FAQHow does Magee Company serve its clients?

The first step is to help Germans and Americans understand the differences in their respective approaches. How can you optimally combine, coordinate, integrate, manage what you don‘t yet fully understand.

In seminars we address three questions: Where do we diverge in our fundamental approaches? What problems, but also opportunities, are created by these divergences? How do we minimize the problems and exploit the opportunities?

We apply these three critical questions to those issue areas where we have done our homework, our research, where we understand what is operating at a fundamental level when Germans and Americans come together: communication, agreements, persuasion, decision making, leadership, feedback, conflict, process, product, customer.

Currently we address ten topics. We have three additional which we can plug in now. We are in the early stage of analysis in three more issue areas: planning, business relationships, negotiating.

There are, however, additional issue areas on which we have not yet begun research. One is accountability. What we research is heavily influenced by the challenges our clients face. We do not operate as a research institution detached from our clients. Quite the opposite.

So, the initial step is to understand the cultural differences.

The second step is to then define what these differences mean for the everyday operations of a transatlantic team, project, program. If Germans and Americans diverge in how they define effective leadership, for example, what does that mean for the concrete interaction between team lead and team?

Our work, our support for clients, is aimed at application. We are not theorists operating in an academic ivory tower. If a German manager prefers to lead his team, made up of Germans and Americans, from Germany, at arms length, in accordance to German leadership logic, that has real, concrete, daily implications for the Americans in his team, located in America. That German team lead will be far less physically present than an American lead. Americans want to see their lead, need contact, maintain a high level of dialogue. An American lead moves constantly from the strategic to the tactical level. Is like a coach, constantly in contact with his coaching staff and players. Well, how does one do that from the other side of the Atlantic?

Such questions need to be sorted out, addressed, and answered. We do this in team-internal workshops aimed at establishing rules of engagement. First understand where the divergences in approaches are. Then – Step 2 – get clarity on what that means for everyday cooperation.

The third way in which we serve our clients is via customized workshops. It‘s not untypical for Germans and Americans to disagree on issues of critical importance. In fact, we believe that this is normal, par for the course, to be expected. And good. Germans aren‘t Americans. Americans aren‘t Germans. The great potential in our cooperation lies in the fact that we are not alike. What‘s to gain by those folks cooperating who think the same? Where are the synergies? It‘s through divergence, diversity, dissimilarities, that better, faster, smarter can be created.

In customized workshops we address those issues, problems, disagreements, bones of contention, which have to be resolved if overall efforts are to succeed. They are mission-critical questions which must be answered. Answered together. Choices need to be made.

We get involved not to advise on the substance of these issues. We are not experts in the disciplines: engineering, finance, manufacuting, supply management. Nor are we industry experts: automotive, chemical, electronics, financial services, pharmaceutical. Our expertise is focused on what is at play when Germans and Americans join forces, regardless of the discipline or the industry.

The expertise on the business issues is in the room, in the people we help support. Our job is to make sure that cultural differences do not impede that expertise. We want cultural differences to set that expertise loose, to free it, to enable it to excel.

So, in customized workshops we guide Germans and Americans to answers to their mission-critical questions. We do this indirectly, via culture, via business cultures.

For example, if Americans and Germans are in disagreement over process harmonization, which is common and for understandable reasons, our method is to say: „Folks, let‘s first get clarity about where you as Germans and Americans diverge in your fundamental process philosophies. Then let‘s talk about if and how you should integrate your respective internal processes.“

Why do we do this? Well again, it is difficult to integrate divergent approaches without first understanding how and in what ways the approaches diverge. First understand. Then apply.

A fourth way in which we serve our clients is via coaching. Senior level management rarely has the time and flexibility to participate in seminars or webinars.

And the topics we go into are of sensitive nature. So we adapt fully to their schedule. The dialogue begins face-to-face, then transitions to the phone, email. You meet when schedules allow, but if the dialogue is working, face-to-face is not an imperative.