Is it even possible to translate into English the German word Entscheidungsverständnis? Decision making philosophy, is what most Americans would say. But, that’s puffy, cloudy. Americans us the term ‘philosophy’ often to mean ‘way of thinking’.

Literal, and more exact, would be ‘understanding of the decision to be made’, from Entscheidung, decision + verständnis, understanding of. The verbs are entscheiden, to decide, and verstehen, to understand. Only very few Americans, however, would use that kind of formulation, ‘understanding of the decision to be made’.

In any case, the American colleagues in the breakout (group work in a management seminar) did not ask themselves about their Entscheidungsverständnis. Instead, they rather quickly defined what kind of used car they were looking for (the question posed to them in the exercise). There were three, perhaps four key factors. That was enough. They moved on immediately to the next assignment in the exercise.

Germans believe that the best path to an optimal decision is first of all to nicht vom Zaun brechen, which is translated literally into “not break out or through the fence”, meaning to think first, then decide, then act. To reflect. Because decisions mean change, they are inherently involve risk. A good Entscheidungsverständnis minimizes risk. It should not be a surprise, therefore, that Americans often give Germans the impression that they tend to move forward too aggressively, impetuously, forcefully.

Americans can come across as not having understood, much less thought through, the complexity of the situation. Especially when it comes to decisions which have far-reaching consequences, the aggressive, impetuous and forceful American approach unsettles their German colleagues. They fear that the Americans are actions are naive, even irresponsible.

Mit dem Kopf durch die Wand – literally with the head through the wall, or forcing things – is how Germans can see Americans. Objectively this is the case quite often. Subjectively certainly very often. The Americans in the breakout group write their flip-charts quickly, but just as quickly tear them down and rewrite or toss them into the corner. Americans like to decide and move fast, change situations and create new ones. They take the initiative in order to ‘stay ahead of the power curve’, to ‘set the agenda’.

Difficult, complex and controversial events

But, is this unfamiliar to the Germans? Haven’t they had their own experiences with the advantages and disadvantages of such national cultural character traits? The German people has a highly developed historical consciousness. Many of their experiences as a people were painful, have made a deep impression on them. 

When the Germans raise their Zeigefinger, their index finger pointing out something important (yes, often in a know-it-all way) it is in most cases because they do know better (at least for themselves, from their perspective). At a minimum they see a situation which they have experienced themselves. And as Germans they are seldom reluctant to point out these (their) lessons to other people.

I had hardly gotten into a conversation with a good German friend of mine. We were talking about everyday topics, nothing terribly deep. A friend of his joined us, a journalist, a women he had known for many years. She – let’s call her Beate – switched the topics of the conversation to politics, her area of focus. Wasting no time she brought up the most difficult, complex and controversial events. Back then I was a member of the professional staff of the Christian Democrats in the Bundestag, the majority party under then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Beate had returned from Southern Africa just a few months before. I had not known her or of her. In the years after that conversation I would see her in television, hear her on the radio, read her articles in newspapers. Very intelligent. Very well-informed. Very active mind.

I was tired. It had been a long week. The initial topics of my chat with my friend were light, casual, pleasant. Beate wanted, however, to get serious. She started off describing the monumental mistakes the Clinton administration had made in Somalia. With her experience in Africa, and in Somalia, it was clear that the American approach would be a total failure.

I tried to steer the conversation back to the lighter topics. Beate just could not let go, however. Puffing away at her cigarettes I was engulfed in smoke and getting dizzy. She fired question after question at me about American foreign policy. Time and again I sent signals communicating: “Please, not now, another day. We don’t even know each other. Do I have to answer personally for my country’s actions abroad?” Beate made everything so complex. She was giving me a headache. It was a very unpleasant evening.

A factory in the Eastern part of Westphalia

I think of my fellow American, the soldier, dead and dragged by a rope naked through the streets of Mogadischu, his body mocked, derided and spat upon by the population. I think of his parents, his siblings and friends, especially of his mother. I think no less sadly of the man (the picture of him) in the second Iraq War, a father carrying on each should the bodies of his dead boys, each around five years old. We see him from behind.

Those little boys can’t move, they won’t ever move. I imagine their father’s heart as he heaves his boys on his shoulders, his heart as he lays them in simple wooden boxes, then lowers those boxes into the earth, his heart when he then goes home. He’ll never hear their voices again. My son, Daniel, was nine years old back then. Evenings, after dinner, he climbs up on my back. Piggyback we call it in English. I carry him up the stairs. Abendroutine, evening routine. Pajamas. Brush teeth. Wash face. Hop in bed. I read to him. Abendroutine here in Bonn, Germany. A German boy with an American father. Safe, secure, happy and healthy.

