Doing business across cultures_5

CORPORATE CULTURE based interviews. This enables us to identify the common features and underlying constructs that underpin them. We are therefore able to apply clustering or factor-like analysis, to reduce these to a repre-sentative set of “golden” dilemmas, which are, in effect, the tensions commonly held by the senior management team. FREQUENTLY RECURRING DILEMMAS All scenarios for different transformations appear in practice. Based on our research and consulting, we now list the frequently recurring dilemmas for different possible combinations. For completeness, we show all combinations, although as can be expected and as indicated above, some occur more frequently than others. We also suggest ini-tial ideas on how each dilemma could be reconciled. Transformation away from an Eiffel Tower (Transformations 1–3) In many of our (organizational) culture profiles we see a shared desire to get away from the Eiffel Tower type of culture. Today, fairly highly-developed hierarchical thinking needs to become more egal-itarian and formalized sets of rules need to become guidelines in which people are empowered. There’s nothing wrong here, but this logic didn’t seem to work in the early stages of a process where the US-based semiconductor manufacturer AMD opened a plant in Dresden in the former East Germany. Could the Silicon Valley spirit of passion, time pressure, and doing the impossible with a limited number of people be brought to life in a region that lived for decades under the communist system? Here was a chance to put this commitment to the ultimate test. Would the formula work in this context? How would the different cultures work with each other? 119 BUSINESS ACROSS CULTURES A famous German (Eiffel Tower) to American (Guided Missile) dilemma is the distinction between solving problems by reasoning and logical insight on the one hand, or by empiricism and pragma-tism on the other. From the German perspective, the Americans were too often, in team meetings, discussing this or that initiative. They kept changing tack and trying something new, instead of keep-ing to agreed avenues of inquiry. They rarely spent any time alone thinking through their problems and coming to rational conclusions. The tension here is between the high-risk pragmatism favored by task-oriented Americans and the lower-risk rationalism favored by role-oriented Germans. From the German point of view, the Ameri-cans “shoot from the hip” without taking careful aim, whereas German engineers, coming as they do from expert cultures, like to solve problems by rational means. In extreme cases, the Americans might criticise the German engineers for “Paralysis by Analysis.” You don’t have forever to find solutions when problem definitions are changing quickly. The joke about centralized planning was that it spawned local improvisation on a massive scale because the plans were so rigid. The value that the AMD Dresden team strove to endorse was that of Systematic Experimentation. The systematic part was designed to appeal to German rationality and the experimental element to American pragmatism (and improvisation). What works pragmati-cally is retained. What fails is discarded. Rationality remains crucial in providing insights into what works and what does not. This holds true even more for painstaking systematic experimentation, and that provides an example of how to change an Eiffel Tower into a recon-ciled Guided Missile culture. It enabled AMD Dresden to beat Intel – for the first time in history – when launching the 1 GHz chip. 120 CORPORATE CULTURE Transformation 1 Current Eiffel Tower Ideal Guided Missile Typical Dilemmas Leadership Reconciliation: Management Reconciliation: Rewards Reconciliation: authority ascribed to the role versus depersonalized authority by task attribute the highest authority to those managers who have refocused their goals to the reliable application of expertise as a prime criterion expertise and reliability versus consistent goal-orientation around task make reliable expertise and long-term commitment part of the task description increasing their expertise in doing a reliable job versus contribution to the bottom line experts use their knowledge to fulfill very clearly set goals Transformation 2 Current Ideal Eiffel Tower Family Typical Dilemmas Leadership Reconciliation: Management Reconciliation: authority is ascribed to the role versus authority is personally ascribed to the leader leadership needs to understand the political aspects of the technical activities they manage. They become servant leaders of relationships. the power of expertise and reliability versus the power of politics and know-who focus crucial systems and procedures so they support the process of management 121 BUSINESS ACROSS CULTURES Rewards Reconciliation: increasing their expertise in doing a reliable job versus rewarding long-term loyalty members apply their expertise and fulfillment of reliable roles to the advantage of increasing the power and status of their colleagues. Transformation 3 Current Eiffel Tower Ideal Incubator Typical Dilemmas Leadership Reconciliation: Management Reconciliation: Rewards Reconciliation: authority is ascribed to the role versus negation of authority to hold the experts responsible for the reliability of their innovating output the power of expertise and reliability versus the power of learning around innovation decentralize the organization into more expert centers where roles are described in a very sharp way and aimed at learning and innovation. increasing their expertise in doing a reliable job versus intrinsic reward of self-development experts use their knowledge systems and procedures to fulfill clearly described innovation outputs. Transformation away from a Guided Missile culture (Transformations 4–6) The challenge is to find an approach that will be effective when the surroundingcultureisnotcompatiblewiththistypeoflogic.AsFons explained in Did the Pedestrian Die?, we remember an American man-agerofEastmanKodakwhohadlaunchedaverysuccessfulprogram in Rochester, New York. After launching the same formula in Europe he cried on our shoulders. He complained of the inflexibility of the French and Germans, saying he had done a whole round in Europe 122 CORPORATE CULTURE and within each of the countries many had seemed supportive. The Germans had some problems with the process, wanting to know all the details of the procedures and how they were connected to the envisioned strategy. The French had been worried about the unions andkeepingtheirpeoplemotivated,buthehadleftwiththeideathat all were agreed on the approach. When he came back some three months later to check how the implementation was going, nothing had been started in either France or Germany. Anyone with a little sensitivity for cross-cultural matters could have predicted this. Germans often believe in vision, but without the proper structures, systems, and procedures that make this vision live, nothing will happen. Germans have a “push” culture. You push them in a certain direction. They are not so easily “pulled” in a par-ticular direction compared to North Americans. This example demonstrates that transformations from one single corporate culture to another are not linear or one way only. Trans-forming away from the Guided Missile to the Incubator is one step in an oscillation that may then return to the Guided Missile – to deliver results. Thus it may be better to describe the ideal culture as a “Guided Incubator” in which the two are reconciled. Such cyclical transitions are discussed further in Chapter Five. Transformation 4 Current Guided Missile Ideal Incubator Typical Dilemmas Leadership depersonalized authority by task versus development of creative individuals 123 ... - tailieumienphi.vn