Klappern gehört zum Handwerk — rattling is part of the trade. Germans use the proverb to say that a business has to make some noise about its work. It is usually said with a slight apology, by someone who is about to advertise himself.
business
A Board Member Pays
After the Siemens corruption scandal, the company claimed damages from eleven former members of its management board for breaching their duties of organization and supervision. Ten of them settled out of court. Siemens sued former finance chief Heinz-Joachim Neubürger for 15 million euros. In December 2013 the court granted the claim. It based the ruling on the overall legal responsibility of every board member. The parties later settled for 2.5 million euros.
Managers Who Keep Their Mistakes to Themselves
In 2023 the consulting firm EY published a Fehlerkulturreport, an error culture report. It surveyed 200 managers and 800 employees in finance, the car industry, mechanical engineering and transport. Of the managers, 64 percent said that in the past two years they had not admitted their own mistakes, or had admitted them only in part. Of these, 68 percent feared it would harm their careers.
Volkswagen and the Chain of Errors
On 18 September 2015 it became public that Volkswagen had used illegal software in its engine control to cheat emissions tests. On 9 October a Börsen-Zeitung editorial wrote that at VW the fear of failing and being dressed down by a superior, vom Vorgesetzten abgekanzelt zu werden, had apparently been much stronger than the sense of wrongdoing. In December the chairman of the supervisory board, Hans Dieter Pötsch, said at a press conference in Wolfsburg that it had been “a chain of errors that were allowed to happen”. He added: “There was a mindset in some areas of the company that tolerated breaches of rules.” The chief executive, Matthias Müller, named the goal: to discuss more openly and to allow mistakes, Fehler zuzulassen.
Failure on Stage
At a Fuckup Night, founders tell an audience how their businesses failed. The idea came from Mexico, and by 2017 it had spread to more than 250 cities in 80 countries. Its stated aim is to remove the stigma of failure. The first Fuckup Night in Munich took place on 5 July 2018. Its organizer, Josef Willkommer, named what the evening works against: diese Versagenskultur, diese Kultur des Scheiterns, this culture of failing.
The situation report
American military practice produces the SITREP on a schedule — what has changed, what is known, what is expected — and pushes it up and sideways whether or not anything has happened. The report goes out on time even when the content is that nothing occurred, because a gap in the stream is itself information.
The status update
American organizations run a rhythm of them: weekly team updates, monthly reports, quarterly reviews, daily notes. The cadence is the point rather than the content. The system assumes that information will stop moving unless something scheduled makes it move.
Cybersecurity incident disclosure
Since 2023, American public companies have had four business days to report a material cybersecurity incident to the SEC, and every US state requires notification of individuals whose personal data is breached. Even the failure of information systems is itself subject to a disclosure requirement.
Silo
American organizations describe a department that keeps its information to itself as a silo, and breaking down silos is a standing management objective. The metaphor is agricultural — a tall sealed container that keeps grain in and everything else out, with nothing getting in or out except deliberately, through a small opening at the top.
Working at cross purposes
Two people or teams both working hard, both competent, and producing less than nothing because neither knew what the other was doing. It is not a charge of laziness or incompetence. It is a charge that the information did not move.