how this should be done.” Not stubborness, obstinance or ignorance or egotism. Those are not German character traits. Quite the contrary the Germans are very open-minded people in many ways. Ignorant? No chance, instead intelligent, well-informed, intellectually very curious. And not egotistical, instead far more collectivistic.

I cannot explain it. It’s puzzling, enigmatic, mysterious. Perhaps Germans think that in any given situation there can be only one truly optimal way to do something, and therefore „bevor ich Deinen Weg ernsthaft in Betracht ziehe, sage ich, unser Weg ist der richtige, oder eher der richtige” – before I seriously consider your approach, I say that our approach is the right one, or more or less the right one.

Many Germans note, and sometimes complain, that Americans don‘t seem to take internal processes seriously enough. They‘re surprised to discover that for many Americans processes simply aren‘t a high priority. Americans „wurschteln vor sich hin“, which loosely translates into they „get the job done some way or another.“ The processes they do follow are neither well thought out, nor consistent nor particularly efficient.

From the German perspective, processes in the American business context are not used effectively enough as a management instrument. They wonder how complex companies can be managed if not with the help of processes.

A German engineer was in the U.S. as a long-term delegate. A capable guy, from Berlin, intelligent, focused, big fan of the Berlin soccer club Hertha BSC. And an open, honest person. We met just by coincidence. I was in town doing management training.

I asked how he was doing, what his first impressions were. He had been in the U.S. less than six months. „The processes here are a catastrophe. There really aren‘t any. A lot has been documented. The book cases are full of binders about processes and procedures. But they aren‘t lived in a consistent way. We‘re trying to clean it all up, put some system to it.“

Not results, but value of results

Such statements aren‘t unique. Germans sense time and again that Americans just don‘t put enough effort into reflecting on how they do the work. Germans often ask, but don‘t get a clear, black and white answer. Americans, from their German point of view, haven‘t mastered their craft. They don‘t reflect and analyze enough.

I think back on my initial sales calls within a very large German global company. It was in 2000, after having transitioned from the German Bundestag back into the business world. Sitting across from German managers I‘m asked to describe exactly what I do, and most importantly, how I do it.

Less so about the final results or the value of those results, more about: „Herr Magee, how do you proceed? What‘s the process step-by-step? Background interviews. Workshop design. Workshop execution. What are the topics? How do you address them? In what sequence? Why?“ Question after question.

What via How

The focus was on my method, on my work process. The discussions were exhausting, penetrating, analytical. The Germans gave very little feedback. But it wasn‘t uncomfortable or unfriendly. It was polite, respectful, almost caring about getting it right. The Germans want to do the right thing. Stated another way, do the thing in the right way.

Perhaps it had to do with the fact that my approach is for many new, different, a bit foreign. Perhaps in order to put my approach to work, folks need to first understand it, the what and the why.

It’s a cliché that Germans are inflexible, that their processes are inflexible. I, too, believed that for many years. This is a complex topic. It depends on the process, of course, and on the particular step within a process. In some cases, Germans, like any other culture, would say: “At this stage of the process stick to the letter of the law. There is little to no room for interpretation.” In other cases, they would say: “Here we have room to interpret, to make our own decision based on the particulars of the situation.“

Now, when the process is documented in black and white, and in detail, it is in the German culture clear that one needs to stick to the process. When, however, it is generally formulated, is not in detail, then it signals that one has the flexibility to interpret. This has to do with the differences between the written and the spoken word in the German context. The written word has a very high level of binding character. The longer, the more detailed, the more restrictive, the less flexible. And the opposite. The shorter, the less detailed, the more flexible. But this is a topic for another day.

2005. I was on a bus from the center of town in Bonn headed home up on the Venusberg. After about twenty minutes we arrived at my stop. I went to the front of the bus and got off. Since more passengers were getting off and on I knew that the bus had a minute or so before it would continue on. So instead of walking twenty feet along the sidewalk to cross the street where the pedestrian crossing was indicated by the wide white stripes, I decided to save a few seconds by walking directly in front of the bus, leaning around it where the driver was sitting in order to see if any cars were coming.

Responsible, according to the German logic

Normally, cars are not allowed to drive around a bus while it is still loading or unloading passengers. Just to be safe, though, I looked. A car was just beginning to maneuver around the bus. Plenty of time for me to scoot across the street with my long legs. I decided to do it. Barely across the street, I heard a very loud screech. The car had come to a very sudden stop, hitting the brakes hard. I pivoted around immediately only to see a young boy, no older than seven or eight years old, standing just in front of that car, trembling, with no more than a foot or two separating them. He then scurried across the street onto the sidewalk.

