Working with Americans how to build profitable business relationships [Second ed.] 9780367196707, 0367196700

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The business world is in a state of turbulence crossing all boundaries. Yet America, despite it all, remains consistent in its unique way of approaching opportunities…an openness to ideas, a somewhat chaotic process of vetting them, and a hope that each will uncover a rainbow at the end. Working with Americans will help you decode this journey and give you invaluable insights on how best to participate successfully on it. —Gary E. Knell, Chairman, National Geographic Partners There’s never been a better time to arm yourself with this essential guide to transatlantic business practices. By explaining how to sidestep many of the common causes of misunderstanding and miscalculation, it cuts out the trial and error that bedevils so many new Anglo-American business relationships. It’s a treasure trove of clear advice from first page to last and, having lived and worked in both the UK and US, I can vouch for its relevance and accuracy. I only wish I’d got hold of a copy sooner. —Patrick Jephson, Former Chief of Staff to Diana, Princess of Wales Working with Americans is also Learning from Americans. This book is a fascinating journey into a business culture that values each person as a unique individual. This coupled with an ingrained enthusiasm and attitude that anything is possible has created a learning environment for the business world in how to truly understand the power of diversity in leadership. —David Allen, President, Pandora EMEA This is a must-have book for anyone wanting to work with and win business with American companies of all sizes. Expertly written with unique insights provided that will put you ahead in your quest for growth. —Brenda Santoro, Head of Global Trade, Silicon Valley Bank Working with Americans is an indispensable read for anyone looking for a practical navigational aid in building and sustaining successful business relationships in one of the most complex markets in the world. —Lee Turlington, Global Chief Product Officer, Canada Goose This is an essential how-to guide that should be required reading for anyone trying to win in the US. —Lord Stephen Carter, Group Chief Executive, Informa PLC

WORKING WITH AMERICANS

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nybody who has ever done business with Americans can testify that there are more differences than similarities between the US business culture and those in the rest of the world. Whether it’s values, etiquette, communication, influencing or negotiating, there’s a clear American style. How you go about building successful and profitable business relationships in the US should be guided by the many important lessons and insights offered in this essential reference guide. Authors Allyson Stewart-Allen and Lanie Denslow capture the current US business environment in this second edition, providing you with a deeper understanding of America’s business mindset, diversity and regions so you can confidently navigate this large, complex and profit-making economy. Whether new to working with Americans or an experienced internationalist, this book will serve as your ready reference for connecting with US colleagues, clients, customers or consultants. You’ll discover what drives American informality, schedules and the desire to combine fun with business. Each independent chapter allows you to dip into specific topics or sections that interest you. All are grounded in evidencebased research on cross-cultural working, behavioral science and leadership. It’s the ultimate guide for busy business leaders regardless of sector or company size.

ALLYSON STEWART-ALLEN is a renowned advisor, author, speaker and educator whose expertise in brand internationalization and localization is sought by leading businesses globally through her consultancy, publications, appearances, mentoring and corporate education. She has advised more than 200 businesses in 26 countries and is a frequent keynote speaker at international conferences. Allyson applies her extensive international consulting experience, MBA education and languages to the company she founded, International Marketing Partners.

LANIE DENSLOW  is a leading author, speaker and advisor on how culture shapes business practices around the world. She is the founder and principal of World Wise Intercultural Training & Resources, providing coaching and customized programs to enhance clients’ cultural awareness and ability to navigate a multicultural, global business environment. She has conducted seminars for global business leaders and organizations in the US, China, Germany, Russia and England.

WORKING WITH AMERICANS HOW TO BUILD PROFITABLE BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS Second Edition

Allyson Stewart-Allen and Lanie Denslow

Second edition published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Allyson Stewart-Allen and Lanie Denslow The right of Allyson Stewart-Allen and Lanie Denslow to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Pearson 2002 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Stewart-Allen, Allyson, author. | Denslow, Lanie, author. Title: Working with Americans: how to build profitable business relationships / Allyson Stewart-Allen and Lanie Denslow. Description: Second edition. | Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019028933 (print) | LCCN 2019028934 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367196707 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429203831 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Business etiquette—United States. | Intercultural communication—United States. | Psychology, Industrial Classification: LCC HF5389.3.U6 S74 2020 (print) | LCC HF5389.3.U6 (ebook) | DDC 330.973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028933 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028934 ISBN: 978-0-367-19670-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-20383-1 (ebk) Typeset in Helvetica by codeMantra

CONTENTS

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Foreword Introduction Acknowledgements

PART 1

BACKGROUND CHAPTER 1  THE TEA PARTY AND THE GREAT FRONTIER

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CHAPTER 2  O  PEN SPACE (WE’VE GOT LOTS) OR BIG IS BETTER

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CHAPTER 3  WE THE PEOPLE

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CHAPTER 4  EVERYONE KNOWS THE RULES OF THE GAME 47 PART 2

FOUNDATION CHAPTER 5  DO IT NOW

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CHAPTER 6  I’LL DO IT MYSELF

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CHAPTER 7  LET’S BE FRIENDS

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CHAPTER 8  WRITE IT DOWN

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contents

PART 3

BUSINESS CHAPTER 9  AMERICAN CORPORATE CULTURE119 CHAPTER 10  WHO’S THE BOSS?137 CHAPTER 11  IF IT’S NEW, IT’S GREAT: INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP153 CHAPTER 12  LOTS OF PLANS AND LOTS OF ADVICE165 CHAPTER 13  SUPERSTITION IS THE WAY183 CHAPTER 14  SEE YOU IN COURT…MAYBE191 PART 4

CREATING CONNECTIONS CHAPTER 15  WAIT YOUR TURN, I’M TALKING NOW207 CHAPTER 16  WHAT CAN WE SAY?219 CHAPTER 17  LET’S DO LUNCH233 CHAPTER 18  W  ORKING WITH AMERICANS – WHY BOTHER?251

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FOREWORD

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hen the first edition of Working with Americans was published in 2002, I described in my Foreword the bookshelves crammed with titles covering “how to do business with” almost every nationality but the US. I was delighted there would at last be a book that explained how to work with Americans. I’m delighted to welcome this new, updated edition to this volume, the first and most valuable insider’s tour of what’s need to be understood in order to be successful in the world’s largest economy. Having lived as an American expat in Britain for some 17 years, serving in various corporate capacities, including Advisor to the HSBC Holdings Board and later Vice President of Group External Affairs at Royal Dutch Shell, I view this book as required reading for everyone who has, or would like to have, American business partners, employees or colleagues. The authors’ invaluable insights facilitate understanding and save precious time and frustration in working with the “cut to the chase” approach of most Americans in business, and in life. Despite criticism, American-style capitalism remains the norm in even remote parts of the world, and business professionals can gain rich insights into the what, why and how of the US business psyche: that things often are exactly as they seem and that Americans usually do exactly what they say they’ll do.

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I’ve often wished this book had been available when I first embarked on my expatriate career; my life – and perhaps the lives of those with whom I’ve worked – might have been made easier with the knowledge of what makes Americans tick. Every American expat should consider sharing it with colleagues and every organization – business, philanthropic, governmental – with its teams to empower their effectiveness and promote their success in their US business pursuits. Mary Jo Jacobi

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INTRODUCTION

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ou might wonder why we decided to write this book about Americans in business. Isn’t working with US business executives just like working within any other culture, just with a different accent? In simple terms, no it isn’t. If you’ve worked with Americans, you already know this is the case. If you’re about to begin that journey, we hope this book will provide useful insights to prepare you for the American experience. And why us, you may ask? Because, as well as both being Americans, we have years of experience living and working in Europe. Californian Allyson Stewart-Allen (allyson@ intermarketingonline.com) has been in London for over three decades, and makes her living advising international and US companies wanting to ensure their trans-Atlantic forays are profitable. Lanie Denslow ([email protected]) lives in San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Her work advising individuals and institutions in the US, Asia and Europe has shown differences in business cultures do exist and understanding these differences, and similarities, is essential for success in today’s global business environment. When working in fast-paced, complex American business contexts, you probably wish “it could be easier”, and wonder when your American colleagues will behave in a “reasonable” fashion. This book is meant to help you understand that the definition of “reasonable”

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varies by culture; to know what drives American business behaviors; to learn what is typical, and thereby reduce potential levels of stress when you encounter business values and decisions which feel very different from those that would be the norm in your home business culture. As Americans and authors, we know it is impossible to describe the complete diversity of the US business culture within these covers. This is not that kind of guide. There are no “one-size-fits-all” explanations as people and situations will be different – influenced by family, upbringing, education and personal experience. But we hope we’ve gone some way toward demystifying the American approach to business, and at the same time, by helping you better understand Americans, they’ll, in turn, better understand your business culture too. Note to Readers: Throughout the book, you’ll see we’ve referred to the United States of America as either the US or simply, America. By that, we do not mean to imply that we’re only one country within the Americas: North, Central and South. It’s a matter of common shorthand for those living in the States to use these two labels for the country that is the focus of this book, and we mean no disrespect to our neighbors near and far.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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o list all those who encouraged me to write this guide for better understanding of Americans at work would be like giving an endless Oscar acceptance speech. Special thanks are due to Graham and Grace Allen, who have been, and always are, supportive, loving and insightful and without whose encouragement I’d be lost. I also owe a great debt to my parents, who taught me the value “hard work gets results”, how to use commas correctly and to appreciate the value of good writing and communication. I certainly owe significant thanks to each of my international clients, colleagues and friends (you know who you are!) who regularly engaged me in conversation about American foreign policy, business and cultural values which was instrumental in allowing me to crystallize my thoughts for this exposé. Others who have inspired and helped me include Mary Jo Jacobi, Dr. Peter Drucker, Philip Kotler, the news producers at Sky News, CNN and the BBC among many, many others. Allyson Stewart-Allen

That this book exists is testimony to the support, encouragement, advice and good humor of my family who have cheered me on throughout my journeys. Friends, colleagues and clients offered support, generously shared their experiences and provided introductions to people they knew. Strangers around the world responded and became friends. To each of them, I owe a debt of thanks. xiii

acknowledgements

My hope is that this book is valuable for you the reader, giving you insights that enable you build bridges across cultures, creating paths to working with people from different places, sharing experiences and ideas. More than enjoying successful business outcomes, I hope it leads to the creation of the special friendships I’ve discovered working across borders and cultures. Lanie Denslow

Our joint thanks to the open-minded and friendly team at Informa and Routledge – Lord Stephen Carter, Jeremy North, Amy Laurens, Alexandra Atkinson, Becca Shand, Sue Damm – for believing in us and this project, for being patient, answering our many questions with thoughtfulness and good humor. Their graciousness and encouragement at every step were invaluable! We also owe a significant debt to the many people who have touched our lives, informed our work, shared our journey – to all we say Thank You! Allyson ([email protected]) Lanie ([email protected])

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PART 1

Background

CHAPTER ONE

The tea party and the great frontier

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INTRODUCTION

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ho are they, the Americans? Where are they from? According to the US Census Bureau as of March 10, 2019, there are 328,549,164 people in the US.1 Most of them can trace their family origins to another country. With the exception of Native Americans, Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders and Alaskan Natives, we are a nation of immigrants. The attitudes and spirit, the hope and energy that propelled the first people to come, and that continue to attract people even now, are the foundations of the America we see today. A few words and phrases capture the essence of the country’s spirit: Independence, Curiosity, Equality, Change is Good, New is Better, Hard work, Abundance, Opportunity. In our lives, personal and professional, these words shape actions.

SPEED READ • The attitudes, not just the results of the actions of the country’s founders, are in evidence today. • America, the Land of Opportunity, is also the Land of Variety. The origins of the population can be traced to all parts of the globe. • Although the country can be considered young, less than 250 years old, it does have a history – one that influences the actions of its people today. • There’s no harm in trying. Americans embrace the idea that change can be a good thing and, even if things don’t work out as you might wish, you can always try again.

PICTURE THIS

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verheard in the corporate halls of British corporation: “It’s big, but so what, everyone speaks English, there’s that ‘special

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relationship’ with the UK, so it’s part hot and part cold, but how complicated can the market be?” The answer is – very complicated. With a rebellious history, a population representing the nations of the world, and an emphasis on independence, the Americans and their market can be segmented by age, sex, income, education, reading habits, even to blocks within zip codes! Complicated, multi-faceted, and yet, tied together by history and attitudes.

THE BIGGER PICTURE IT’S A NEW WORLD The US has been referred to as the “New World” in contrast to Europe, the home of the original settlers, the “Old World”. The idea of a place being the “New World” can be interpreted as it being a destinaton for a fresh start, an untouched place, one ready to accept everyone, a world that can be shaped in new ways, an implied promise. A place where you can realize your vision. Although there are many today who would suggest that this time has passed, that opportunities are limited, the actions of millions of others argue against this perspective. The continuing flow of immigrants suggests that, for many, America is still seen as the Land of Opportunity.

INDEPENDENT AND STILL YOUNG The creation of the British Parliament in 1215 is often marked as the beginning of democratic traditions. In 1776, 461 years later, the Declaration of Independence was signed, creating the US, a democracy that is a republic, giving a vote to its citizens with a constitution protecting the rights of all. The country, officially the United States of America, is still young. Its present configuration – a total of 50 states and the District of Columbia – was completed with the addition of Hawaii in 1959, less than 70 years ago.

