Stated openly by American managers as a standing instruction: I don’t like surprises, tell me early, bad news does not improve with age. The instruction concedes that the news may be bad, and asks for it anyway. What is being forbidden is not the problem but the concealment.
The vocabulary of results
Results-oriented. A standard phrase on an American résumé. The claim is not that the person works hard or knows the field, but that they can be judged by what came out.
Deliverables. American project language names the output as the unit of work. Not tasks, not effort, not hours. The thing handed over.
Track record. Not qualifications, not references, not what someone believes about themselves. What has already been produced, and can be pointed at.
Best practice. Methods are adopted from a competitor, another industry, another country, on the grounds that they work. There is no loyalty in the concept — the practice earns its place by outcome and loses it the same way.
Return on investment. Every expenditure becomes a candidate for the calculation, including training, meetings, research and attention. The question is not whether the thing is good. It is what came back.
The LinkedIn profile
An American professional’s career is displayed publicly as a sequence of positions with dates, visible to their employer and to everyone else. Progression is a matter of public record, and its absence is equally visible.
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.
Reputations ruined
One reason why Americans take criticism so personally is the importance they place on public perception. Reputation, especially in business, is a very sensitive issue. It can be damaged quickly, and often irreparably, by criticism.
The public relations sector has been thriving in the American economy for generations. And in the digital age companies such as reputation(dot)com focus solely on helping companies (and individuals) to protect their reputations.
Warren Buffett, called the Wizard of Omaha and the Oracle of Omaha, and considered the greatest American investor, once said “It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.”
Roger Boisjoly, an engineer at NASA during the Challenger space shuttle disaster, suspected that the explosion would occur. He tried to warn his superiors, but was ignored. During the investigation he was very forthcoming about what went wrong and whose fault it was, damaging many the reputation of many colleagues and superiors.
Even though he had fought to keep the disaster from happening, by ruining those reputations he damaged his own. Boisjoly received such horrible treatment at work that he eventually quit. Because he had a reputation as a reputation destroyer he couldn’t find another engineering position. Instead, he worked as a speaker on workplace ethics, teaching Americans how to avoid his mistakes and point out problems in a work environment without hurting reputations.
Tesla’s Bane
In 1885 Nikola Tesla, who had recently immigrated to the US from Serbia, told his employer Thomas Edison that he could redesign Edison’s direct current generators, greatly improving both their service and cost. Hearing this, Edison remarked: “There’s fifty thousand dollars in it for you if you can do it.”
Even though Edison’s company had a reputation for being tightfisted, Tesla took him at his word, and after he completed the task, Edison refused to pay him the money. Instead, Edison told Tesla that he was only joking, and offered him a $10 per week raise for his current $18 per week salary. Insulted, Tesla immediately resigned.
bane: death, destruction; woe; a source of harm or ruin, a curse. Middle English, from Old English, akin to Old High German death. First Known Use: before 12th century
tightfisted – parsimonious; stingy; tight; mean; miserly. Origin from 1835-45.
Team Lead as Defender
Team leads are also expected to defend the team against criticism, whether internal or external. The lead is „out in front“, shielding the team from attack, „taking personal ownership“ of the problems. An American team lead does this also out of self-interest. For any and all criticism of the team is direct criticism of that team lead. „Your success is my success“ has an opposite. „Your failure is my failure.“
To „take ownership means“ to take responsibility for one’s actions; not blaming others. To „take the heat“ means to listen and accept criticism or blame. Take „the bull by the horns“ means to confront a problem head-on, as it is, and deal with it openly.
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”, John Quincy Adams – America‘s sixth president, 1825-1829.
“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.”, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), an American industrialist who led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and who was one of the highest profile philanthropists of his era, whose 1889-article on wealth remains a major advisory for those who aspire to lead philanthropic lives.
Public Apologies
In America, celebrities are often considered suppliers, and their fans customers. Anytime celebrities make mistakes or behave in ways which don’t meet their fans’ expectations, they are expected to immediately issue formal apologies. Some of the more recent examples include:
Lance Armstrong – issued a public apology after admitting to using drugs to win the Tour de France seven times. Justin Bieber – issued a public apology after a video surfaced, in which the pop star told a racist joke. Reese Witherspoon – issued a public apology after being arrested for disorderly conduct.
Roommate Agreement
On The Big Bang Theory, an American television show about a group of physicists and the girl next door, two of the main characters share an apartment together. In order to ensure that things run smoothly from the beginning one of the roommates drafts a roommate agreement that outlines all of the rules by which the two characters will abide.
Additionally, anytime there is a change in the characters’ status (for example, if one of them starts dating), this roommate will write a modified version of the agreement to accommodate the new arrangement.
However, the second roommate hates having a fixed list of rules, and rather than being a way to solve disputes, the roommate agreement actually becomes the source of many arguments.
1990. Bush. Gorbatschow.
Robert Zoellick, former Deputy Secretary of State under President George H. Bush, addresses Putin’s claim that the West broke a promise it made in the 1990s not to expand NATO.
This is about the topic Agreements, and the American logic. Listen carefully beginning at around 2:30, especially at 3:56, where Zoellick reveals crystal clear the American logic: “Nothing’s really final until you put the words on paper.”
This video was posted on YouTube on February 1, 2022. It is not clear when it was recorded. Russia had amassed conventional forces surrounding Ukraine. The invasion began on February 24.