Had the driver not reacted so quickly, chances are that boy either would not be with us today, or would be in a wheelchair, or worse. It shook me to the core. Time and again, over the years since, I recall that moment. I shudder. According to the German logic – social logic – I was partly responsible for that boy’s behavior, for choosing to cross the street directly in front of the bus and not at the official crossing point. Now, I am not sure if I would have been legally responsible, had he been hit by the car, but that is not the message here.

German thinking goes like this: “You are an adult. You know the rules. There are good reasons why we have official crossing points, and why they are marked with wide white stripes. So that drivers of cars, buses and trucks know to be careful at those points. And so that pedestrians cross at those points and not simply wherever they want. We want to minimize accidents between vehicles and human beings, especially children. So be a role model for children. If you pass at those official points, that will reinforce what they have been taught by their parents, teachers and the crossing guards who volunteer in the mornings and afternoons near the Kindergartens and elementary schools. If you do not stick to the rules, they will be tempted to do the same, possibly with tragic results.“

“They obey the rules no matter what.“

The American in me thinks that children should be responsible for themselves. Their parents, in the end, have to teach them good judgement, and not too simply do what others do. “Am I responsible for the actions of children of other people?” This, too, is certainly a topic for another day. It’s an important one, but far too complex for this story.

Little red man. Little green man. Many of us non-Germans are familiar with the traffic lights in Germany. The cars look for red, yellow, green. Pedestrians crossing streets look for the red man and the green man. The red man signals: “Don’t cross the street. You might come into contact with a car, bus or truck, and it won’t be terribly pleasant.” The green man signals: “Ok, you’re good. Cross the street.“

Many of us have stood at a street-crossing looking at that little red man and at the same time seeing no car, bus or truck far and wide. We look around and notice that the Germans are waiting, many stiff, still, often a grim look on their face. We, at least we Americans, wonder what in the world are they waiting for. Why aren’t they crossing the street? No cars coming. Many of us conclude: “Oh, they’re Germans. They obey the rules no matter what. How ridiculous.“

“Do you think you’re someone special?“

2005. Up until then, after seventeen years in Germany and I’d say that at I had received a comment barked out at me least a dozen times when I crossed the street while that little red man was still shining bright. “Hey you idiot, are you color blind?” or “Do you think you’re someone special?” or “Don’t you see that there are children standing here?“

That last comment is the key one, it goes to the heart of German social logic. For many years, when the target of such barks, I thought: “Mind your own business. Get a life. Get a job. Who made you a policeman?” In some instances I barked such things back, but in a more colorful language. “Those arrogant, busybody, know-it-all Germans”, I thought, “obeying silly rules like mindless slaves.”

Until that day. That day when a boy of seven was almost struck by a multi-ton chunk of steel, on sleek wheels of rubber gripping the concrete, with the power of well over a hundred horses, and often an impatient driver at the wheel. It was on that day that I understood why Germans in some cases are very inflexible.

2005. My son, Daniel, was also seven years old. Average height. Light as a feather. Tender. His grammar school was around the corner from our house. He needed not cross the street when walking from home to school and back. On another day, in another part of Bonn, however, that seven year old boy could have been mine. And that car could have been another car. Not as quick to stop.

The intense German focus on processes unsettles Americans time and again. It limits, cramps their flexibility. In the U.S. processes are seldom viewed as an effective alternative to agility, speed, creativity. Americans believe that the core skills of good management cannot be forced into processes, cannot be performed by processes. For them processes are tools which offer support.

In my early years here in Germany as an American I was put on the defensive when asked about my processes, my approach, how I do my work. Or at least I felt defensive, perhaps because I was not prepared to respond.

Then I went into the opposite direction. When asked about my work and its value for my customers, I would go into great detail about how I do the work, my thought and work processes, and spend too little time explaining the value of it all.

Intensity bangs into bafflement

My first website did little more than simply show my four-step process, in the sense of: „Do you want to know who I am, what I do, what value it could have for you and your company? Just take a look at my methodology.“ As you can imagine, the site did not attract much attention.

Well, you can also imagine what happens when Germans and Americans come together to discuss internal work processes. Intensity bangs into bafflement. Precise questions get imprecise answers. Impatience meets impatience. Each side shaking their heads about the other.