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Contrast this with the longevity of England and France –the two countries linked to the founding of the US, who trace their histories back to the eleventh and ninth centuries, respectively, more than 1,000 years ago. A Los Angeles-based advertising executive, originally from the United Kingdom (UK), likens the US to a teenager. He says the country has all the qualities of a young person: boundless optimism, vast energy, confidence, certainty that their opinions are correct and a sense of invincibility. The US, which based on his description could be called a precocious youngster, thinks of itself as mature and wise, a leader of the free world.

WHO WERE THEY? THE PEOPLE WHO CROSSED THE OCEANS We think first of the settlers, referred to as Pilgrims, as being from the UK. America (or the original New England settlements) was, after all, a British colony. However, the founders represented a broader spectrum of Europeans: French, Irish, German and Spanish. Slavery brought people from Africa, and gold mines and the construction of the railroads drew workers from Asia. Although the majority of the early immigrants were Western European that pattern of immigration has changed over the years. As of 2015, 14% of the US population are foreign -born, compared to just 5% in 1965. Nearly 39 million immigrants have come to the US since 1965, with most coming from Asia and Latin America.2 If you travel throughout the US, it’s possible to find people from almost any of the countries of the world. As people still do today, when they come to a new country, the early arrivals tended to settle in specific areas, often near others from their country and culture. This created cities with concentrations of people from specific places, influencing the culture in each city. For example, Chicago drew people from

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Poland; Boston, the Irish; New York is known for Italians and Puerto Ricans, and San Francisco for its Chinese community. In some US cities, architecture tells the story of their inhabitants’ origins. The churches and buildings of Europe are reflected in the architecture of East Coast cities such as New York and Boston. Spain and Mexico are the inspiration for the West’s distinctive missions and haciendas, and Louisiana shows the influence of France in the colors of its buildings and the famous ironwork balconies found in New Orleans. When an American visits London for the first time, the city looks familiar: “It’s Boston!” or “It’s New York!” they say, seldom stopping to acknowledge which city was first.

LOOKING FOR A BETTER LIFE To understand what brought people to the US, it is useful to look beyond their place of origin and consider their motivations and attitudes. One point of view is that the people who founded the US were explorers, adventurers, independent thinkers and risk-takers. According to Cornelius Grove’s article in Grosvewell’s Knowledge Center, “some came to attain religious freedom. Some came for economic freedom or to escape an endless cycle of poverty. Some came in the hope of developing ideal political or social arrangements. Most people who arrived on the shores of North America were highly motivated to accomplish something”.3 On the other hand, it is worth considering that some may have been opportunists, thieves and misfits with nothing to lose, nothing to risk, by making the journey. However, you view them, it is reasonable to hypothesize that there was a common tie. They were all willing to take a risk, to act upon their belief that changing their circumstances and their environment would bring about a better life for themselves and their families. Today, we see that same spirit, as newcomers take great risks to make their way to the US.

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It’s OK, Ms. C. – I prefer to be the master of my own destiny.

CONNECTED TO THE WORLD The US, the former colony, has traditionally had a “special relationship” with the UK. It is often said we are two countries separated by a common language. Yet today, in addition to its relationship with the UK, the US has strong ties to multiple countries around the globe. Simply looking at its major trading partners tells the story of its worldwide reach. As of late 2018, its major trading partners included nearby neighbors and those from across the globe. The top ten include China, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Germany, South Korea, the UK and France.

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THE STORY OF HISTORY: THE REBELS AND THEIR TEA PARTY

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sk people what they remember about American history and many will tell you it started with the Tea Party. They may not remember exactly where this happened, or the exact sequence of events, but they generally recall the idea of citizens throwing tea into the harbor as an act of rebellion against what they saw as financial injustice. Today, one may argue that this was an act of urban protest no different than those targeted against globalization. But for American children learning the history of their country, this story is about freedom fighters, brave men and women standing up for their rights. Lost in history is the fact that this specific act was a protest against “taxation without representation”, only one element of a larger revolution seeking freedom and rights for each individual. Considered broadly, the American Revolution was a rebellion against traditional thinking and behavior, against the formality and rigidity of existing society and institutions. The new nation was created to be a land of freedom and opportunity for all, to give concrete form to the ideal that “all men are created equal”. Not only were people to be equal, they were to be free (with freedom defined broadly): to speak, to travel, to assemble, to bear arms, to be considered innocent until proven guilty. These philosophical concepts were codified in the Bill of Rights, further defined the Constitution and have been the subject of debate, interpretation and legislation for almost 25 years. History has been portrayed in many ways in many movies. For a clear statement of the idea of freedom of speech and responsibility, listen to Michael Douglas’s speech toward the end of The American President. It is a light-hearted movie that includes a powerful explanation of the ideal view American democracy.

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HISTORY BEYOND THE TRADITIONAL STORY Americans tend to see their history as triumphant. We tamed a wilderness and created a dynamic, free society with endless opportunities. We are a “melting pot” with arms open to receive the newcomer. Unfortunately, such a view tends to overlook some of the less attractive realities of our history. To begin, the land was not empty when the European settlers arrived. The continental US was populated by Native American tribes (Alaska and Hawaii also had indigenous populations). In some places, the meetings between the original inhabitations people and new arrivals, Pilgrims as they are known, were peaceful, but in others they were not. The battles over the ownership of the land, along with diseases brought by the settlers, decimated much of the original population. Not everyone who arrived in the US came freely. Those coming from Africa were generally brought as slaves and kept as slaves until the American Civil War (1860–1865), which ended the right to ownership of people. But the end to the right of ownership didn’t bring immediate equality between the races. Rather, it created the “separate but equal” relationship between whites and blacks, majority and minority. Although blacks were freed, they were still segregated in schools, in housing, in the marketplace. This division existed until the 1960s, with the emergence of the Civil Rights movement. Then, the battles that filled the nation were more often fought with words than with guns, with people marching in the streets to press their demands. The goal was not to eliminate slavery but to end the concept of “separate but equal”, to bring full equality to all minorities as well as the descendants of the freed slaves. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin,4 was enacted to bring that about. Unfortunately, that goal has yet to be fully realized and that the struggle continues. We can see that through the work of

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the Black Lives Matter network, what Time magazine called it a “new civil rights movement that blossomed from a protest cry into a genuine political force”.5 In an interview in the Economist, Alicia Garza, a co-founder of BLM stated, “What we are trying to do is point out the failings in the basic premise of the founding of this country, that there would be liberty and justice for all”.6 Americans continue the work to make the vision of the founders a reality for all.

HISTORY AND OUR PLACE IN THE WORLD When Americans shift their focus and think of history in terms of the world rather than their nation, they generally regard themselves as the guardians of the free world. Keepers of the flame of democracy. The contributions of the Americans in World War I and World War II are widely documented and celebrated, in books, films, songs and stories. We were the saviors, the “good guys”. We’ve attempted to forget Vietnam and the way it divided the country, and seldom discuss conflicts including the Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan. It wasn’t until the attacks known as “9/11” (September 11, 2001) that Americans began to understand that this positive view of themselves is not shared by the entire world. It shattered the American vision that we would always be safe and secure. Although American had been attacked before, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1941, leading to the US entrance into World War II, Hawaii was not the mainland, and 1941 was the distant past. The 9/11 attack, in New York, the financial heart of the country, was shocking in a way that destroyed the American sense of certain safety. Although the attacks were almost two decades ago, reminders populate our lives. It comes at the airport with the security check points and at office buildings where identification is required before entering an elevator to attend a meeting. Notwithstanding that there has been “home-grown” terrorism

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rather than attacks from outsiders in the US since that time, the echo of, 9/11, the loss of belief that we would always be safe, is still felt today.

WHO ARE THEY NOW? American society is varied and complex with issues such as age, education, income (yours, your family’s), values, experience and location (rural, urban, suburban) influencing attitudes, employment and lifestyle. Marketing companies study, dissect and discuss the American population looking for clues to values and resulting behaviors. Probably best known are the demographic groupings by age: Silents, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z. But marketers today look more deeply into social media and endless data to find the details of the lifestyles in order to target their consumers. A little research reveals multiple definitions of consumer segments. For example, Beverage Daily tells us there are six distinct winebuying consumer groups, which include Engaged Explorers, Senior Bargain Hunters and Contented Treaters7. Bankers, however, may be more interested in the cohorts described by the Financial Brand site described as follows: Delayed Dreamers, Ambitious Adopters, Success Driven Savers, Fiscal Futurists and Precarious Passives.8 The answer to “Who is my customer?” varies by who’s asking the question.

WE ARE ALL TOGETHER As we said earlier in this chapter, the US population brings together people from around the globe with a variety of languages, cultures, experiences, ages and preferences. But one concept binds us together and that is the notion that all are equal. Although the implementation of that idea continues to be challenging, it is the value we strive to achieve.

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From a business standpoint, it is important to acknowledge and respect this ideal as you engage with the American business community. Treat everyone with the same measure of respect. It’s useful to remember you often cannot tell if the person in casual clothes, even the ones wearing shorts and flip-flops, is responsible for photocopying or for negotiating contracts. Americans prefer not to acknowledge differences in status. For example, business cards with creative titles may not help sort out the hierarchy. Is the “Master of Mischief” the company founder or a recent hire? Also business cards will seldom include a person’s educational level. Your host may hold a doctorate in microbiology, but you won’t know that from their card.

THE AMERICAN DREAM

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distinguishing feature of the US is the idea and the real possibility of being able to move within the society – to grow up poor and end up educated, wealthy and well regarded. We could call that a short description of The American Dream, the promise that still draws people to this country. It is the idea that through hard work, and determination one can achieve financial prosperity. Well-known examples of this include former Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton (see more examples in Chapter Three). But it isn’t just about becoming famous, the dream comes true in many ways. It can be the seen in the person who moves from washing dishes in a restaurant kitchen to owning a restaurant or an administrative assistant who creates a finance company and takes it public. In recent years, since the Great Recession of 2008 (also known as the Financial Crisis), there’s been uncertainty around the idea of being able to accomplish one’s goals, realize the American dream. For most people working today, the Great Depression of 1929– 1939 was part of history – often the history of their grandparents.

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The crisis of 2008 was the major financial upheaval experienced by the multiple generations in the workforce today. Homes and jobs were lost. The unwritten compact between employers and employees that assured long-term employment (if you were a reasonably good employee) was broken. Career expectations were changed forever. Uncertainty became part of everyone’s career path. In the decades since, the US overall has recovered. As we write, employment is at the lowest rate in 50 years. However, not everyone, or every place has fully recovered. The impact of technology and global trade have also brought dramatic changes and challenges to the country. Yet, for all that, we see evidence of the return to the American optimism. A recent study revealed that across three generations believe the American dream can still be achieved. For this group, the components of the dream are slightly different from the original vision but one that reflects life today. These are owning a home, being debt-free and able to retire comfortably and being able to pursue your passion.9

GIVE IT A TRY

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n America, basic attitudes about work and business can be traced back to the country’s founders. As we discussed earlier in this chapter, people came to this country, and still come today, with the goal of a doing something, having fresh start. Part of the attraction of a new beginning was an attitude that continues today: that if matters didn’t work out as you wished at first, you could try again. A fresh start and change might mean a new job, a new city, a new marketing campaign, a new product, a new company that you create. An unspoken but critical element in the acceptance of this view of endless view of with new beginnings is that a failed attempt is really a learning experience. If you try and if something doesn’t succeed as

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hoped, too bad, but “no harm done” and you should “put it behind you” as you “get on with it” (moving to the next idea). Failure and disappointment should not stop your efforts. Every school-aged child has learned the saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”. Or, as the expression as evolved: Fail Fast, Fail Often, Fail Forward. Listen to the comments of a professional woman from France when asked what surprised them about life in the US: Changing careers is okay. It’s OK to fail and try again. Americans are so open, willing to experiment. It’s okay to try something new even in your 40s (or now in your 50’s, 60’s, or 70’s). You can start a company or go back to school. People will help you and support you. If it doesn’t work out that’s fine too. No one thinks less of you. In fact, they will encourage you and help you to try again.

WE WORK

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e often hear the expression “Protestant work ethic” to describe the American approach to work. It’s the idea that work is important and one must be serious, focused, and above all, hard working. That financial success was a positive and appropriate outcome of working hard. But Protestantism may have had a far wider impact, one that affects the entire world. According to Max Weber in the book Culture Matters, “Protestantism promoted the rise of modern capitalism by defining and sanctioning an ethic of everyday behavior that was conducive to economic success”.10 The idea that your success showed that you were leading a good life created an environment where it was acceptable, you could be proud of being a success in business. It was no longer your inherited title or wealth that marked your success – it was your own achievements resulting from your efforts.

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So if you combine these concepts – change can be good, experimentation is approved of, hard work is valued, achievement and success depend on individual effort and wealth can be displayed – then you have the basis for the strong entrepreneurial attitudes that are fundamental to the US still today.

