German Approach
Germans regard an individual step in a decision-making process as completed only when all relevant information has been gathered and analyzed with rigorous tools. Germans are scientific. They are skeptical of intuition. Patterns
American Approach
Americans gather limited, but highly relevant, information. In-depth analysis is done only when necessary. Americans apply rigorous tools of analysis. However, they balance analysis with pragmatism. Patterns
American View
For many Americans, German analysis is overly complex, cautious, scientific, tool-oriented.
German View
Americans are viewed by their German colleagues to be too pragmatic, too inexact, too tolerant of insufficient analysis.
Advice to Germans
Reduce the overall scope of your information gathering and analysis. Focus on the most relevant questions. Americans have less of a need than Germans for depth and breadth, as long as the key factors have been addressed.
Advice to Americans
For Germans, comprehensiveness and completeness are a virtue. If you opt for less depth and breadth in your information gathering, be prepared to provide the reasons.
If possible, place a monetary cost on the extra work involved. Demonstrate how there is limited value added to the decision making process (resource conservation).
When it comes to your approach to analysis, your German colleagues will expect you to describe the process, methods and tools you employed or plan to employ.
Germans seek scientific objectivity and avoid “gut-based” approaches to analysis. From their point of view, your results will only be as good, as reliable, as convincing, as the process/method/tools you used to arrive at them.