We Americans see long, detailed discussions about processes as a form of German navel-gazing. It‘s all well and good to do some thinking about the how, every now and then, but not too often, and certainly not for too long. The more you spend analyzing internal things, the more quickly you distance yourself from external things, such as the market, customers and their needs, from reality.

Proud but not arrogant

It was a discussion I had with Egon in the summer of 1991. In Bonn. He was married to a classmate of my German wife. Very intelligent guy. Mathematician in the Max Planck Institute. Friendly, courteous, sensitive, analytical. His wife, a linguist, outgoing, lively, funny.

Our conversations were always fascinating. Serious topics. Intellectual substance. We were eating in an Italian restaurant. A warm day with a lovely breeze wafting up from the Rhine River. The windows of the restaurant wide open. The long, black container boats on the Rhine, but also the private boats darting about, all waving their large German flags, black red gold. Germany had become reunited in October the year before. For a brief moment the Germans felt they could show feel, and show, patriotism.

Poets and thinkers

In the summer, especially in the early hours when the sun shines, Bonn has an almost Mediterranean flair. The air is clear, fresh, sweet. The water‘s surface reflects the rays of the sun in a soft, inviting way. If you look across the Rhine into the distance, starting to the North, then pan to the East, then South, you can see the transition from the Lower Rhine (flatland) to the Middle Rhine, to the Seven Mountains, pointing to the south, where the Rhine snakes to and through the towns of Koblenz, Mainz, into the Palatinate, on to Northern Baden, where the river becomes the border between Germany and France.

We discussed German history. I should have noted down what Egon had said. Only some of the details can I recall. But his thesis seemed more than plausible. Time and again over the years the conversation came back to me.

The Germans, Egon said, were in their history always a bit boxed in, geographically, and politically. They turned inward. The land of Dichter und Denker, of poets and thinkers. A land of people who reflect. Whereas the British, French, Dutch, Spanish and the Portugese looked, and went, outward.

They are Seevölker, literally sea peoples, maritime nations. They had overseas colonies, traded across the oceans, became naval powers. Many of their finest, the most talented, looked outward, went out, chased adventure and ventures outside of their countries. In Germany, the best looked inward, worked inward, stayed within.

Recently I interviewed an American process expert working in a global German company with a very significant presence in the U.S. He and his colleagues have been working for quite some time to integrate the processes on both sides of the Atlantic.

The term used is „harmonisieren“ or „harmonize“, which for many Americans had become the equivalent of a four-letter word. They have made little progress. Folks continue to disagree. When I asked about whether American processes were the result of deductive or inductive thinking, he looked at me as if saying: „What kind of question is that? Are we in an Introductin to Philosophy class at some university?“

Instead he said, he does his best to remain in close contact with his colleagues who make the business go: their world, problems, effects, observing, asking questions, listening carefully. He then reflects, analyzes, suggests, discusses. He only recommends changes to processes, especially to the key ones, if they are based on a solid understanding of how the work is done, on reality, after having been „on the ground“ with the people who use the processes.

Abstraction as a requirement for understanding

He collaborates very closely with the people whose work he is analyzing. Process experts, he says, have to understand the business, the people involved, and the workflow before they can engage in a discussion about whether a process can and should be modified.

As an American I understand this. But, I think, is it not essential to then separate yourself from that which you have observed and studied, in order to truly understand it? Isn‘t abstraction a requirement for understanding?

Could it be that the German process experts often forget to inform their American colleagues that they, too, get into the details of the processes they review? Are they misperceived by the American side as being too abstract, of not „getting their hands dirty“, not digging into the details?

Tension between depth and distance 

I suspect that the German colleagues present the results of their process analysis „right out of their process laboratory“, where they get abstract, but after having studied the details. Perhaps they do not get into the details as much as their American counterparts, who embed themselves in the processes.

Germans are reluctant to embed themselves based on a fear that they will lose perspective, lose Überblick (overview), not be able to recognize patterns. In their process lab they have the peace and quiet to reflect on, to understand what they have observed and studied.

The big stick

Making acceptance of German processes in the U.S. even more difficult is the impression many Americans have that their German colleagues do not understand the U.S. market. They see in many German processes a threat to their business: „Their processes won‘t work here. They‘ll ruin our business.“

It‘s the big stick which many Americans use to beat back the importation of German processes, or even the partial integration of American and German processes. In some situations, where the American organization had been an independent company bought by a German one, one can hear Americans say: „You don‘t know our customers, how we work, what it takes to be successful here. You failed in the U.S., that‘s why you bought us. So please, no processes from Germany, at least not without first discussing with us how to modify them so that they help more than harm.“