The German term Strukturierung conveys the concept of structuring; logical and clear organization of topics or processes. It is culturally significant because Germans often insist on well-organized meetings and documents.
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Constant Info Flow
Information: For a close collaborative effort between customer and supplier (consultant, vendor, etc.) to function effectively in the American business context a high level of communication between the two parties is essential.
Information flow is guaranteed via short-term feedback between customer and supplier during the entire business relationship. This allow customers to modify their requests depending on changing situations.
Servitium
Serve: The English term service implies graciousness, helpfulness and to a degree selflessness. To serve is to be humble. Serve stems from the Latin word servitium, which meant the condition of a slave. Service, at its roots, involves one person serving another or several. It is inherently personal.
The term service in the context of American business involves the notion of servitium: to respond to the needs of your customer, to serve that customer personally and individually. But service also anticipates compensation: payment, customer loyalty, growth of the business.
Service is both personal and commercial. They go hand-in-hand. Impersonal service seldom leads to commercial success. Personal service without fair compensation is servitude. And, indeed, some business relationships are so one-sided that the one serving feels more like a slave than a free person.
Personal: Of, relating to, or affecting a particular person; done in person without the intervention of another; carried on between individuals directly; relating to the person or body; relating to an individual or an individual’s character, conduct, motives, or private affairs often in an offensive manner; being rational and self-conscious; of, relating to, or constituting personal property; intended for private use or use by one person. From Latin persona.
Helpful: Of service or assistance, useful.
Selfless: Having no concern for self, unselfish.
Humble: Not proud or haughty, not arrogant or assertive; reflecting, expressing, or offered in a spirit of deference or submission; ranking low in a hierarchy or scale. From Latin humilis low, humble, from humus earth.
Consensus via Dialogue
Precisely because it is so important to Germans to work in an independent, self-managing way, and because they usually have a clear picture in their mind of what the end result should look like, it is critical that customer and supplier reach as high a level of consensus as possible about what is to be achieved and how. All too often, however, the supplier simply asks for an okay from the customer about certain details.
When the details of collaboration need to be worked out, then colleagues from both sides sit down together and discuss them. Germans strive to work in integrated ways, including work processes. German customers and suppliers do their best to work as partners.
To clarify details is to address the how, whether it be a technical matter, how a given process is interpreted and lived, or how the organization is structured. Germans place great importance on clarifying as many details upfront as possible. They want to anticipate possible problems. Participating in and contributing to this upfront clarification process is critical to the success of customer-supplier relationships in Germany.
Abstimmen. Clarify, decide on, together; to decide based on voting; to bring things together, harmonize, agree on; to co-decide, to discuss with another person; to listen carefully and consider the other point of view, then find a joint solution; to establish consensus together.
Critical Loyalty
Capable consultants not only provide good advice, but they also denken mit, think with. With the client about solutions, ideas, approaches to implementation. Therein lies the added value. That is why consultants are paid. Mitdenken, thinking with, however, also means thinking independently, including correcting or contradicting the customer.
A good consultant is not an order taker. Instead she knows when to challenge the customer, when to point out what is best for the customer, even when the customer does not recognize it, believe it or want to hear it.
Criticism and critique are in general positive in the German culture. To accept criticism, though, is not easy for anyone. Criticism can be interpreted as disloyalty, even though constructive criticism is in many ways the highest degree of loyalty. Criticism points out dangers, identifies ways to optimize, helps to make difficult decisions.
Germans are a direct people, including how they communicate criticism. But they also see it as their duty, as their responsibility, to point out to their colleagues, boss or customer what does not or will not work. Discreet conversations under four eyes which address critical issues is what capable consultants do. These conversations are a sign of loyalty and trust.
Kritische Loyalität. Literally critical loyalty, or loyalty which voices criticism, which address critical topics.
Mitdenken
Mitdenken – literally mit with + denken thinking. With-thinking or thinking with. A very German word. There is hardly a German who has not heard this word repeatedly, from their parents, in school, from their driving instructor, or their boss. They all stress, expect, demand Mitdenken. But what does Mitdenken mean?
Duden, one of Germany’s most prestigious dictionaries, offers a brief but complex definition: „etwas denkend bei einer Tätigkeit nachvollziehen.” Literally: “something thinking during a task comprehending.”
Grammatically this formulation does not work in English. Its meaning, however, is: while you are performing a task, a job, an activity, be aware of how and why you are doing it, in the sense that you are recapitulating or reproducing in your mind how and why the task should be done in a certain way.
Duden also states: “nicht gedankenlos, sondern mit Überlegung vorgehen.“ This is easier to understand. Literally: “not thoughtless, but with Überlegung (consideration, reflection, thought, observation, deliberation) proceed.” In other words, think through carefully what you do while you are doing it.
A German online dictionary states: “think clearly about what is to be done; for this work we need someone, who can think-with; students should learn to think-with; we need young people who can think-with.”