I see in my mind’s eye a factory somewhere in the Eastern part of Westphalia. The niece of my German wife’s grandfather. He was from Herford, not far from Hanover, a pilot in the Luftwaffe. Early in the Second World War in France, a part of the occupation forces. Then in the East, fighting the Russians. Prisoner of war. He returned to Germany in 1949, a broken man. My wife’s grandmother said of her husband that he had believed in German victory up until the very end. 

She told the story only once of his niece. She must have worked in an armaments factory. I never asked. Tears worked their way carefully down her cheeks as she talked, her eyes fixed on a far-off point. Allied bombing one day. Direct hits. The mother of the young woman, the sister-in-law of my German wife’s grandmother, ran to the factory. Everything destroyed. She found her daughter. Her tender, youthful body ripped open by a steal beam.

Yes, it was a very unpleasant evening with Beate, but primarily because we’re far more different than we realize. In fact she is a very nice, intelligent, hard-working German journalist, who, like all of us, would like the world to be different, better. A woman who adopted a young African girl and is raising her alone. Beate is a fighter for the right cause. And there are others, like the late Peter Scholl-Latour, who in the months leading up the Second Iraq War was in the German media doing his best to warn of its risks: explaining, seeking, describing, questioning. Out of concern.

Long, detailed discussions about decision-making

Scholl-Latour was a prolific journalist and author about the Middle East. His early years, however, were spent first fighting in the Indochina (Vietnam) war, then covering it as a journalist when the U.S. had entered it in a serious way. Not a know-it-all but a concerned German, whose fears were based on experience and knowledge. One who is trying to say to his friends (to Americans): “Dear Friend, don’t do it. Think about what you learned forty years ago. Don’t repeat that mistake, please.”

To be called naive in the German context is very serious. It means a significant deficit in intelligence. It means not being in touch with reality. Naivité in the U.S. context, however, can be interpreted as positive. Young. Fresh. Optimistic. Full of initiative. Ready to learn. Willing to make decisions. Amerikaner sind wie große Kinder. Americans are like big children. How often I’ve heard this in my years in Germany. I understand how and why Germans make such a statement.

Systematic thinking is one of the strongest of German character traits. It‘s a red thread woven in and through all of the topics CI addresses.

I think of the many Germans in my seminars and workshops. I observe their tendency time and again. I separate the Americans and the Germans into separate breakout groups, pass out their assignments. They have an hour and a half to think, discuss and prepare their presentation on flip-charts, after which they give their presentations and discuss.

The breakout. What do the Germans invariably do? They get very quiet, focused, read the assignment carefully, ask me clarification questions. No detail is unimportant. After they have taken whatever amount of time is needed to read and reflect, they begin to discuss among themselves: respectful, quiet, their body language still. They listen attentively to each other, seldom interrupt. I observe, listen in, stand nearby in case they need help.

Germans analyze from 30k foot perspective

Even though I know how the Germans will proceed, it surprises me, nonetheless. It is foreign to me. It impresses and fascinates me still. The atmosphere in their breakout groups is like a graduate- or Ph.D.-level seminar at an elite university. It could be either in the natural sciences or in the humanities. Or perhaps business students analyzing a case study or mathematicians attacking a problem cracked centuries ago.

Maybe they’re students of theology or history studying the political ramifications of Martin Luther and the 97 theses he nailed to the door of the church in Witterberg in 1517. Perhaps they’re psychology students working on a particularly complex patient to be handled a day later.

The scenario is unimportant, the approach taken by the Germans is always the same. First they get (common) clarity on the case study I have given to them. Then they define the key terms. The scope is then discussed. After that they address approach and method. Then they finally get to the substance.

Isn’t that the case in so many situations in Germany? Analyze the topic from the so-called thirty thousand foot perspective. Identify the key factors in play. Pay attention especially to the interdependencies, the mutual influences. Then slowly but surely, carefully and focused, address the substance.

Like in early versions of Google Earth after one has typed in the address. You start out way up in space. See the Earth as a planet, then the continents. The globe rotates a bit. You recognize immediately if you are zooming down in the right direction. You go further down, stopping and starting as you wish, to get oriented. It’s just a matter of clicks, moving in and directly, north south east or west. Constantly seeing things from different perspectives.

Not without problems, not without mistakes

I imagine, as a metaphor, how much Germans would like to alter the code within Google in order to determine how quickly it zooms. They would slow it down, I suspect, whereas Americans, again metaphorically speaking, would not be interested in that in the least, instead switching to another website while Google completed the zoom-in.