Famous (last) words “Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal”. (Aristotle) “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”. (Winston S. Churchill) “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”. (Charles Darwin)

NOTES 1 US and World Population Clock. US Census Bureau. Accessed March 11, 2019. https://www.census.gov/popclock 2 United States Population. (2019-02-17). Accessed March 29, 2019. http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/united-states/ 3 Grove, Cornelius. “Why Americans Handle Time in Peculiar Ways.” Grovewell LLC Professional Knowledge Center. 1992. Accessed February 12, 2019. www.grovewell.com/pub-american-time.html 4 History.com editors, “Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Updated September 20, 2018. Accessed March 29, 2019. www.history.com/topics/ black-history/civil-rights-act 5 Altman, Alex. “Person of the Year the Short List No. 4 Black Lives Matter.” Time. Accessed February 12, 2018. http://time.com/ time-person-of-the-year-2015-runner-up-black-lives-matter/ 6 Garza, Alicia. “Open Future Black Lives Matter Is Not a Terrorist Organization.” The Economist. August 9, 2018. Accessed

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February 12, 2019. www.economist.com/open-future/2018/08/09/ black-lives-matter-is-not-a-terrorist-organisation 7 Arthur, Rachel. “The US Wine Market: Six Consumer Groups.” Beverage daily.com. Updated November 26, 2018. www.beverage daily.com/Article/2018/11/26/The-six-consumer-segments-ofthe-US-wine-market 8 “5 New Customer Segments You May Have Been Overlooking (and How to Hook Them).” The Financial Brand. April 25, 2018. https://thefinancialbrand.com/72142/ psychographic-behavioral-segmentation-models-in-banking/ 9 Hoffower, Hillary. “People of All Ages Define the American Dream the Same Way – but Millenials Take It One Step Further.” Business Insider. July 19, 2018. www.businessinsider.com/ millennials-baby-boomers-gen-x-define-the-american-dream-2018-7 10 Harrison, Lawrence E, editor and Huntington, Samuel P., editor Culture Matters, Basic Books, New York, 2000.

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CHAPTER T WO

Open space (we’ve got lots) or big is better

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INTRODUCTION

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eople are said to be the product of their upbringing and their environment. The very particular environment, the size and variety, of the US has had a profound influence on the thinking and activities of its people.

SPEED READ • Natural endowments have laid the foundation for the vibrant American economy. • The size of the US has shaped behaviors in a number of ways. • The abundance of natural resources and a general perception that there’s “plenty to go around” has led to Americans “win/ win” philosophy.

PICTURE THIS

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n executive with a Polish company visiting the US and considering expanding their business here told their US contact that they were surprised at the “hugeness” of opportunities just in California. Their observation wasn’t unique. Business people new to the US frequently express surprise at the variety and the size of everything, even the portions of food served in a restaurant. You start to plan a business trip to the US wine country and discover that you can’t limit your trip to California or Oregon. Today, wine is made in all 50 states. To thoroughly explore wine being made in the US, you must travel thousands of miles, through multiple time zones, and visit states as varied as New York, Washington, Hawaii, Virginia, Kentucky and Texas. (It may surprise you to learn that a highly rated méthode champenoise sparkling wine is made New Mexico.)

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THE BIGGER PICTURE HOW BIG IS IT? The US has a population of 328.55 million people and an area of 3,797 sq. miles or 9.8 sq. km including Alaska and Hawaii. That makes it approximately the size of China, slightly larger than Brazil and more than twice as large as the 28 European Union (EU) countries combined.1 While land mass is not the only factor that is significant when it comes to economic development, it is extremely important. According to Jeffrey Sachs, Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, there are four geographical factors that can influence economic development.2 America is well-endowed in all four areas. As noted, there is its significant size. Next, the entire continental US has enjoyed (historically) a temperate climate and provides an abundance of natural resources. Finally, there are extensive transportation routes. The country is bounded by oceans on both coasts and has navigable rivers, enabling a flow of commerce both internally and externally. Combining all these elements of geography, you have the foundation for a large and dynamic economy. To get a sense of the size, think about distance in terms of travel by air or train. How much time do you need to allow to travel for a meeting? By air, an hour from Los Angeles in Southern California takes you to San Francisco, in Northern California. In contrast, an hour by air from London takes you to another country. It takes approximately five hours to fly from New York to Seattle, about the same time as a flight from Paris to Moscow or Beijing to Shanghai. Although the US is not the largest country in the world in terms of physical size or population, it does rank first by other measures. For example: The US has the most airports (14,712) in the world.3 It is home to the busiest airport in the world: Hartsfield Jackson in Atlanta, Georgia.

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By nominal GDP, measured in US dollars, it is largest economy in the world (a rank it has held since 1871), with 2019 GDP projected to reach over $21.506 trillion. Following closely behind are China at $14.242 trillion US and Japan at $5,231 US.4 Even the states have significant economies. In 2018, California became the fifth largest economy in the world, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of $2,747 trillion surpassing the UK, at $2.625.5

UNITED BUT VARIED

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lthough we talk about, and think about, the US as one unified place, it is useful to look more closely at its makeup.

First, it is diverse from a legal standpoint. It is a country composed of 50 individual states. Forty-eight are contiguous in North America and one, Alaska, is also in North America, but without a shared border to other states. Hawaii is also physically separate but still connected legally and economically. Each state is unique with its own physical characteristics, population make up, government and approach to business. In addition to considering the US as a set of states, another way to grasp the similarities and differences of this extremely varied environment is to consider the US as a set of regions. Defining what is a region, however, isn’t always simple. How many regions are there depends on who (which government agency) you’re asking. For example, The Federal Reserve Board (or The Fed as it’s known), which oversees the banking system, has 12 regions. The US Office of Budget & Management counts ten. The Census Bureau, whose breakdown is most commonly used, lists just four regions. They are as follows, including major cities in each one: Northeast: New York, Boston, Philadelphia Midwest: Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati

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South: Washington, DC, Atlanta, Nashville, Dallas West: Seattle, Denver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Honolulu Other chapters discuss regional differences beside location. In this chapter, we treat the US as a united whole.

THERE’S LOTS OF ROOM

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he physical size of the US, how big it is, led to the idea that there is endless space, lots of room for people, and ideas to grow. This physical vision influenced American lifestyle patterns, and is deeply embedded in the US psyche. Described below are some ways in which you will see this as you work with Americans.

TIME ZONES There are six time zones, an indication of size and clue to some of the complexity associated with doing business here. (The six time zones are somewhat unusual even for large countries: There are three in Brazil, five in China but eleven in Russia.) The US time zones are identified as Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, Alaska and Hawaiian times. Think of arranging a call with people in major cities of the US? It can be a challenge: If it’s 8:00 am in New York, it’s 7:00 am in Chicago, 5:00 am in Los Angeles, 4:00 am in Anchorage and 3:00 am in Honolulu (8:00 am in New York would be 1:00 pm in London, 9:00 pm in Singapore and 7:00 am in Mexico City). How would you schedule a call that includes people in all those cities? To check the time before you start to schedule a call, you might check the meeting planner function at https://www.timeanddate.com/ which show a comparison of times city to city.

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SHOUT IT OUT! What is more famous than the image of the American tourist, in running shoes, on their phone, having what sounds like a private conversation that can be heard by everyone in the immediate vicinity? Americans don’t know they’re being loud, seen as rude. The CEO of a branding agency in California says, with a laugh, that he thinks when he attends meetings in England he’s considered the “loud funny American”. Big spaces, big voices. Children are taught to Speak Up!

PRIVACY, PLEASE, AND A PLACE OF MY OWN A 5-year-old child says to her grandmother, “I need some privacy, please” and shuts the door to her room. Americans value privacy, the ability to be separate, alone. This is a characteristic of their individualist culture where people tend to segment their lives, keeping relationships, especially business and personal ones, separate. Fortunately, the physical size of the US has allowed people to express this in their housing. By the standards of other countries, American living space is exceptionally large. Historically, as in European cities, people lived in apartments above the stores. A move away from commercial centers accelerated after World War II, with increased wealth and new highways, housing moved to the suburban areas. (Although by 2018, the reverse of this trend has started to appear. Space for new housing in the suburbs is becoming limited, commuting distances longer, more congested and public transportation scarce, so living in urban areas near retail or office space becomes more attractive.) However, for many, a house with bedrooms for every child, and a backyard for family barbecues is still a goal. Not only does a house fill an emotional desire, to put down roots, but it is also a driver of the American economy. Tax policy has been developed to encourage home ownership. The overall industry creates jobs and

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encourages consumer spending. In addition to the major purchase of a home, people buy things for their homes. If you have any doubts, walk through a Home Depot, Crate & Barrel, Ikea or WalMart. They’re all filled with items for inside and outside your home.

PERSONAL SPACE “You’re joking, aren’t you? This isn’t really my room, is it?” Overheard by a new US arrival at a Paris hotel. It’s always a shock to a US traveler, making their first visit to Europe as to how small the hotel rooms are, compared to those in the US. Americans’ expectations are for space, and lots of it, all the time. But it isn’t only the American’s expectation about the space they want in homes or hotels that can surprise people. Shawn Flynn, Senior Business Development Manager, Tech Code and Founder, Silicon Valley Successes, shared his story about encountering the American’s need for personal space. Shawn had recently returned to Silicon Valley after living and working in China for a number of years. He said, “I’d forgotten how large a bubble of personal space that Americans expect around them. I was reminded of that when standing in line at the grocery store near my home in San Francisco. The woman in front of me asked if I could please step back, stop crowding her. By Chinese patterns I was standing just where I should have been, close to the person in front of me, but for the California woman I was almost a foot too close.” He isn’t the only one to notice a difference. Saja Raoof, a San Francisco attorney, who moved to the US for college said at that time she didn’t think much about personal space. Now years later, when she travels overseas, she notices that people stand very close to each other during conversations and aren’t expected to apologize when they brush against each other on the street. For a culture that values its privacy and space, the change to openplan offices which began more than 50 years ago was a true shock. According to a 2019 article in Fast Company, the open office is

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still popular with companies, although less so with employees.6 For companies, it is often a cost savings and as a way to increase collaboration and communication between employees. However, studies indicate that hasn’t been the outcome. Today, the trend is changing with some companies adding back private spaces so employees can have a respite from the distractions of shared work space. Private space that isn’t private: The bathrooms may surprise you. They are much less private than those in major European offices. Rather than private rooms, there are stalls of metal dividers that do not extend floor to ceiling. If you walk in you can observe a row of feet.

BIG FOOD: ALL YOU CAN EAT In a country with a growing concern about an epidemic of obesity, and new restaurants opening with the promise to serve healthy, farm-to-table meals, we still see the popularity of Big Food. The US is the home to the hamburger called The Whopper, and the all-youcan-eat (for a fixed price) Buffet. This type of restaurant is so popular that you can find one in every one of the 50 states, and there’s even a website that will help you locate them when you travel.7 Portions in restaurants have been called “huge”, “generous” or “ridiculous”, depending on your point of view. There does not seem to be a small size of anything anymore, unless it is for children. Drinks come in medium, large and extra-large, At Starbucks drinks come tall, grand, venti or trenta at an amazing 31 oz.

BIG CARS: THE GAS GUZZLER A nation of drivers, of commuters, in a country with the world’s largest road network, Americans have a well-documented love affair with their cars.8 In California, a car is your status accessory, often more important than where you live or what you wear.

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A famous American image from the 1950s was a Cadillac with fenders that looked like fins of a fish. The car was both long and wide. Americans loved their big cars then and they do still today, even as hybrids and electric cars become more common. According to Jessica Caldwell, the executive director of data strategy at Edmunds, an auto-market research and review site, Americans are still opting for pickups and SUVs over (smaller) cars at a record rate.9 Those larger vehicles now comprise over 60% of the market for new vehicles in the US.

BIG BUSINESS

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mericans have a tendency to grow big businesses. At the beginning of 2018 two companies, Amazon and Apple each reached market valuations in excess of one trillion dollars. A number hard to imagine. But it isn’t just these two companies that are big. Of the Fortune magazine’s Global 500: World’s Largest Corporations 2018, four of the top ten, including number one, Walmart, were from the US.10 In the retail sector, Walmart is again the biggest with over 11,600 stores in 28 countries. The world’s largest restaurant chain is McDonald’s. Whether you are a Big Mac fan or not, it is the largest global food-service retailer with more than 37,000 restaurants in 115 countries serving over 68 million people daily.11

HOME SWEET HOME: IT’S ALL HERE

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he sheer size of America, the abundance of its resources and the ability to move freely have contributed not only to the economic growth of the country but also shaped the thinking of its people in ways that influence business today.

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Grounded in a history filled with images of openness, encompassing vast areas for exploration, Americans developed a highly optimistic point of view, a conviction that there were opportunities and plenty of everything for everyone. Americans believed that they had everything and then alternated between two different views of their relationship with the rest of the world: either that they needed no one at all, or they could and should care for the entire world. Historically, all the resources needed were available locally: land, fuel, water, room for people and room to grow food to feed them. America was virtually self-sufficient. Although this was never entirely true, it was a pervasive enough view to influence the perspective of the population. Today, this is clearly not the reality. But attitudes don’t change easily. Some Americans tend to hold on to their isolationist view that “we don’t need anyone else” even though the trade statistics prove otherwise. Despite the fact that Americans imported $2.9 trillion worth of foreign goods and services in 2017.12 Relatively, few of them traveled to where the goods are made. While Americans guard a vision of their founders as intrepid explorers, conquerors of the West, they have not been frequent travelers beyond their own borders. A powerful reason has been the size and variety of the offerings within the US. Thinking about a vacation? There’s plenty to explore at home. Skiers have lots of choices: Vermont, Colorado, Washington or California. Surfers choose waves in California and Hawaii. Museums and restaurants? You’ll find them in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Nashville and New Orleans, to name just a few popular destinations. Ocean beaches: take your pick, Atlantic or Pacific, or there’s the Gulf of Mexico. Hot or cold, city hotel or country cabin – it’s all available. Plus, travel in the US is relatively easy. You can fly, take a train, or drive. You don’t need to get a passport, learn a new language or cope with different money or customs. Home is sweet.