Mitdenken is also defined as „etwas mit anderen Gedanken zusammen denken” – literally: “something with other thoughts combined think.” Meaning: to think about something while combining other thoughts with it.
Auftrag
Auftrag. A command, instruction, order, to complete a task, job, assignment; to order a product or service; an obligation, a duty. An Auftrag is given by a manager or a customer. The Auftrag indicates that someone will do something for another. An Auftrag can be rejected. They can be legally binding. An employee can assign herself an Aufgabe, but not an Auftrag.
Aufträge (plural of Auftrag) are foundational to any economy. Whether it is involves one colleague answering the email of another or one company building a production site for another, Aufträge are the lifeblood of commercial activitiy.
An Auftrag is at its core a request from a customer. Taking on the Auftrag signals that one will complete it to the best of their ability. The details are set in a purchase order or in a contract.
German companies report time and again that their Auftragsbücher, order books, are full, but that they cannot fulfill all of them due to a shortage of trained personnel, often technicians and engineers. Taking on an Auftrag is no guarantee that one can complete it.
This also means a certain degree of risk for the Auftraggeber (Auftrag giver), the customer, that the supplier will not supply the end product on the agreed upon date, or at the expected level of quality. In many ways it is also unimportant who completes the task. In contrast to an Aufgabe, an Auftrag is impersonal, business-like, unemotional. The relationship is all about the execution of the job. No more, no less.
A self-identification with the task is secondary. Only the final results count. Is the Auftrag completed, rejected or not doable, then it automatically no longer exists.
Balance customer and supplier
Augenhöhe. Literally eye-level. To be at eye-level with each other. Germans reject any form, even the slightest indication, of a one-sided customer-supplier relationship. One-sided in the sense of imbalance, a working relationship in which the one is master, the other slave.
For Germans, implicit in any business relationship is a transaction, an exchange, a trade. A problem is solved. A need is satisfied. A lack of expertise in a particular area, on a specific question, is provided from the outside. Manufacturing needs better technology. The company needs advice concerning tax law. Another company needs help with marketing, logistics, personnel, product packaging, research and development.
The list of possible business transactions is infinite. People, teams, companies collaborate, work together, because one has something the other needs, and will exchange it for something of value.
Germans are very sensitive to maintaining balance in any form of collaboration. The German customer wants in a supplier, service provider or consultant: someone who insists on working with them at eye-level, who is self-confident, knows her own worth, and rejects any working relationship which can lead to an imbalance.
The German customers want the best possible work results, input, support from suppliers, service providers, and consultants. They do not want those who react immediately to each and every desire, idea, or spontaneous thought they might have, as if the client had issued a purchase order.
Often the customer is not in a position to recognize what is best for them. And every customer is, in turn, a supplier, service provider or consultant to another company in another business relationship. That’s what business means. Today customer, tomorrow supplier.
The Germans would far more prefer to consult than to serve. Consulting is knowledge- / expertise-based. To give advice. Two parties standing at eye-level to each other. Balance. Listen, discuss, decide, act. The one side pays for it. Of course. But for the Germans, the customer is never king. And the supplier, service provider, consultant is never slave.
Autonomy !
Autonomie. Autonomy. Greek autonomía, independent, free, self-determining; acting based on free will.
Autonomy has a negative connotation in the German culture. Those who demand their autonomy are often seen as being uncooperative, as wanting to be totally free, not connected, not tied to or related to others.
To be autonomous in Germany sounds like not being connected to the whole, not belonging, rejecting it. The term autonomy is often used in a political context. Alarm bells go off in the German head when groups demand more autonomy. A well-known radical group on the left refers to themselves as the Autonomen.
On the other hand, institutions such as universities often seek more autonomy from state regulation. In that sense autonomy stands for independence, self-reliance, and transparency. There is a very fine line in the German culture between autonomy and independence.
Dienen
As is the case with many English terms, the Germans prefer to use the word service instead of dienen. The term dienen can be traced back to the 8th Century, when it meant runner, messenger, serf. Dienen in today‘s German means to serve, to be helpful, to be useful.
Dienen, however, also implies – and this is what Germans hear – subjugation, to place oneself below the person being served. Germans feel a loss of independence, personal sovereignty, autonomy, when dienen involves focus on the individual needs and wishes of the other person.
In such situations Germans sees themselves almost as slaves, as imprisoned, as unfree. They feel that their free will has been put on hold in order to serve the free will of the other. They no longer have the say over themselves.
Dienen, though, can have a positive meaning in the German context – namely when individuals freely choose to serve a common purpose, which is to the benefit of all, a greater good.
This all gives us a sense for why Germans avoid using the word dienen and instead prefer the English term service or the German-English combination Kundenservice, literally customer service. Germans have no problem subordinating their freedom when it comes to serving a purpose they believe in: Einer guten Sache dienen.
They do have a problem, however: serving exclusively the needs and desires of another individual. Such phrases as Ihr ergebener Diener, your loyal servant, or stets zu Diensten, at your service, have died out in Germany, and with these phrases the thinking behind them.