I think of the English word circumspection, from Latin circum + specere via French into the English of the 15th Century: to look around, be cautious, to consider all circumstances and possible consequences, to be prudent. I see my German seminar participants in their work group with their handouts. They’re careful. Want to do things right, and not just avoid making mistakes.

Do things right, what is right, for themselves and their colleagues. Remember, we‘re talking about two of the most capable peoples on this planet, the German people and the American people. Both have demonstrated that their approaches to solving the fundamental challenges to any society work. Not without problems, not without mistakes, but they work, and work well.

Doing alters, a given situation

And some of their mistakes were serious, gravierend (grave). Mistakes made by both sides, not just by the one. Both peoples want to do things right, and to do the right thing. Verantwortungsvoll. Verantwortung – responsibility + voll, full. Which of the respective approaches is better, more appropriate, superior, is not our topic here. Such questions can only be based on very concrete and specific situations. Even in such, it is difficult to answer the question in a definitive way.

The Germans focus on the consequences of their decisions. They think several steps ahead. They try to anticipate if you wiggle in one area where it will waggle in another. They are well aware that decisions lead to action. Things are set in motion. Doing creates, or at least alters, a given situation (reality), and not always in a positive way.

Back to our breakout groups in the workshop. Americans very seldom discuss the deeper meaning of a decision to be made. If, however, such a discussion does take place then it‘s focused on the purpose of the decision, on whom it serves and how.

Nor do Americans spend much time considering a decision to be made in its broader context. They think more particularistic than systematic. Their approach to decisions is motivated primarily by pragmatism. Americans orient themselves on concrete decisions and actions. They are focused on decisions which lead to actions, which, in turn, require further decisions.

In addition, Americans do their best to avoid over-interpreting or -analyzing a decision to be made. Absolutely critical is maintaining forward movement. Individual decision makers seldom have the mandate, much less the inclination, to discuss and debate the philosophical meaning of a decision to be made. They want to maintain momentum.

Germans and Americans together against the competition

Breakout. The Americans read the assignment quickly (perhaps hastily), then begin to discuss it, but without taking too much time. Once they‘re in agreement what it is all about they choose a colleague to write the flipcharts, and they‘re off and running. They think aloud, brainstorm, ideas are written down: open, free, creative, for German eyes and ears an unstructured discussion.

Words and phrases are thrown up on the flipchart, perhaps a stick figure, a drawing, whatever works. Just as quickly, though, these are revised, crossed out, some pages ripped off the stand, rolled up into a ball and tossed into the corner. The Americans keep going, discussing, debating, writing down.

In this concrete case we‘re talking about a breakout group, in an integration workshop, in an American company which had been acquired by a German company, in a sector of the world economy in which the competition does not wait around for Germans and Americans to come to agreement on how they‘ll work together.

No time for contemplating things from 30k feet

Everyone participating, the consultant included, needs to move quickly (but not hastily) and intelligently. The participants are investing valuable time. They need to understand the complex cultural differences, how these affect their collaboration, then together define that collaboration. 

This is reality, not theory. There is no time for contemplating things from 30k feet. The battle is taking place on the ground, not in the clouds. Germans and Americans together in that battle against their competition, solving problems, serving customers.

Decisions are always local, specific and concrete. Americans strive to break down complexity into its component parts, in order to make those decisions. Deciding and acting are synonyms. Decisions lead to action. Action lead to new situations, which demand more decisions. And action always influences (changes) reality, its parameters, that which is to be decided.

It occurred within my very first year working in the Bundestag for the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group. There were some serious differences of opinion between me and my team lead, my boss. Apparently people at the highest level became aware of it. Within a few weeks I was simply informed – in a respectful, competent and intelligent way – that I would be moved into another team.

It had surprised me. At no time in the weeks leading up to the organizational change had anyone, not one person, spoken to me. Neither was I asked to describe the situation from my point of view, nor to suggest a possible resolution, nor was there any kind of meeting with my boss in order to talk things out.

In my years of consulting German companies I have come across many internal conflict situations which my clients need to resolve quickly, but prudently. I observe over and over again how they go about it in an almost stealthy way. Quiet, careful, in the background, unobserved. The German approach certainly works. Their society is extraordinarily peaceful, safe, predictable. The Germans know how to resolve conflicts effectively.

In case law every case is unique

A few months back I discussed this with a senior-level American who works very closely with Germany and who has Germans in her organization, including direct reports. We discussed the differences in approaches to conflict resolution.