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THE SPIRIT OF EXPLORATION REVIVED? However, we are beginning to see changes emerge. According to an article in Forbes magazine, in 2017, 21.4 million passports were issued in the US, a historic high. As of early 2018, 42% of Americans held passports, up from 27% in 2007.13 The change came in part due to requirements instituted after 9/11 requiring passports for travel between the US and Canada or Mexico, the closest international destinations for many Americans. In addition, according to a recent study by Expedia & and the Center for Generational Kinetics, highlights the change in American’s attitudes with an increasing preference for experiences versus collecting “things”. They said, When it comes to where Americans are spending their money, travel is a top priority. The national study found that 57% of Americans are currently saving money specifically for travel. But this is even higher for Millennials, where 65% of which who say they are currently saving for travel.14

HOME SWEET HOME WORKED FOR BUSINESS TOO Businesses have traditionally been content to stay at home. Although international trade has always been part of the American commercial activity, for decades the majority of businesses enjoyed a national market that provided seemingly unending opportunities. The growing population provided plenty of buyers for your product or service. Common currency and increasingly similar laws encouraged commerce. There was room to expand. There was little reason to take on the complexities of entering another country. However, as the local markets became saturated, companies increasingly looked outside the US in order to continue to grow. Probably among best known are the food chains: McDonald’s, Starbucks, Pizza Hut and KFC, followed by Apple, Google, Nike

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and Amazon. Even though they were not the first American corporations to become global, they are better recognized as American companies than GE, GM or Citibank, to name three that were global before it was trendy. Today, emerging companies plan on being global as well as local as soon as they launch. Although the American market is still the #1 in the world, companies know it isn’t enough to be local – you have to be global too.

IT’S MORE THAN A PLACE, IT’S A BRAND

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brand began as a physical mark indicating ownership (for example, of cattle) or work completed (by a stonemason working on a castle or cathedral). Today, it can be both those things. However, today’s definition of a brand has evolved from something physical to an idea. When we discuss a brand today, we are talking about people’s “perception about a particular product or place”. What we think of, or about, a place we visit, a product we buy or consider acquiring. What’s our opinion of it?15 Today America, the US, is as much a brand, an idea that people like or don’t, as it is a physical entity. According to the 2018 Anholt GFK Nations brand index, the US was tied for #6 in most admired brands/ countries, down from #1 in 2015, well behind Germany, which now sits at #1. This index is compiled from interviews with 20,000 people, in 20 countries, asking them to rate 50 countries considering the following factors: tourism, exports, people, culture, governance, immigration and investment. These rankings matter because the image and reputation of countries can be a real deal maker – or breaker. How your country and nation is perceived by overseas audiences has implications for your success as destination, your economic development, public diplomacy and talent attraction.16 For the US, even with the fall from #1 to #6, the country still has strong attributes that attract people to it as a brand. Brand USA CMO Thomas Garzilli said: 30

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What (still) draws people to the US –are music, the variety of cities, states, towns, and the things that keep Americans here (mountains, deserts, rivers and the rich variety of cultures, music, food.) These are what makes our brand a place people want to visit. Brand America, Brand USA, even at #6 in a group of 50 countries, still has fans.

Famous (last) words “The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem”. (Walt Whitman) “America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large”. (E. M. Forster) “He has not spent his life badly who has passed it from his birth to his burial in privacy”. (Horace)

NOTES 1 “North America: United States”. Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook. Accessed March 14, 2019. www.cia.gov/library/publications/ the-world-factbook/geos/us.html 2 Jeffrey Sachs, “Notes on a New Sociology of Economic Development”, in Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington (eds.), Culture Matters (New York, Basic Books. 2000), 29–43. 3 “Countries with the Most Airports in the World”, World Atlas. Accessed March 14, 2019. www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-thehighest-number-of-airports-in-the-world.html 4 “The World’s Top 10 Largest Economies”, FocusEconomics. Updated November 8, 2018. Accessed February 14, 2019. www. focuseconomics.com/blog/the-largest-economies-in-the-world 5 Corcoran, Kieran, “California’s economy is now the 5th biggest in the world, and has overtaken the United Kingdom”, Business 31

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Insider, May 5, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/ california-economy-ranks-5th-in-the-world-beating-the-uk-2018-5 6 Schwab, Katherine, “Everyone Hates Open Offices. Here’s Why They Still Exist”, Fast Company, January 15, 2019. www.fastcompany.com/90285582/ everyone-hates-open-plan-offices-heres-why-they-still-exist 7 Myers, Dan. “The Best All-You-Can-Eat Deal in Every State.” The Daily Meal. March 8, 2019. www.thedailymeal.com/eat/ best-all-you-can-eat-deal-every-state-gallery 8 Levin, Nancy/ “10 Largest Road Networks in the World.” Largest.org. December 31, 2018. https://largest.org/technology/road-networks/ 9 Coombs, Chelsey. “Trump Isn’t Alone. Americans Love Their Gas-Guzzling Trucks Again.” Vice Money. November 7, 2017. https://news.vice.com/en_ca/article/434qd9/ trump-isnt-alone-americans-love-their-gas-guzzling-trucks-again 10 Global 500. Fortune. Accessed February 14, 2019. http://fortune.com/ global500/2017/list/ 11 Smith, Craig. “50 Interesting McDonalds Facts and Statistics (2019).” DMR. January 25, 2019. https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/ mcdonalds-statistics/ 12 “U.S. Imports and Exports with Components and Statistics.” The Balance. Accessed February 14, 2019. www.thebalance. com/u-s-imports-and-exports-components-and-statistics-3306270 13 McCarthy, Niall, “The Share of Americans Holding a Passport has Increased Dramatically in Recent Years.” Forbes. November 1, 2018. www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/01/11/the-share-ofamericans-holding-a-passport-has-increased-dramatically-in-recentyears-infographic/#4e26a9e63c16 14 “Generation on the Move.” Expedia and the Center for Global Kinetics. January 2018. https://viewfinder.expedia.com/wp-content/ uploads/2018/01/Expedia-Generations-on-the-Move.pdf 15 McLaughlin, Jerry. “What Is a Brand, Anyway?” Forbes. December 21, 2011. www.forbes.com/sites/jerrymclaughlin/2011/12/21/ what-is-a-brand-anyway/#6a36c93b2a1b 16 The Editorial Team. “Country Brands: 2017 Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Study Reveals Winners, Losers and Trends.” The Place Brand Observer. November 22, 2017. https://placebrandobserver.com/ anholt-gfk-nation-brands-index-2017-highlights/

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CHAPTER THREE

We the people

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INTRODUCTION

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s we said in a previous chapter, the US is big and diverse. That statement applies to the physical properties of the country as well as its population. Each region, each state and each city have special attributes and attitudes. Despite of all the diversity and differences, the people are tied together by their shared experience of being Americans.

SPEED READ • Most of the 328 million Americans can trace their family history back to another place. Immigrants built America. They worked in factories and fields. Created companies big and small. Whether they came willing or not, long ago or just months ago, they worked hard, built new lives and created the country that is the US today. • America’s regional differences show in many ways. People’s patterns of speech, accents and attitudes vary. People in Arizona don’t sound like their fellow citizens in Maine. The arrival of a Texan dressed in a cowboy hat and boots would be a surprise at business meeting in San Francisco. Fast-paced New Yorkers complain about the seemingly slow pace of their Southern colleagues. • Americans laugh or argue about their differences. Most of all, we relish what’s unique about our cities and regions. To name just a few: famous Boston baked beans, dazzling neon lights of Las Vegas and the stunning Mount Rushmore, a massive sculpture of the faces of presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt, carved into the side of a mountain in South Dakota.

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our New York colleague seems very different from your Los Angeles colleague. They both seem different from the folks in your Atlanta office. In the week you’ve spent flying around the 34

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country, you have been struck by their attitudes, the pace of the meetings and their hospitality – or distinct lack of it. Now, as you head to your next meeting in Chicago, you wonder whether it will be more like Atlanta or New York – or perhaps an entirely new experience. What’s with this country?

THE BIGGER PICTURE IMMIGRATION YESTERDAY AND TODAY Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. These moving words, written by poet Emma Lazarus, are inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty, located in New York Harbor. The statute itself could be called an immigrant as she (as we Americans refer to this huge sculpture) was gifted to the US by France. The words capture the idea of the US as a safe haven, a land where people could “breathe free” and realize their dreams. The US has welcomed people to its shores throughout its history. What isn’t as well known is that despite the welcoming words on the Statue of Liberty, the pace, and warmth of the welcome have varied. From the founding of the country until the late 1880s, the flow of arrivals was unrestricted. Everyone was welcome. However, as some of those who arrived earlier settled into their communities, experienced economic hardship, anxiety about job availability, attitudes changed. We can see that in the enactment of legislation in 1882 that limited immigration from Asia and again in 1924 with the establishment of quotas linked to country of origin. It wasn’t until 1965, with the passage of The Immigration & Nationality Act, that the welcoming attitude officially returned. Passage of this legislation began a period of steady immigration, focused on re-uniting families and welcoming skilled workers. For the US, its passage “ushered in a new era of ethnic, racial and religious diversity”.1 Yet, parts of the country face economic and employment uncertainty resulting in part from changes in technology and expansion of global 35

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trade. Against that background concerns exist that the abundance of America will no longer be available to all. Against this background, attitudes toward immigration are mixed, as they are in countries around the world. Some Americans point to the benefits received due to immigration and argue that immigrants enrich the economy and that immigration opportunities should be expanded. Others argue just as strongly that limitations on who may enter the US should be reestablished. The pattern of immigration, the warmth of the welcome to newcomers, which will exist for the decades to come is not yet clear.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? According to an article from the Pew Research Center, as of 2016, roughly half (46%) of the nation’s 43.7 million immigrants live in just three states: California (24%), Texas (11%) and New York (10%).2 If you think about their locations in terms of regions, about two-thirds lived in the West (34%) and South (33%). Roughly one-fifth (21%) lived in the Northeast and 11% were in the Midwest.

THEY MADE A DIFFERENCE Here’s a very brief list of well-known Americans with a shared characteristic: they are immigrants. • Madeline Albright (Czech Republic): First woman Secretary of State • Sergey Brin (Russia): Co-Founder of Google • Liz Claiborne (Belgium): Founder of the first woman-owned company included in the Fortune 500 • Albert Einstein (Germany): Inventor • Patrick Ewing (Jamaica): Hall of Fame professional basketball player • Salma Hayek (Mexico): Actress • Yo-Yo Ma (France/China): Cellist

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• Indra Nooyi (India): Former Chairman & CEO of PepsiCo, member Board of Directors of Amazon • Mariano Rivera (Panama): Award-winning baseball player • Levi Strauss (Germany): Founder of Levi Strauss & Co, the creators of Levi’s jeans • Hamdi Ulukaya (Turkey): CEO of Chobani Greek Yogurt

REGIONAL DIFFERENCES: SOME BACKGROUND

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e tend to think of the regions of country in terms defined by the US Census Bureau (see Chapter 2): East, West, North and South. We know of the early influence that shaped those areas. There were the French in the South, Spanish and Mexicans in the West, English, Germans and Eastern Europeans in the East and the North. However, according to the author Colin Woodward, there is another way to look the influence of early arrivals to the US. In his book, American Nations, he offers different interpretations of who these people were, the settlers, or founders of what he counts as 11 rival regional cultures of the US (which took in parts of Mexico and Canada).3

According his research, New York, founded by Dutch settlers, was always a commercial hub, destined to be the city it is today.4 The area he calls the Left Coast takes in the most westerly part of California, running all the way into Alaska and founded by “merchants, missionaries, farmers, prospector, and fur traders”. The melding of these groups over the years created an environment that was the “birthplace of the modern environmental movement and the global information revolution”.5 The Midlands (composed of areas of 11 states, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, Missouri, Ohio,

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Indiana, Illinois, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas) was founded by English Quakers, and later joined by people of German descent. “Midlanders believes society should be organized to benefit ordinary people”6 with generally moderate political views. Read through Woodward’s book to get his complete analysis of these American Nations. For us, it is reminder that US is big, diverse and complex and, there are many ways to explain the influences that created the country as it is today.

BUSINESS ISN’T CONFINED TO ONE REGION

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he business of America is business, as the saying goes. But that doesn’t mean business is done the same way everywhere.

