Despite a common language used in business (American English), despite the fact that many of the key terms used are very similar and therefore easily translated between German and English, despite fundamental agreement on the key characteristics of effective cooperation, Germans and Americans experience in their bi-national cooperation differences in thinking, working, approaching problems, resolving conflicts, planing, negotiating, organizing, and envisioning the future.

Sell Opel. Keep Opel. Overcapacity in the auto sector. For years now. Sell or keep. Either way, jobs will have to go. Complex. Paychecks, families, fears. The financial and economic crisis. Crisis for some, opportunity for others, a chance to exploit for again others. Some profess to understand, few do. Then elections. 2008. On [...]

I see a jacket. CBS News on the back. „Hi, I‘m John Magee. I know Berlin. Both sides. Also know German history and politics. My German is fluent. I can help out.“ From the next day until December 23, from early in the morning til past midnight, we covered events. Steigenberger Hotel around the corner [...]

November 1989. I‘m a graduate student in History and Government. Die Freie Universität in Berlin. In West Berlin. The Wall. Cold War. A thaw, but still cold. An American. 30 years old. This was 20 years ago. Events were developing rapidly.
May. East German opposition groups had accused the regime of election manipulation. Protests. July. [...]

October 16. Friday. Cool, drizzling, dark. Early bus into town to Bonn Hauptbahnhof. Then an IC (Inter-City) to Frankfurt. Not the super modern, super fast ICE (Inter-City Express) via Siegburg rechtsrheinisch (right or east of the Rhine River), but the slower, more relaxed linksrheinisch, hugging the left bank of Germany‘s greatest river, snaking in [...]

Processes coordinate complex, interrelated activities. In a sense, they make up the manual governing the inner workings of a company. I have listed below – in very simplified form – where I see key divergences between German and American process philosophies.
What does your experience tell us?
Success Factor
Germans consider processes key to the success of [...]

Hard factors. Measure, anticipate, control. Two dimensional. Man adapts to and harnesses the physical world. Atom bomb. Moon-landing. Life‘s genetic instructions. Objects, however. Coal can’t think. Cows can‘t revolt.
Mathematics, chemistry, biology, physics. The scientfic method. All have brought us wonders. Progress. I climb into a hunk of steel. It transports me to another continent. [...]