„John, it‘s true that Germans, when resolving a conflict, will try to do it for all time, to create a kind of best practice out of it. I understand that.“ But it takes too long, Karen went on to say. „And besides, documenting a best practice doesn‘t help anyway.“ I asked why. „Because every conflict is different. People, details, circumstances.“

I agreed with Karen. We went on to speculate about the nature of case law in the Anglo-American legal tradition. Neither of us have any training in the law, but any educated American knows that a legal system based on case law, indeed, sees every case as unique. The system draws not only on the law, but also on precendence (how previous courts resolved the conflict), as well as on the actual details of the case.

„Developing a best practice is not worth the effort. Future conflicts, even if the same in nature, will differ in the details. And true justice has to address those details.“

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.

It was many years ago. In New Jersey. I met with a close friend – Michael – who I know from our days as students at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. We don‘t see each other often, but when we do, we catch up very quickly. Michael went on to law school at Georgetown, then into the healthcare field. He is successful, has a solid marriage and four well-rounded daughters.

After our undergraduate degree I moved to Germany for a year, Michael along with eight other close friends went to Nicaragua in order to do development work organized by the Jesuits. They all took a summer-long crash course in Spanish, then moved in with Nicaraguan families in different villages.

When we met in New Jersey we discussed my work. Michael was very curious, but at the same time skeptical that cultural differences existed, or at least significant ones. I was quite surprised by his skepticism, since he had lived in a culture which was clearly different than the American. “I don‘t believe there are real differences, John. People are people.”

I threw a couple of examples out between Germans and Americans. He remained unconvinced. Perhaps the examples were too simple. We ate our sandwiches, sipped from our milkshakes, then it occurred to me that Michael is a trained attorney. I said: “Ok, let‘s take the law. Do you think that how conflicts are fundamentally resolved are the same in Germany and in the U.S.?” He was sure about the answer to that question. The law is the law, right?

Testing his patience, I went into some detail focusing on hearings. “Do you think when a team lead in a company resolves a conflict between team members that the German and the American team lead respectively will take the same approach?” A no-brainer for Michael: “Certainly.”

I went on to explain that Germans have a very strong tendancy to avoid an open hearing with the two conflict parties. Argument vs. counter-argument in front of next level management would only heighten the tension, making a resolution that much more complicated. Instead, the conflict resolver in the German cultural context is far more likely to interview each party separately and on a one-on-one basis.

“Americans, on the other hand”, I continued, “expect a fair hearing. The conflict resolution actually starts off when the conflict parties, in the presence of each other, make their case before the team lead, who, in the American business context, sees her-/himself as the judge.” Self-defense is only possible, if one knows what they are being accused of.

Michael had listened very carefully, raised his eyebrows, didn‘t respond at first, instead looked at me and reflected. Then he said: “I didn‘t know that about the Germans.” No, how could he? He had spent his entire life, with the exception of one year in Nicaragua, in the U.S. And he had studied law in the U.S.

Michael is a close friend. An intelligent, self-critical, reflective person. I‘ve known him for more than thirty years. And he had lived in a culture much different than the American. How could his operating assumption be that there are few, if any, significant cultural differences between Germany and the the U.S.? I encounter this time and again, and it always surprises me.

“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.

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.

Where Americans go into duck and cover mode, Germans see themselves in a spirited debate, perhaps an open argument or dispute, but most likely necessary in order to get clarity on an important matter.

Stuttgart. They meet once a quarter. The leadership team. Each reports on the state of their business. The others have the opportunity (obligation) to comment, ask questions, make suggestions.

German company. German logic. Weak business units are supported to a certain degree by stronger ones. “Your weakness impacts me. Therefore, I have a say in the matter. In your matters.”

One of the business unit heads is American. Barbara. New. Her numbers are solid. There are few comments. Not so for other colleagues. One in particular is cross-examined as if in court charged for a serious crime.

Observing this Barbara feels very uncomfortable. “What value does this have? How can this group ever function as a team?” She senses nothing but negativism. And the head of the organization doesn’t intervene!

The colleague under fire responds calmly. The criticisms are not entirely unjustified. Perhaps overstated, perhaps somewhat mean spirited, but legitimate. Several suggestions from a more experienced business unit head are quite helpful. They agree to meet that evening to discuss.

Their American colleague, though, senses only small mindedness and harshness. She is determined not to subject herself to this every quarter. The next two meetings Barbara is absent. Her reasons are plausible, but not totally excusable.

Among themselves, her manager and colleagues begin to question Barbara’s loyalty to the team. She appears to them to be a lone-wolf of the self-centered kind. Perhaps her business unit should be folded into one of the other ones as a way to integrate her into the team.