There are many commonly accepted regional traits. Here are some other observations about the variety of how business is conducted across the US. Alexander Poels, LL.M., international lawyer and partner at a leading European law firm who frequently works in the US shared the following comments. I believe each region in the US, and even each major financial/ business hub, has its own culture and specificities. It is difficult to compare cities, but generally speaking, I notice some major differences between the East Coast and West Coast, where cities such as Chicago and Denver have features of both East and West Coast. The main differences between East Coast and West Coast are as follows: • The way of communicating on the East Coast is much more direct, and what people say is what they mean; they will also generally say what they think, even if it is negative or may lead to a deal not going through. On the West Coast, people are

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usually more nuanced and diplomatic; this gives (to Europeans) the feeling that West Coast people are friendlier and more open; however, this lack of directness can be detrimental when negotiating deals and partnerships. • It is clear that the outdoor culture on the West Coast is reflected on the way business is conducted: it is not uncommon to have discussions on the golf course, in the outdoors, during hiking trips or during barbecues. On the East Coast, indoor venues are favorites (pubs, restaurants, hockey/basketball arenas, etc.). This difference is also manifested, for instance, in dress code: The West Coast is generally speaking more casual and focused on comfort, whereas the East Coast is more formal and focused on appearance. • When planning, meetings need to be firmly fixed in on the calendar much more in advance on the East Coast than on the West Coast; once confirmed and fixed, there is no more flexibility on the East Coast. On the West Coast, meetings remain pending usually until a couple of days before the intended meeting date. • Looking at particular cities: In the center of the US, I find Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland to lean toward an East Coast culture, whereas Denver, St. Louis and New Orleans to lean toward a West Coast culture. An award-winning digital strategist, S.C. Stuart, from the UK, observed: New York is all fast decisions and firm handshakes; while LA wears business casual and Monday greetings are always “what did you see this weekend?”

SOME AMERICANS SAY The pace of business in New York can seem frantic when compared to Kansas City or Sacramento. Ask someone from Los Angeles what their local food is and they’re likely to tell you where to get the best taco or burrito. In Atlanta,

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they’ll tell you where to find shrimp and grits, and in Kansas City they’ll rate the barbecue joints. Texans are also go-getters, and are often seen as showy, eager to impress with big ranches, big cattle, big oil wells. Texas is big (bigger than France, Germany or Japan). Californians is where you’ll find Soul Cycle and yoga fanatics, are thought to be fitness-obsessed. It’s assumed that every waiter in Los Angeles is an actor waiting for a part or writing a script for a movie or TV show. In the Pacific Northwest, home to Amazon and Microsoft, hard work is the norm, but outsiders are sometimes suspect. Transplants to Washington and Oregon from California report sightings of bumper stickers that shout California Sucks.7 In the South, one can still find an unhurried, way of life. Hospitality is generous and the speech is slow. Don’t be surprised to be greeted as “ma’am” or “sir,” or hear “Y’all come back” when a meeting ends. Personal relationships are highly valued, and business often involves food and lengthy dinners. Some say the most “normal” Americans hail from the heartland of the Midwest. This is flat farm country, where “the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye”, as the song from the musical Oklahoma goes. But there are also booming, powerhouse cities like Chicago, home to the nation’s largest commodities exchange and a major financial and cultural center. In the distinctly Midwest approach to business, your word was your bond. Bostonians can be preppy and formal. There are even differences within individual states. Houston is more freewheeling – home of the energy industry – while Dallas, sometimes known as Silicon Prairie, is home to banks, technology companies and transportation (home to Southwest airlines). The once-quiet Austin (Silicon Hills) is home to tech companies and

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South by Southwest (SXSW) an annual music, media and film festival that welcomed over 75,000 people from 102 countries in 2018.8

TECH IS EVERYWHERE No longer do tech firms exist just in Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco, or along Route 128 in Boston. Today, tech centers are appearing in every region. These are places where innovative companies gather, investors search for opportunities to fund new ideas and skilled workers are available to staff the start-ups. Don’t be surprised to find opportunities from Seattle to Chicago, Raleigh, to Miami. Some places have been given creative names, following the model of the name for the San Jose/Palo Alto/Mountain View area: Silicon Valley or simply “The Valley”. Look for innovation (covered in Chapter 11) in some of these places too: • Silicon Mountain: Denver, Colorado • Silicon Hills: Austin, Texas • Silicon Prairie: Kansas City, Kansas; Dallas, Texas • Silicon Beach: Santa Monica, California • Silicon Slopes: Salt Lake City, Utah

FOOD IS REGIONAL TOO, OR WHAT YOU EAT DEPENDS ON WHERE YOU ARE

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he influence of the founders shows up not just in how we talk or dress, but also in our kitchens, restaurants and as part of our holiday celebrations. The national holiday most closely associated with special foods is Thanksgiving. Celebrated on the third Thursday of November each year, it’s a time for family gatherings and sharing of traditional foods, which vary according to family and place.

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According to American lore, the first Thanksgiving dinner was held in 1621 as a joint celebration between Plymouth settlers and the local Wampanoag Indians.9 Although there are questions about the actual menu, a cooked turkey is the food most often associated with this holiday feast. How it’s prepared (roasted, fried, barbecued) and other dishes are served vary from family to family, region to region. Here’s what you might find on the Thanksgiving table as you travel around the US.10 • New England: Creamed onions and stuffing with oysters • New York: Manicotti or lasagna • Northeast: Fresh cranberry relish with orange zest • South: Sweet potato or pecan pie, macaroni and cheese, collard greens • Midwest: Green bean casserole, German potato salad • West: Sourdough bread stuffing with kale and dates • Pacific Northwest: Mushroom gravy, cranberry sauce with pinot noir • Hawaii: Okinawan purple sweet potatoes, spam fried rice

OLD, YOUNG AND IN BETWEEN

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e can look at the US population in multiple ways not only by where you or your grandparents (or great grandparents) came from. For businesses selling products and services, age is an important predictor of possible future sales.

According an article in Forbes, The US Census Bureau projected that by 2035, less than two decades from now, older people, considered those over 65, will outnumber children.11 This will be a first in the US. Two reasons for this shift are that people are living longer and they are having fewer children. Although it is of concern in the US, the aging of a population is a worldwide issue. As old as the US people will be in 2050, this

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country will not have the oldest population. That ranking will belong to Japan, followed by South Korea, Germany and China. The youngest population, although older than they are in 2018, will be in countries in Africa. The aging of the populations of the countries creates a variety of challenges. Discussions today focus on shortage of workers to provide goods and services for the aging population, increased demands on health care systems and fewer workers to pay into the social security system to provide income for those who are retired. Unfortunately, there don’t appear to be any easy and quick solutions. However, issues about age are not limited to the matter of the impact of an aging population on the resources. Business today is also concerned with the fact that there is a wide variety of ages, spanning five generations in the workforce in some companies there is a gap of 50 years between the oldest and youngest members of their staff. Researchers have divided the working population into five groups each with specific values, experiences and attitudes. The following are breakdown based on birth year of those in each cohort12: Silents: before 1945 Baby Boomers: 1946–1964 Gen X: 1965–1980 Millennials: 1981–1996 Gen Z: 1997 and after (projected to be the biggest group, even larger than Millennials) An important distinction between the groups is their level of technical fluency. Gen Z members are digital natives, always connected. Silents, Boomers and Gen X members have had a steep and often challenging learning experience as all the technology has been new for them. Millennials, according to The Economist, are “the first to be fully at home in the digital world, yet also the last to remember doing research projects in a physical library”.13

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Famous (last) words “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”. (Margaret Mead) “America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination, and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand”. (Harry S. Truman) “Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless”. (Thomas Edison) “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers”. (Pablo Picasso)

NOTES 1 Zeitz, Joshua. “The Real History of American Immigration.” Politico Magazine. August 6, 2017. www.politico.com/magazine/ story/2017/08/06/trump-history-of-american-immigration-215464 2 Bailik, Krisent, Gustavo Lopez, and Jynnah Radford. “Key Findings about US Immigrants.” November 30, 2018. www.pewresearch.org/ fact-tank/2018/11/30/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants 3 Woodward, Colin, American Nations (London: Penguin Books, 2011). 4 Woodward, Colin, American Nations, 7. 5 Ibid., 11. 6 Ibid., 7. 7 Martichoux, Alix. “They Do Not Like Californians’: How the Pacific Northwest Is Treating Transplants”, SFGate. Updated August 2, 2018. www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/move-bay-area-topacific-northwest-oregon-boise-13120449.php 8 “South by Southwest Fast Facts”, CNN US, CNN library. Updated November 28, 2018. www.cnn.com/2013/09/13/us/south-bysouthwest-fast-facts/index.html 9 History.com editors. “Thanksgiving 2018.” History. October 27, 2009. Updated March 15, 2019. www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving/ history-of-thanksgiving 44

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10 Fantozzi, Joanna. “What Thanksgiving Dinner Looks Like in 16 Regions Across the Country.” Insider. November 13, 2018. www.insider.com/ regional-thanksgiving-dishes-us-2017-11 11 Jefferson, Robert Seaton. “Older Adults Projected to Outnumber Children for First Time in U.S. History.” Forbes. March 19, 2018. www.forbes.com/sites/robinseatonjefferson/2018/03/19/olderadults-projected-to-outnumber-children-for-first-time-in-u-shistory/#1ef62a395ab2 12 Fry, Richard. “Millennials Are the Largest Generation in the U.S. Labor Force.” Pew Research Center. April 11, 2018. www.pewresearch.org/ fact-tank/2018/04/11/millennials-largest-generation-us-labor-force 13 Rauch, Jonathan. “The World in 2019 Generation Next.” The Economist. Accessed February 14, 2019. https://worldin2019. economist.com/millennialsvboomers.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Everyone knows the rules of the game

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INTRODUCTION

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o do business in any country, you have to understand its culture and values. Americans are, generally, a straightforward group, which is especially helpful when trying to work out what makes them tick. True to the declarations of the national constitution, there are three things held dear: life (creating the life one envisions for oneself), liberty (having control and freedom about the work one does) and the pursuit of happiness (following your dreams and having sufficient money to realize your vision). What is astounding is the consistency of the business values in the US today – stable for decades – flavored with the national values and cultures brought by the waves of immigrants starting their new lives in the country.

SPEED READ • Everyone in the US knows that “time is money” and that’s one reason everyone is in a hurry all the time. Everyone knows that “the early bird gets the worm”. • Everyone also knows that what enables business achievements to be open to all is the value Americans place on equality, freedom and the meritocratic distribution of the fruits of their labors. There are a variety of values and attitudes which you should be aware of when considering the ways business is conducted in the US, some of which are laudatory, some of which are surprising, annoying even unattractive.

PICTURE THIS

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hose people in Switzerland always seem to be taking vacation, having a long weekend, off on some special holiday” – comments made by American working with a company that had

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offices in Zurich. The fact that the Swiss now average 5.1 weeks of annual leave can be shocking to an American.1 How can we get things done when they’re always gone and never check in while they’re off?

THE BIGGER PICTURE

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mericans generally believe that if you really want to pursue a business idea, it’s possible to make it happen, and it’s even possible you’ll make good money trying. How will you recognize this? Because no matter how ludicrous an idea you present to your American boss or colleagues, it’ll be given time and treated with respect. And we know from the history of business successes in the US – some of the seemingly wackiest ideas really make it to the big time. Who would think there’s a market for false eyelashes that light up, bacon-flavored dental floss or a giant watermelon slicer? Yet those are just three of the dozens of products to be found on Amazon. Your idea may be weird, but somewhere there’s a customer. The downside of this positive and optimistic outlook, however, is that those who raise concerns or reservations are sometimes viewed as negative, and unhelpful. Want to raise concerns? Tact and well-structured, objective arguments against something that seems outrageous will go a long way toward avoiding having your comments ignored.

YOU CAN DO IT!

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his phrase, reflecting the meritocratic, “all men are created equal” ethos that runs through the business culture. People really do believe that even those from the most humble beginnings can become business success stories. It isn’t unusual to find an example of a “rags to riches” story in a major business publication. A recent article in The New York Times article titled “How the Slice Joint Made

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Pizza the Perfect New York City Food”, includes one of those stories not from decades ago, but from 2019. This story is about John Kambouris, who immigrated to Washington Heights in 1965 from a small Greek island. “I had $10 in my pocket”, he said from behind the counter of Pizza Palace, which he’s owned since 1979. “I love what I’m doing…making pizza that people want. I’ve put three kids through college off this shop”.2

WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER

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ompanies work to create an environment that encourages the idea that everyone’s ideas and opinions matter.

There are subtle ways to communicate the idea that “we’re all in this together” as equals. Calling the boss by her first name, washing your own coffee cup regardless of your job title, not listing academic qualifications on business cards are all indications of the value placed on the idea of equality at work and the desire for equal treatment.

A WIN/WIN APPROACH

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his is one of the best and most productive approaches to most business opportunities, since it works on the basis that both parties to a business deal emerge victorious. The rules of the American business game have been clear: make as much money as you can, as fast as you can. Notwithstanding the increased emphasis on the need for companies to be socially responsible, making a profit is still the driver. This approach perhaps reflects the long held view of endless abundance, the idea that we can continue to make the pie bigger, with benefits for all. It’s apparent in the language of business negotiations, with phrases such as “how can we both make this work?” and “we’re really excited about working with you on this!” The downside of this approach, however, is the assumption by Americans in business that cash is the universal motivator and language of 50

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business. This focus on the bottom line, rather than on developing and sustaining working relationships, can be seen as one of the less appealing aspects of working with Americans.

LET’S MAKE A DEAL

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mericans, as we’ve said before, are in a hurry. They value time and what they see as efficiency. One area where that is revealed in their focus on Doing the Deal without first building relationships and getting to know the other parties to the transaction. This is apparent when beginning negotiations with your American colleagues who may neglect to offer you tea or coffee since the transaction is foremost in their mind. The small talk that comes with relationship building is sometimes saved for the end of a meeting or the negotiations rather than being included as a necessary opening step. After all, “time is money” and we don’t want to use up too much of your time – we’ll get to know you while we work together. A completed transaction not only gives more immediate rewards (a high return on time) but also deliver short-term positive commercial results at a fast pace. A comment from an attorney based in Eastern Europe underscores this reality: Business in the US is very short-term and result driven. Unlike in many places in Europe where we work along a long-term pattern and process driven business culture, US approach to business (even when a foreign investor starts business in the US) is very result driven.

