The Office is an American comedy television series adapted from a British series of the same name. The series depicts the everyday lives of office employees in a branch of a fictional paper company.
The office’s manager, Michael Scott, constantly interrupts his workers in an attempt to inspire them and win their approval. His efforts usually fail in a humorous way. Although this is a comedy, the manager’s frequent attempts to keep updated on his employees’ work and interact with them personally is similar to actual office environments.
Geh’ nicht zu Deinem Fürst, wenn Du nicht gerufen wirst – Do not go to your ruler, if you have not been summoned – this is nothing more than an order not to ride your boss’s coat-tails.
Selbst ist der Mann – Do it yourself! Only those who think for themselves can act for themselves, too. And he who is capable of thinking and acting independently is also ‘master of the situation’ – and has ‘everything under control’.
To be one’s own master – which Germans value very highly. The how? Please, no spoon-feeding!
A fascinating article in the New York Times about how a few major U.S. companies are handling the post-Covid work environment. Some employees are returning full-time to the office. Others are working exlusively, or almost excluisively from home. And many are splitting the time between office and home.
There are, of course, consequences for each choice. And in the U.S. some companies are concerned about reduced opportunities for those folks who are less present in the office. Why? Reduced face-time with management.
This is a clear statement about the nature of leadership in the U.S. business environment: Get face-time with your boss !
If you collaborate with Germans, ask them if less face-time with management would be a disadvantage or an advantage. And when you do, read to them, as best you can this, well-know, German figure of speech: “Gehe nicht zu Deinem Fürst, wenn Du nicht gerufen wirst.”
Phonetically: Gae nisht tsu die nem first, venn doo nisht gae-roofen veerst.
„The most unfortunate officer in the field, is the one who is distracted by headquarters with daily, even hourly requests for reports on his strategy, tactics and intentions, quite often from an overly self-important junior staff officer with access to a telegraph line.“ General Helmuth von Moltke, Head of the Prussian General Staff
In German companies the head of a department or project team assigns tasks to the team and to individual members, who carry them out ideally without any supervision. This logic is also at play in business relationships between customer and supplier.
When a German contracts a craftsman or mechanic – plumber, electrician, handyman – to do a job, he or she does not go beyond explaining the problem which needs to be solved. Everything else is left up to the person contracted to completed the job. The German customer expects the job to get done without any more input or oversight from them.
It‘s the same approach when one goes to the bank. The customer explains their financial situation, states their goals and then expects the financial advisor to do the rest, meaning come up with a financial plan. The bank employee, like the plumber, only contacts the customer if it is absolutely necessary.
Many job advertisements will promise their employees the opportunity to work independently. An independent work environment, without constant oversight or having someone ‘looking over your shoulder’, is viewed very positively.
This is also an indicator of trust. Constant check-ins with one’s boss about the status of a project are neither necessary nor desired. In the German workplace, too many check-ins suggests an over-dependence on guidance on the part of the employee. Such ‘needy’ employees require a lot of ‘hand-holding’ – something which no German employer feels like doing.
In his book A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon (2010) author Neil Sheehan describes the life and work of Bernard Schriever, who is considered to be the father of the American nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Schriever and his military and civilian colleagues believed firmly that if both the United States and the Soviet Union possessed these weapons of mass destruction the probability of them being used actually would be decreased.
Schriever had to overcome strong institutional resistance within the U.S. Air Force whose leadership was convinced that manned aircraft﹣strategic long-range bombers﹣was the only way to maintain a credible deterrent against the Soviet Union.
Through telling the story of Bernard Schriever and the development of the American ballistic missile program from the end of Second World War up to the mid-1960s Sheehan tells the history of the Cold War, which would last up until the 1990s with the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the unification of West and East Germany, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, and the freedom of Eastern Europe from Russian domination.
In a 2010 television interview (Booknotes on C-SPAN) Sheehan contrasted Schriever with his American-born military colleagues, Generals Paul Harkins and William Westmoreland, both who had overall command of U.S. forces in the Vietnam War.
Schriever would tell his subordinates that he would never fire anyone for failing, but instead for failing to inform him immediately of problems. For Schriever, as stated by Sheehan, success would take care of itself if one focused on solving the problems at hand. Go to minutes 25:10 to 26:50.
Sheehan had been a young war correspondent in Vietnam for United Press International (UPI), later with the New York Times. As told in his book A Bright Shining Lie (1989), which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, the American generalship during the Vietnam War was unwilling to accept that America was losing that war.
General Schriever, according to Sheehan‘s research, made clear time and again to the members of this organization, whether military or civilian, that he wanted timely and accurate reports on the problems the program was experiencing, and was far less interested in the progress made.
So-called progress reports had become common within the U.S. military after the Second World War, and according to Sheehan, symptomatic for an institution unwilling to face what was not working.
Bernard Adolph Schriever was born in 1910 in the German port city of Bremen. His father was an engineer. They immigrated to the U.S. only months before the U.S. entered the First World War in 1917.
Schriever grew up in New Braunfels, Texas, an area mostly populated by German immigrants. Read about his fascinating life in Wikipedia