The customer is always right. Whatever the customer needs. We’ll make it work. Happy to flex on that. Yes, and we can bill it. American supplier speech accommodates first and prices afterwards. The refusal, where it comes, arrives as a number rather than as a no.
Can you just
The two words that open the American scope conversation, and the change-order literature quotes them directly as the thing to watch for. Can you just is a request framed as a small one. The framing is what makes it hard to refuse and what makes it worth a document.
The statement of work
The American SOW closes with acceptance criteria stated as testable facts — the system processes a thousand transactions without error, fifty users complete training and pass assessment, the sponsor signs off.
The guidance is explicit about why: these become the finish line, and everything else is a change order.
The definition of done is written before the work begins, because everyone involved expects the request to grow.
The change order
The American answer to scope creep is a document. Either party proposes a change in writing, the supplier delivers an impact assessment naming the effect on fees, timeline and acceptance criteria, both sides approve, and only then does the work proceed.
The standard clause is blunt: work performed without an approved change order is performed at the consultant’s risk and may not be billable.
The American supplier is not defending the boundary of the work. He is building the machinery to price its expansion.
Scope creep
A named American business phenomenon with its own literature, its own software features and its own prevention advice: the gradual expansion of a project beyond what was agreed, without any corresponding change to fee or timeline.
It begins small. One more interview, a slide deck summarising the findings, a follow-up workshop. A consultant contracted for three research workshops and a report can end up delivering forty percent more work for the original fee.
The word exists because the behaviour is normal enough to need a name. Creep is the giveaway — nobody decided it, and it happened anyway.
Only live to serve
In 1991, Disney produced the movie “Beauty and the Beast,” a film about a prince who is turned into a beast and the young woman who helps return him to human form. Although this movie is set in France, because it was written by Americans for American children, it exemplifies many of the values held in American culture.
In this film, many of the characters are servants, and they have no trouble expressing their desire to serve their master. In fact, at one point in the movie, the servants avow that they “only live to serve.” Nevertheless, no American would ever think of these characters as degraded or less than human – to Americans they are simply helping their customer in the best way they can.
Servitium
Serve: The English term service implies graciousness, helpfulness and to a degree selflessness. To serve is to be humble. Serve stems from the Latin word servitium, which meant the condition of a slave. Service, at its roots, involves one person serving another or several. It is inherently personal.
The term service in the context of American business involves the notion of servitium: to respond to the needs of your customer, to serve that customer personally and individually. But service also anticipates compensation: payment, customer loyalty, growth of the business.
Service is both personal and commercial. They go hand-in-hand. Impersonal service seldom leads to commercial success. Personal service without fair compensation is servitude. And, indeed, some business relationships are so one-sided that the one serving feels more like a slave than a free person.
Personal: Of, relating to, or affecting a particular person; done in person without the intervention of another; carried on between individuals directly; relating to the person or body; relating to an individual or an individual’s character, conduct, motives, or private affairs often in an offensive manner; being rational and self-conscious; of, relating to, or constituting personal property; intended for private use or use by one person. From Latin persona.
Helpful: Of service or assistance, useful.
Selfless: Having no concern for self, unselfish.
Humble: Not proud or haughty, not arrogant or assertive; reflecting, expressing, or offered in a spirit of deference or submission; ranking low in a hierarchy or scale. From Latin humilis low, humble, from humus earth.
Not a consumer’s job
Harvard Business Review. October 31, 2001. Tom Davenport, Business Professor at Babson College: Was Steve Jobs a Good Decision Maker?
„He (Jobs) also didn’t believe in analytical decisions based on extensive market research.“ Quoting The New York Times’ obituary:
„Mr. Jobs’s own research and intuition, not focus groups, were his guide. When asked what market research went into the iPad, Mr. Jobs replied: ‘None. It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.’”
Steve Jobs was not of German descent. It was known, however, that he had great respect for German design and technology. He and his family, it was reported, had debated for weeks what brand of washer they should choose. His arguments won out. They purchased a Miele.
Consult the customer
Communication with the customer about expectations is a primary role of American business. For example, a senior consultant at a major American strategy consulting firm described collaboration as an attribute that is “built into the very culture of our consulting firm.” New consultants are selected for their ability to understand and respond to the needs of their clients.
The website of a leading strategy consulting firm tells future clients that “custom solutions yield the greatest competitive advantage and value for our clients. We ground each solution in how our client’s organization actually works and in the client’s unique position in the marketplace.”
In order to understand the client’s unique situation and demands, the consultants work side-by-side with the client’s employees and listen to their concerns.
A report from the Center for the Study of Social Policy about customer service describes the complex interplay of factors involved in customer satisfaction. One finding of the report is: “Successful customer service companies listen to, understand, and respond—often in unique and creative ways—to the evolving needs and constantly shifting expectations of their customers.“
Tail wags dog
Germans. Augenhöhe. More consult than serve. Ok, fine. American customers can work with the German approach. Maybe even work better, if the approach is understood by both sides and is applied carefully.
But even if so, it can look and feel to the American customer as if the tail is wagging the dog. The customer is the dog. The German supplier-vendor-consultant is the tail. Germans don’t want to be the tail. Who does? But the American customer is clearly the dog. And that dog doesn’t want to be wagged by its tail, German or any other culture.