COMPETITION

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mericans are competitive and value competition. There is a shared understanding that competition raises the stakes of the game, and that winning brings sweet rewards. It is akin to playing tennis with a better player because you know you rise to their level. 51

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American business language often looks to competitive sports for references: slam dunk, home run, left field. The love of rankings is an indicator too of the spirit of competition that exists in the business world: The Fortune 100, The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America, The Best Bosses, The Best Business Schools, One way you can recognize this focus on achievement is by the display of trophies, diplomas, sports medals and awards in the offices of your US colleagues, demonstrating their love of competition and reinforcing the belief that hard work pays off.

FAIL FAST/FAIL OFTEN/FAIL FORWARD

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nother aspect of the business culture is the idea that you can try something new and that if it doesn’t work, you can try something else – just pivot in a new direction. This perspective has been part of the American ethos since its founding. Every child learns the expression: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. We’ll see how this attitude has contributed to the ongoing innovative spirit of the US discussed in Chapter 11. As Alexander Poels, LL.M., international lawyer and partner at a leading European law firm who works with American firms commented, “Failing in the US is more accepted than in many places in Europe, where if you fail you’re done forever. Not so in in the US”.

LIVE TO WORK

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enerally, your occupation defines who you are and gives you branding and positioning, Renowned for the 60-hour week, Americans in the world of business relish the satisfaction that comes from a good day’s work, something can be traced back to the Puritan founders. Their emphasis on the value of work, that the accumulation of wealth was a sign of God’s favor, might help you reach heaven, made a lasting imprint on American values and business. 52

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YOUNG AT HEART

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he aspiration to look and stay young can be seen in a general enthusiasm for attending training programs and learning new and better ways of doing the job, regardless of age. This reflects in part the expectation that today’s jobs may disappear, that everyone will have multiple careers and that life-long learning, both on and off the job, is a necessity. Today’s workforce combines both young and old, spanning multiple generations often ranging from early 20s to early 70s, almost a 50-year difference in ages. One of the reasons for the range of ages is that mandatory retirement is illegal in the US except for certain professions like airline pilots, fire fighters, and air traffic controllers. While some companies and professions encourage retirement, often workers prefer to continue. For some it’s or the pleasure of working, for others for financial necessity. Few companies provide have pensions and additional earnings increase the payout from the Social Security system. Even with this range of ages within a company, the team building events traditionally are youthful: hot air ballooning, kayaking, even rock-climbing. However, according to a human resources consultant, more companies are looking beyond just taking people outside for physical activities. Instead, they are selecting activities such as cooking challenges or scavenger hunts using technology – seen to ways to foster inclusion, collaboration along with competition.

YOU’RE FROM WHERE?

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s we discussed in Chapter 2 and will explore again in Chapter 9, Americans are known for being somewhat insular, focused on opportunities within the very large and varied US market. As a result, they are often without a clear understanding of other national and business cultures. Their limited knowledge comes in part from a lack of time to explore the world outside its borders. 53

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Vacation time is short, compared to many parts of the world, and there is no legal requirement for companies to provide paid vacation time for employees. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 76% of workers in private companies (83% of the total workforce) received paid vacation time off and it takes up to five years to receive even 15 days off.3 Combined limited time with distance to travel to another country and abundance of vacation options within the US, Americans tend to stay local for their holidays. The impact of that means that your American counterpart is likely to know less about your country and business culture than you already know about theirs – partly as a result of the extensive distribution of American TV, films and books. This lack of knowledge, combined with American pride, can result in an attitude toward non-American ways of doing business is often intolerant: “That’s different, so that’s wrong. It’s not the way we do it at home”. It takes patience to overcome that mindset and explain why what works in Boston may not work in Beijing. Another barrier to building connections is that very few Americans speak multiple languages, which is one reason that you’ll see business who do venture to foreign locations seek out local and familiar businesses: US hotel and car rental chains and US food chains, not realizing that the staff is local, and may not speak much English.

WELCOMING

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espite the fact that Americans may be oblivious to the how business is done outside their own territory, their openness, informality, optimism, humor, curiosity and friendliness instantly puts most people at ease. This is especially helpful when coming from business cultures with steep class hierarchies and formal rituals. An attorney from the Czech Republic, now based in San Francisco, shared that her experience entering a new business community

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was much easier in New York and San Francisco than anywhere in Europe. Because of the belief that anything is possible in American business, optimism carries over to your relationship too: we start out a relationship believing we’ll like you, that we’ll be able to work with you. We believe the glass will be half full rather than half empty and even that it can be refilled. Don’t be surprised if your colleague suggests that the “problems” you foresee are actually “opportunities” for future success.

ETHICAL

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ecause the business culture (and national culture) values each person as a unique individual, the idea that any supplier or customer should get unusual preferential treatment is totally unethical and considered bad practice. US companies and businesspeople are shocked by offers of bribes or kickbacks – since that would be rigging the rules of the game, and the rules apply to everyone. The seriousness with which Americans take this issue is clearly illustrated by the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. That legislation addressed the costs for offering bribes to foreign entities, added requirements for accounting transparency and established the penalties for corporations and their executives for actions that violated the law. The practice of developing corporate social responsibility strategies (companies doing good works in their communities) has gained momentum as awareness of the importance of giving something back to the community that helped create your success increased. A recent article states that “Today’s consumers are eager to embrace brands that stand for something important, be it diversity, eco-friendly business practices, or charitable contributions. To meet this demand, organizations are integrating cause marketing in their brand awareness efforts”.4

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Famous (last) words “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young”. (Henry Ford) “The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written”. (Franklin D. Roosevelt) “The Law of Win/Win says, Let’s not do it your way or my way; let’s do it the best way”. (Greg Anderson)

NOTES 1 Von Wartburg, Reto Gysi. “Swiss enjoy more and more annual leave”. Swiss.Swissinfo.ch. July 2, 2018. www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/ jetting-off_swiss-enjoy-more-and-more-paid-annual-leave/44221002 2 Wilson, Korsha. “How the Slice Joint Made Pizza the Perfect New York City Food.” New York Times. January 16, 2019. www.nytimes. com/2019/01/16/dining/slice-joint-pizza-new-york-city.html 3 Hess, Abigail. “Here’s How Many Paid Vacation Days the Typical American Worker Gets”. CNBC Make It. July 6, 2018. www.cnbc. com/2018/07/05/heres-how-many-paid-vacation-days-the-typicalamerican-worker-gets-.html 4 “The Simplest Marketing Trend of 2019 to Implement”. TINT. December 5, 2018. www.tintup.com/blog/ the-simplest-marketing-trend-of-2019-to-implement/

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PART 2

Foundation

CHAPTER FIVE

Do it now

f o u n d at i o n

INTRODUCTION

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eople’s concept of time is a fundamental component of their definition of appropriate business and personal conduct. In this chapter, we look at two significantly different ways of understanding, valuing and allocating time. Although our view of time guides our actions, most people are not aware that there are differing definitions of time that shape the actions around them. They only know that there is their way, and the wrong way. Understanding the different ways in which we view time and especially how the American perspective and how this shapes the way Americans behave in business is critical to building productive, successful relationships with them.

SPEED READ • What drives the Americans’ obsession with time (it’s not just money)! • Why it’s important to be on time. • Factors that contribute to the impression of Americans being rushed and exhausted.

PICTURE THIS

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ou are a new employee with an American company. Your immediate supervisor tells you your work is excellent and that she is glad you’re on the team. The next day Human Resources calls you to their office to counsel you about your record of tardiness. What’s happening? You begin to think something’s wrong with your watch. No matter how many times you set it, check it, it seems to be running slow. You know this because the watches of all your colleagues seem to be ten minutes faster than yours. You finally ask and find out they all set them fast to be sure to be on time. 60

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You arrive 20 minutes late to meet a friend for lunch and they’ve left the restaurant, leaving a message saying they couldn’t wait any longer. What’s the rush?

THE BIGGER PICTURE WHAT IS TIME? If we look at dictionary definitions, we come up with multiple ways of defining this concept. A quick search will lead you to: Dictionary.com offers: the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.1 Merriam-Webster: a non-spatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future.2 Oxford English dictionary: The continued progress of existence as affecting people and things.3 Time, it would seem, is about events, whether from the past or in the future. In this chapter, we’ll look at how people think about events in their lives should be organized.

TIME: SCARCE OR BOUNTIFUL? Time, is it scarce or bountiful? This question itself, although we are unlikely to raise it, illuminates the two schools of thought about the availability of time. Scarce or bountiful? Do I have lots of time or am I always rushed? Can I spend a little extra time with a friend, interrupt a project or must I finish a task and meet a deadline? And the answer is: Yes, scarce. Yes, bountiful. Depending on your culture, your understanding of the world, either answer is true. 61

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Overall, the world’s cultures divide into two distinct approaches to understanding and using time. One approach, or system, is called monochronic, with an emphasis on tasks and schedules. The other is polychronic, where developing and maintaining relationships outweighs adherence to schedules, Some key concepts are as follows:

MONOCHRONIC: • Time is talked about as a tangible thing to be spent, used, saved, lost, wasted. • Time is linear and can be divided into precise units. • Adhere to plans. • People concentrate on doing one thing at a time, sequentially. • Tasks (doing things) take precedence over engaging with people. • Interruptions are not welcome (as they interfere with a schedule). • An outcome of the industrial revolution where the labor force had to be on hand at an appointed hour. Countries considered to follow this system include the following: the US, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Canada and Northern European countries.

POLYCHRONIC • Time is bountiful and ongoing. • People before task. • Fluid approach to scheduling with less focus on accounting for every moment. • Simultaneous occurrence of many things and great involvement with people.4 • Interruptions acceptable.

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Countries represented include the following: Mexico, Africa and many Asian and Middle Eastern countries including Saudi Arabia, India and the Philippines.

THE DIFFERENCE: SIMPLY STATED Simply stated, people in one group believe time is infinite, unending, impossible to use up and the other is certain that time is limited, finite and a disappearing resource.

ABSOLUTELY MONOCHRONIC

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mericans are probably best known for their focus on time, schedules and deadlines. Stories abound of negotiations adjusted, deals lost, misunderstandings created because American business people stuck to their schedules without regard to other events. The clock is king. This attitude about time is deeply ingrained, passed down through the generations as it is in all countries, all cultures. The Founding Fathers were mainly immigrants from Northern Europe, and they brought with the influence of the industrial revolution and the schedules of the factories. The focus on time and task contributes to American’s reputation as alternately warm, friendly and then cool, distant and unpleasantly direct. With the emphasis on “getting things done”, it appears they’re just interested in the business, rather than building a relationship with you and other people involved. Problems arise because it never really occurs to the American that this can be experienced as rude, even insulting. Their concern to wisely manage their time – and yours – expecting that you too are in a hurry. Absolutely monochronic, convinced that time is a non-renewable resource, they are certain that everyone will understand that

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keeping to schedule is critically important. Americans simply believe that creating relationships will happen as you work together. It is understood in the business culture that you can only do one thing at a time. A colleague talks about leaving “place markers” with her friends. That translates to sending brief e-mails, leaving voice mail messages to tell people she’s thinking about them but is too pressed to see them or even have a serious conversation. Then when the deadline is passed, she will re-take her “place” and in a sense re-enter their lives. Since Americans usually work mainly with Americans, this mindset works. As with the colleague above, no one is insulted when a social engagement is cancelled due to a looming deadline, or when a call is cut short with the announcement “Got to run. Working on a big project. Catch you later”. Time slips away. Use it or lose it!

Think 24/7 is bad? Try 56/12.

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LOOKING FORWARD OR LOOKING BACKWARDS? Another important aspect of people’s view of time is whether their focus is on the past, present or future. Is today the best, was yesterday, or will it be tomorrow? For Americans, the answer is “It’s the future”. From the founding fathers of history to the most recent arrivals, this is a country where people left their past to come to a strange place, to create something new, something better. Their actions clearly stated their belief in the future. A hallmark of future oriented cultures such as the US is a widely shared optimism that things can be changed for the better. A favorite American saying is “The best is yet to come”. This optimism, in a business sense, is a driver of innovation and experimentation. That outlook can lead to planning, building, creating what comes next. One could say this is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for economic development. Although today you can read studies that indicate Americans are now less positive that tomorrow will always be better than today, the overall orientation of the culture still remains focused on the present and the future. A recent study shows that those in the beginning of their careers, the “twenty-somethings” create five-year plans.5 The focus on time and the future can be a powerful but sometimes problematic driver of US business. In this rush forward, Americans are sometimes accused of not thinking carefully, of proceeding in a way described as “Ready, Fire, Aim” or “Just Do It”. From either perspective, understanding the American attitude about time is key to understanding how they work at work.

