The Pursuit of Happyness (2006). The protagonist’s journey is marked by continual follow-up-on job opportunities, client meetings, and personal goals. The film emphasizes the necessity of staying proactive and persistent to achieve success.
movies
Billy Beane
Moneyball (2011). The management team, led by Billy Beane, holds frequent meetings to review player statistics, discuss strategies, and follow up on recruitment and trades. The film’s structure is built around ongoing check-ins and data-driven updates, emphasizing the importance of regular follow-up to achieve team goals.
Mean
An uncut scene from Bridesmaids where Kristen Wiig and the teenager argue in the jewelry store. This is improv at its best! Who says Americans can get in each other’s face?
YouTube comments:
“This girl was only 14 when she held her own with a professional comedian for 10 minutes.”
“Kristen Wiig is an absolute improv genius and not afraid to set herself up as the punching bag for the little girl.”
“They clearly were having way too much fun with this scene. Mia starts to smile too much because it’s such a joy to go so unhinged on somebody. The director probably said to go in there and completely go off on her but don’t overlap lines so we can edit. The editors probably had too much fun with this scene too. Can you blame any of them?”
“Props to Kristen but that girl annihilated her.”
“Always be closing!”
This is a famous scene with Alec Baldwin from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. Brace yourselves. This scene is very intense and includes vulgar language. In the American business context persuasion is sales, and sales is persuasion.
“Whaddya say, Ray?”
Observe how a very intelligent young man by the name of Harry Sonneborn persuades Ray Croc to fundamentally change his business model re: McDonald’s.
“Buy before too late!“
When Americans sell too energetically Germans find it a bit crass, loud, unpolished. I see in my mind’s eye a certain kind of television advertising in the U.S. Evenings. Six p.m. A local station. A local car dealership. The owner him-/herself, with his face up close to the camera, in a loud voice: “This is the greatest deal of the century. Buy fast, folks, before it’s too late!”
Or I think of the famous, and often infamous, television evangelical preachers of the 1980s and 90s, with tears in their eyes asking their audience in the church and in their living rooms to “speak directly to God” – via an 1-800 telephone number – and make a donation.
What Germans do not understand, and reject (often vehemently), is the caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) approach in the American business context. The difference between the German Auskunftspflicht and caveat emptor is dramatic and leads to significant misunderstanding and irritation.
What surprises, throws off balance, and can anger Germans is when Americans while selling their product, service, concept or idea only mention its strengths, even though the Germans sense, or even know, of its weaknesses.
They often notice immediately when Americans exaggerate the positive and either play down or leave unmentioned the negative. And if the negatives are mentioned, then as if by some magic they can actually be converted into strengths, if understood and managed properly.
Depending on how much experience Germans have working with Americans, the caveat emptor approach can lead to indignation. At a minimum Americans can be viewed as being tricky, clever, in some cases even as lying.
“Make an Englishman shit”
This is also a reason why it is anecdotes, if well told and timed, are enormously persuasive in the American cultural context. For Americans anecdotes are empirical. They are reality experienced, the opposite of theory, which is often seen as abstract and unrealistic, separated from reality.
An anecdote says: “I know what I’m talking about. I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. This is no theory, it’s reality!” Any American politician, for example, speaking in their legislative district or in the media about a difficult issue, such as the war in Iraq, will come across as especially convincing if they can claim to have visited that region.
Like aphorisms, anecdotes transport deeper-lying wisdom. Isn’t that what the Bible – Old and New Testament – does via one story after the other, communicate the deepest-felt, and therefore most complex, beliefs of a people, of Jews and Christians?
Isn’t story-telling the highest, the most sophisticated, form of activating (speaking to) the human imagination? Truly persuasive communicators in the U.S. plan very carefully when they draw on anecdotes. This is why we all listen so carefully when our grandparents tell their stories. They have the years of human experience.
The historians are in agreement. That Abraham Lincoln was the most masterful storytellers in American history. It has been written that he could hold audiences for up to four hours at a time.
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.
Serviceability is reliability
Reliability in the U.S. also means serviceability. No product is perfect. Service can make up for it. And service is based on a product’s serviceability. After sales comes service. Should be fast, easy and profitable.
From Ford’s Model T which came with a tool box, all the way to today’s call centers responding 24/7 via 1-800 numbers, to the service trucks on the road, Americans tolerate suboptimal reliability if their concerns are listened to and acted upon.
But wait. Earning profits on a product’s imperfection? The German engineer winces at this. Products should work as developed. The German consumer winces at this. Products should work as promised.