YOU SAID YOU COULD DO IT

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he former vice-president of store planning for a European upscale men’s retailer tells a story about her experience of opening a flagship store in New York City. The store had to open by 65

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mid-November in order to take advantage of the key retail season – Christmas. This was to be their first store in the US. The store was designed to achieve the look of a fine, traditional men’s store, which meant fixtures, flooring and cabinetry in wood. They selected a small firm in Europe to handle the majority of the cabinetry. This firm had the expertise to do the job, experience with the client and could obtain the specific materials they required. They signed a contract. But one problem appeared – the deadline. The cabinetmakers informed their client, the retailers that they would have to work weekends to meet the contracted deadline. But they didn’t work weekends, so they couldn’t meet the deadline. They were sorry. But the work could be done by early December and that wouldn’t be too much of a delay as the store could simply open a few weeks later. Telling the story, years after the event, Meg is still incredulous. How could they not understand? A deadline is a deadline. It’s a commitment. Once you agree you move “heaven and earth” to do “whatever it takes”. Work weekends. Work nights. Hire more people. What were they thinking? Miss the Christmas season – don’t be crazy! In this case, retailer and supplier were able to resolve the issue (they worked those weekends), the contract went ahead and the store opened. At least this time, there was a happy ending.

A DEADLINE IS NOT GOAL: IT’S A PROMISE A deadline, a due date, is more than a goal – it is a promise, and Americans learn as children that you must keep a promise once it’s made. Your honor is “on the line”. So if you find yourself in a position where you cannot meet a deadline agreed to with an American, tell them!

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Don’t attempt to hide the fact or delay sharing the bad news. Americans do not respond well to bad news when it’s a surprise, especially if it’s received too late to correct the problem. If you announce in advance that a problem has emerged, you can take advantage of another American characteristic: the love of solving problems. Overall, Americans enjoy a challenge, trying to find a way to do something other people think is impossible. If asked to paint the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco purple in two weeks, some people would say “Ridiculous” but others would start lists of what would need to be done and create a project schedule.

MANAGING TIME: THE AMERICAN WAY

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key to working with monochronic (American) people is to understand to their view of time.

PUNCTUALITY • Be on time. An appointment is more than a promise to show up, it’s seen as a contract, a set agreement. • Being late equates to disrespect, and worse, wasting other people’s time. • It’s good to arrive five minutes early and wait. • If you’re going to be late, call even if it’s just the delay will just be five minutes. • Always apologize if late. • For social occasions, dinner at someone’s home, it is acceptable to arrive ten minutes after the appointed time. Being early is not good, nor is being much later. • If meeting at a restaurant, even for a social event, it’s still important to be on time.

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MEETINGS • Expect meetings to start on time. • Stick to the agenda in a meeting; don’t stray from the topics stated (that’s wasting time).

THE VARIETY OF BUSINESS HOURS Normal business hours vary from place to place, business to business. Traditional hours were 9:00 am to 5:00 pm (which became the title of a 1980 movie.) Today, 7:00 to 4:00, 8:00 to 5:00, 9:00 to 6:00, 10:00 to 7:00 all could be called “normal business hours”. But depending on your profession, industry and location, those traditional hours may not apply. Finance people on the West Coast likely start their days at 6:00 am before US markets open in New York, for tech people everywhere, hours are likely to be flexible with late starts and late finishes not unusual. For someone on a global team, based in San Francisco, many days start with a 7:00 am call to connect with a team in India (although the usual start time is 8:30 am). Normal business hours? It depends. Lunch is usually an hour, beginning as early as 11:30 am (to avoid crowds at popular places, and respecting the needs of those whose day starts at 7:00 am). However, the most common time for lunch is between noon and 12:30, sometimes as late as 1:00 pm and ending an hour later. For companies with in-house food service, hours may vary more, and for many rushed Americans, lunch can be a salad or sandwich eaten at their desk. So much to do, so little time.

WHEN CAN I SEE YOU? When setting an appointment, Mondays and Fridays are the least desirable days to request, unless you are setting up what you hope with be a long conversation over lunch, in which Friday might your best choice. On Monday, people are getting a start on the week,

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catching up on e-mails that appeared over the weekend and on Friday afternoon, people are closing out their week’s activities and thinking about the commute home.

THAT MEETING IS WHEN? Americans’ special focus on time extends to how we write a date and specify the time for an appointment. Dates: In the US, the format for a date is: Month/Day/Year; for example, November 4, 2020, which can be shortened to 11/4/20. This may be confusing for our global colleagues, for whom 11/4 is more often translated as April 11. To be sure your American counterpart knows when you plan to visit, it’s wise to write out the name of the month. Time: In the US, the day is divided into two- to twelve-hour segments. Morning defined as 12 midnight to 11:59 am and afternoon/evening beginning at noon and ending at 11:59 pm. Many Americans won’t know what time the meeting will start if you tell them it’s at 14:30 or that dinner is at 20:00.

RETAIL BUSINESS HOURS Many “brick and mortar” retailers are open seven days a week, although their weekend (Saturday, Sunday) hours may be shorter than on weekdays. Most are closed at least part, if not all, of Thanksgiving Day (the third Thursday in November), Christmas Day and Easter Sunday. However, movies, restaurants and some grocery stores will be open. One area where there are differences across the country is in the sale of alcoholic beverages. In some states (North Dakota or Utah for example), there may restrictions on what days, times and places they may be sold. Banks are generally open on Monday through Friday, with limited hours on Saturday, and are closed on all national holidays.

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ALWAYS ON THE GO

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lthough Americans think that they work the longest hour in the world, current data don’t support their view. Information from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), whose 35 members include much of the developed world and some developing nations, found the average Mexican spends 2,255 hours at work, the highest in the countries surveyed. The same article notes that Germans works “a meagre” 1,363 hours per year. The US? It ranks in the top third of those surveyed, at #11 with 1,780 at work hours per year.6 But looking at the US as a nation only tells part of the story. WalletHub compared the 116 largest cities, considering nine metrics that they call “work factors” (including average workweek, unused vacation time, commute time) to determine the hardest-working cities. At the top are Anchorage and San Francisco, at #1 and #2, respectively. Washington, DC came in at #14 and New York at #73 well behind Seattle, Nashville and Chicago. The least hardworking of the 116: Buffalo, Burlington and Detroit.7 No matter where they are and what the data indicate, Americans overall have a sense of working hard, long hours. Many work more than one job. Others volunteer hours to organizations in their communities. Their days and evenings are filled with activities, e-mails and responsibilities.

WE CAN HELP Recognizing an opportunity resulting from the demanding pace and time limits of American life, entrepreneurs and established businesses have created services to relieve the stress. • Online all the time: 24/7 Shopping. Whether you need a dress for a business event, a wedding gift for your niece or food for your dog, with just a few clicks the purchase is made and

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delivered to your door, in as little as two hours or as “long” as two days. • Want dinner tonight? Have DoorDash deliver it from your favorite restaurant or unwrap the preset meal, sent from your subscription meal service, so you can cook your favorite farmto-table dish at home for your family. • Ran out of time to get gas for your car before picking up your children from soccer practice so you can drive to that morning meeting 50 miles from home? No problem. There’s a service that will refill your tank at your house during the night while you sleep. • Monthly subscription services deliver clothes selected by a stylist to meet your preferences, foods from around the world, toys for your children and so much more. You need it now? It will come. • Too complicated to get to the bank? Use your phone to deposit a check, send money to your friend to share of the cost of lunch or obtain a loan. But sometimes you wonder, do all these services a benefit or do they just allow us to add other tasks to our already busy schedules?

RESPONSE TIME You need it when? Yesterday? OK, no problem. A joke that’s almost serious. Americans seem to want everything instantly. Information. Deliveries. No longer are we willing to wait a month, two weeks to receive what we order. Tomorrow – ok. Today? Much better. In two hours? The best! The general rule for replying to phone messages and e-mail – to indicate that you are interested in the person contacting you, and/ or their proposal – is no more than 24 hours, maybe 48 if you’re traveling. If you are an American, waiting for an answer, a day or two seems reasonable. After that, unless you’ve been forewarned, the response time seems slow (translation may be the person is

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not interested, slow, lazy, not “with it”, not professional). In Europe, a week may be satisfactory. However, for American colleagues working with European teams, you say, “They take their sweet time responding. They don’t seem to understand I need this by COB – and that Close of Business means I need it today”. But if you cannot reply promptly (in American time), then tell your American colleague and indicate when they can expect a response: three days, a week, two weeks? If you won’t be able to meet a target date, speak up, tell someone. People will let you know if that causes a problem and they will generally help find a solution but unexpected missed deadlines, or worse yet, unending silence, can precipitate a disaster or ruin a business relationship.

IN A HURRY. TOO MUCH TO DO

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ou’re in a hurry. You learned as a child that it’s important to “Do something. Don’t just sit there”. But today, you’re an adult and you are busy, rushed. There are deadlines at work, endless e-mails at all hours of the day and night. Even your non-work is filled with activities: friends and families need your attention (and time), you volunteer in business and philanthropic organizations, feel compelled to read those new business books and don’t forget those early morning yoga classes. It turns out there are even names of this state of being: the hurry sickness, or being “overly time oriented”.8 While this is stressful for you, just hearing your tales of all that you have to do can be exhausting for people, like your colleagues in Europe who don’t have the same time focus.

TIME TO GET AWAY? Considering this state of “time urgency”, you might think that Americans would be anxious to take vacations and enjoy every minute possible away from the stress of the workplace. Yet, this isn’t always the case.

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But first, a reminder of how little vacation time most Americans have. As we said before, it begins with the fact that companies are not required to provide vacation time. Most industrialized countries (European, Japan and Australia) by law give employees four to six weeks of annual paid leave. In fact, the US is the only OECD country that does not mandate time off for employees.9 However, recent studies show that the majority of companies do provide some paid vacation, usually depending on tenure within a company ranging beginning with one work week (or five days) after one year and increasing to four weeks (twenty days) after ten years. For employees who do have paid vacation time off, a startling number do not take advantage of that opportunity. One reason for people’s reluctance to take vacation time is related to a sense of increased job insecurity, resulting economic downturns of bursting of the “tech bubble” in 2001 and the Financial Crisis of 2008 which resulted in significant job losses. But even when Americans take vacation, they often still don’t leave work completely. According to Chris Abato, President of Moneta Vista Advisors: Americans work very hard and we don’t view a vacation as a time when you’re not working. It just means that you’re not working all day long, or taking a business call while sitting at the pool with your kids playing in the pool. We think its noble to work hard and that a person’s value is tied to hard work even above accomplishments.

OFFICIAL HOLIDAYS

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here are ten federal holidays when the banks, post office and many businesses (except retail and restaurants) are closed. Some are fixed to a specific date, for example January 1st, and

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others are a set day within a month, such as Veterans Day, which is the second Monday of November. The ten days are as follows: • • • • • • • • • •

New Year’s Day Martin Luther King Day Washington’s Birthday/Presidents Day Memorial Day Independence Day Labor Day Columbus Day Veterans Day Thanksgiving Christmas

January 1 Third Monday of January Third Monday of February Fourth Monday of May July 4 First Monday of September Second Monday of October Second Monday of November Fourth Thursday of November December 25

Famous (last) words “Americans and clocks go hand in hand (even though it’s the Swiss who are the master clock makers). We run our lives around a clock. We don’t eat lunch when we’re hungry if it’s not lunchtime”. (C. Abato) “Lost Time is never found again”. (Benjamin Franklin) “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life”. (Charles Darwin)

NOTES 1 “Time.” Dictionary.com. Accessed March 15, 2019. www.dictionary. com/browse/time 2 “Time.” Merriam Webster. Accessed March 15, 2109. www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/time 3 Time.” English Oxford Living Dictionaries. Accessed March 15, 2019. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/time 4 Hall, Edward T. and Hall, Mildred Reed, Understanding Cultural Differences, Intercultural Press, Maine, 1990.

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5 “Future Focused.” Mashable. Accessed February 15, 2019. https:// mashable.com/2017/01/13/millennial-five-year-plans/#2NixKuznDsqu\ 6 Leach, Whitney. “This Is Where People Work the Longest.” World Economic Forum. January 16, 2018. www.weforum.org/ agenda/2018/01/the-countries-where-people-work-the-longest-hours 7 McCann, Adam. “Hardest Working Cities in America.” WalletHub. February 25, 2019. https://wallethub.com/edu/ hardest-working-cities-in-america/10424/ 8 Ashworth, Michael. “Always in a Rush? Maybe It’s Time Urgency?” PsychCentral.com. Updated October 8, 2018. https://psychcentral. com/lib/always-in-a-rush-maybe-its-time-urgency/ 9 McCarthy, Niall. “Vacations: American Get A Raw Deal.” Statista.com. August 8, 2018. www.statista.com/chart/15005/ statutory-minimum-paid-leave-and-public-holidays

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CHAPTER SIX

I’ll do it myself

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INTRODUCTION

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very American knows they are unique, special. Based on that certainty, they are convinced that they can achieve their dreams and change things they don’t like. An IT professional summed it up with the simple statement: “We never say something is impossible”. If plans don’t evolve as conceived, one can learn more, adapt, create a new plan, move to a new place, work hard and eventually achieve your goals. The whole notion of the importance of the individual, of one person’s value, and focus on their growth is fundamental to American culture. It influences how people behave in all facets of their lives. It is particularly obvious in American marketing and human resource policies, two issues which broadly touch every facet of business.

SPEED READ • Americans are intensely, stunningly independent. • Americans are taught to make personal choices early in life. • Americans love challenges or often simply the idea of challenges, whether they take them on or not.

PICTURE THIS

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our friend has been laid off for the second time. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology with an MBA from Duke, she combined her creative and practical education working for Ralph Lauren, The Gap and Williams Sonoma. She helped start several online retailers and had a top job at Macys.com. Now that’s over. Determined to control her own destiny, she’s called you to see if you want to back her new venture. She plans to start a new line of clothing for people who cook at home. She’ll use special

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stain-resistant fabrics and make colorful, comfortable “chef-wear” for the man, woman or child who loves to cook. She’s already got a tie-in with a cookbook author and Chef Works, the online source for chef’s clothing. All she needs is some seed money. Can you invest $20,000 with her and do you have five friends who can also help? Her business plan says you’ll be repaid in two years with interest, plus all the cook’s clothing you can wear. She’s sure that Williams Sonoma will feature her line in store and online. Even more, she’s sure she’ll have an early exit, make enough to become an angel investor herself and have fun along the way. She wants to share it all with you in exchange for your investment. What’s your answer? Seen on the street: An American walking briskly toward an unknown destination wearing Nikes, made for him, to his specifications, and custom-made jeans from MadetoOrderJeans.com. On his way, he stops at Starbucks to order his low-fat mocha latte with an espresso shot. The server calls his name, not a number, when his order is ready. From shoes to drink, he has what he wants, made his way.

THE BIGGER PICTURE I, NOT WE The American culture is above all individualistic. The focus is on one person rather than a group of people. In his book, The Cultural Dimension of International Business, Gary Ferraro points out that some cultures, including the US, place a high value on individualism. He goes on to say, “These cultures emphasize the worth and dignity of the individual over the group, independence rather than interdependence and relatively few social obligations”.1 (When asked, “Who comes first, me or the group?” Americans will most often answer “Me, of course”.) This attitude is in vivid contrast to that of people from many other countries. The majority of the world’s population lives in cultures that

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are collectivist and group-oriented, where the group and personal relationships are more important than the individual. Members of group-oriented cultures are, beginning almost at birth, integrated into strong, cohesive groups, for lifetime membership. In contrast, Americans, in their strongly individualistic and highly mobile culture, change groups, jobs and relationships throughout their lives.

THE SOURCE This strong individualism can be traced back to the Pilgrims, the founders of the US. Then, as now, the majority of the population was Christian, with the Protestants being have the largest group of adherents.2 According to their religious beliefs, each person had an individual relationship with God. This belief clearly holds that each individual is sufficiently meaningful to allow him or her to “speak” directly to God. But speaking for oneself is not sufficient. Each person has responsibility for their own actions. One can see a link between these two ideas and the American outlook that all people are created equal and that they should be responsible for themselves with minimal interference from government. These ideas were codified into laws with the writing of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, the documents that guide the country even today. Inseparable from the belief that all people are equal and responsible is the matter of freedoms for the individual: freedom of speech, religion and of the press (which provides information to each individual), freedom to carry weapons, to congregate, to travel and to vote. All freedoms are granted to one person, the individual, so that they can conduct their lives as they choose. As a result of amendments to the Constitution, legislation and court rulings these freedoms have survived and, in some cases, expanded during the almost 250 years since the founding of the nation. Although these freedoms are a matter of law, clearly stated and protected, Americans recognize that it’s necessary to pay attention to be certain they remain in place. Individuals and groups have not

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only brought lawsuits when it appeared their rights had been violated but also created organizations to be “watchdogs”, to protect the rights of individuals and groups. Probably, the best known is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), founded in 1920. Today, the organization has 1.5 million members and 300 attorneys on staff. Their website clearly states their mission: For nearly 100 years, the ACLU has been our nation’s guardian of liberty, working in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and the laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.3 The ACLU at times finds itself defending minority groups with opinions that are, at best, considered unpopular. In the past, they have defended the right of people to oppose the Vietnam War as well as the statements of the Ku Klux Klan. The ACLU defends people’s right to express these and other unpopular opinions recognizing that dissent is required in order to ensure an open society and that freedom of speech includes freedom for all points of view to be heard.

BEING AN INDIVIDUAL

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hildren are encouraged to express their opinions and preferences almost before they can speak. Parents will ask a child to choose one of two toys when they can only point and make sounds. Americans learn early that they can have an opinion, make a decision and often, get what they want. This early development sets the stage for an education that is designed to enable a child to take their place in a society of individuals. One goal of education is to help children learn “how to learn” because the assumption is that learning in life never ends. This attitude contrasts with collectivist cultures, where learning is about what is necessary to be an acceptable group member.4

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By learning to learn, it is more likely that people will be prepared to cope with new, unknown, unforeseen situations, and be able to adapt. This attitude is especially important today, as we experience rapid and far-reaching changes in industries, technologies and societies around the globe. Boys and girls, men and women receive the same education in the US. They attend school together, unless parents elect to send them to private same-sex schools, and participate in group activities from the time they start kindergarten (at age five) until they complete their education. Educated equally, sharing the same experiences, they naturally also expect equality in the workplace. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always occur. One indicator of that is the disparity in wages between men and women. In the US, women, on average, earn less than men in nearly every single occupation for which there is sufficient earnings data for both men and women to calculate an earnings ratio. In 2017, female full-time, year-round workers made only 80.5 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 20%.5 Although there is increased movement toward equality in pay, it is slow-moving; yet, some women have found ways to work around this problem. Several freelance tech writers and analysts discovered that if they submitted their work with their bylines listing their name as only a first and middle initials plus their last name, acceptance and pay rates were higher than if they used their given (female) names. For example, Mary Beth Writer would become “M.B. Writer” and suddenly have more work accepted, at higher rates.

ON MY OWN

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nlike many other cultures, children, both boys and girls are expected leave the family home and live independently even before they marry. Once they’ve completed their schooling, high school or college, they expect to leave their parents’ home live alone

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or with friends. This is seen as a sign of development, a step toward becoming an adult, an independent and self-sufficient person. In recent years, this move to independent living hasn’t been an option for everyone. For example, 15% of 25- to 35-year-old Millennials are still living with their parents. This is five percentage points higher than the number of Gen Xers who lived in their parents’ home in 2000 when they were the same age.6 A variety of factors are driving this trend: People are delaying marriage, many college graduates have significant student loan debt that must be paid and housing is increasingly expensive. While the majority of graduates still live independently (sometimes with expenses subsidized by parents), it is an important trend to note.

MAKE IT MY WAY

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nowledge of a country’s language, more particularly, their vocabulary can help you understand its culture. Individualistic, independent Americans often use the world “I” – as they expect to have things how “I” (we, they) want them. And that is reflected in what businesses offer to them as consumers. Some examples: • Starbucks is known for allowing customers to design their drink (from more than 87,000 possible combinations). • Nike offers NikeByYou, allowing customers to customize a shoe design selecting their own color palette. • StitchFix, a subscription delivery service, sends each customer an assortment of clothes chosen to fit their preferences, on a schedule that set by the shopper. • Made-to-measure jeans, shirts and shoes are increasingly available with the click of a mouse. • McDonalds, famous for a set menu, now allows customers to make some changes (add a tomato or onion, take off the sauce) to that famous quarter-pounder burger or chicken sandwich.

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This attitude is important to note, as your client may expect you to be able to customize your product or service to fit their vision of how things should be.

THE MANY VERSIONS OF ME

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or all the talk of Americans as one group, with one set of attitudes, it is important to note that there are variations. Some are regional and others are experiential. To understand those differences, researchers use years of birth to segment the population, thereby identifying the experiences that define these clusters (sometimes called cohorts). Currently, we can identify five cohorts as follows:7 Silents: born before 1945 Baby Boomers: 1946–1964 Gen X: 1965–1980 Millennials: 1981–1996 Gen Z: 1997 and later

There has been much written about the cohort known as Millennials, will be the biggest group, surpassing the Baby Boomers but soon to be overtaken by Gen Z. Some notable experiences that have shaped the attitudes of the generations include wars (World Wars I, II, Vietnam) and economic shocks most recently the Great Recession of 2008, and the shocks that have come from changes in technology. Each group has varied characteristics and one we note interesting trend in the area of individualism and independence in the Millennials. They are choosing to marry later than previous generations, are willing to change jobs and career frequently, as opposed to following the pattern of previous generations. Some of that reflects changes in overall structure of business but some is particular to this group. According to a recent study, Millennials were the most interested in contractual rather than full-time work,

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with 74% of those in that age group saying they were curious about freelancing, as compared to 57% of those who comprise Generation X and 43% of older Baby Boomers. They want to take charge of their work schedules and are willing to go solo to make it happen.8 We will look at these groups from different perspectives throughout this book, but for now, suffice it to say that each group, and each person within the groups, believes they are special, and knowledgeable and expects to have a voice and a choice in all facets of their life.

MORE THAN AN INDIVIDUAL, YOU ARE A BRAND!

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n Chapter 2, we introduced the idea that America, the country, is not just a place, it is also a brand. A brand defined as “the perception about a particular product or place”. Substitute the word “person” for “product” or “place” and you have the idea of a personal brand. How do Americans view themselves and others as brands? Consider the following from an article in Forbes (a well-known business publication): A brand is something you’re constantly building because it’s the affirmation of who you are and what you love to do. Whether you’re a full-time employee, independent freelancer or business owner, your personal brand speaks before you. Being intentional about what you want it to stand for shapes the opportunities you attract9 This once again underscores the idea you, the individual, are responsible for creating your life, and branding yourself will help you create the life you envision. Not sure how to do that? There’s help in this area. Business magazines offer articles on the topic such as

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the one above, titled “5 Ways to Build a Powerful Personal Brand”. Among the tips is, “Create a value proposition that speaks to what you do and who you best help”.10 As an indicator of how important this topic is, consider that a Google search shows over a 100 links to advice on how to create a personal brand plus dozens of pages listing branding oaches. Prefer to find the answers in a book? Amazon is ready with dozens and dozens of titles on personal branding. Need help? It is just a click away.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS This tendency to “shout it out” or market yourself can be quite surprising for people coming to the US. A professional woman who came to California from Greece said that the hardest adjustment to life in the States was having to think about marketing herself as if she was a product. Yet that is increasingly important. In the today’s world of social media, instantly being able to gather information about people as well as product have a brand presence is essential. According to a Vice President of Marketing for a manufacturing company who frequently mentors young professionals, having the right message online is a must: If you’re meeting someone for the first time you can be certain they’ve checked you out online. LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram are just the beginning. It used to be that you had seconds to make an impression when you met someone for the first time. Today, they’ve already checked you out and have a impression before they ever see you in person. Americans see themselves as individuals, with unique skills, talents and abilities. They want others to understand who they are and the value that they can bring to an activity, organization or project. I Am Me, Special and Unique. There is a brand called Me.

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Ms. Rickman is reinventing herself. May I take a message?

YOU CAN DO IT!

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mericans are generally optimistic and believe that you can create your own destiny, achieve the life, the future that you want. The choice is yours. Look to the future, define your goal, work hard and you can succeed. Americans even have a short way to express this concept. We simply say, “We believe in ‘rags to riches’ and the Horatio Alger story”. Horatio Alger was a writer in the late 1800s who wrote over 100 books telling the story of poor young boys who grew beyond their beginnings and achieved success. Today, there is a Horatio Alger Society that annually recognizes Americans who personify that story. Included among those honored are well-known names as Wayne Gretzky, Quincy Jones, Condoleeza Rice, Oprah Winfrey, Sam Walton (founder of Wal-Mart) and Gordon Moore (co-founder of Intel). But it isn’t just members

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of the Horatio Alger Society who are known for having created something unique. Asked to make a list and names of people who created something from an idea to reality, you’re likely to hear names from the tech world: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Elon Musk. The tech world isn’t the only segment of the business world that’s home to dreamers who created vibrant companies. Peggy and Andrew Chang, both of whom immigrated to the US for college (where they met) also fall into that category. Together, they founded The Panda Group, which includes their flagship restaurant brand, Panda Express. In 1983, they started with a single restaurant in a Los Angeles suburb. By 2019, the chain grew to 1900 locations with 30,000 associates.11 An impressive Horatio Alger story.

YOU’RE THE RESPONSIBLE ONE Tied to this idea of endless possibilities is the concept of personal responsibility. You can create the life you want, but it’s up to you to discover what you want and how to get there. If you aren’t sure how to do this, many resources exist. A quick search on Amazon for selfhelp books offers almost 500 titles and that doesn’t take in books about topics that could be broadly constructed as “helping yourself” or “self-improvement” in the areas of finance, weight loss, starting a company or managing a team. Moreover, an entire industry has developed to advise you. Similar to the resources for creating that personal brand, there are seminars, classes and personal coaches all to help you “be all that you can be”.

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his independent attitude, however, may appear as stubbornness, even arrogance in business situations. Americans’ certainty that one knows the answers and insistence on doing things “my way” can create challenges for everyone. Echoing this observation were the comments of Tad Bobak, a Polish-born, retired IBM executive. During his 40 years with IBM, 88

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Mr. Bobak had an extensive experience working with Americans. His postings included a period at headquarters in New York, as well as assignments in San Francisco, Paris, Brazil, Germany and Russia. When asked what one should know about working with Americans he said, “Know that Americans above all are individuals, independent. They must be in charge. They will learn eventually but not easily. When coming to Europe, Brazil or Russia and starting something new they will say to you: in Kentucky (or Texas or wherever is their home state) we are prosperous and we don’t do it that way. We must do things the way we do in Kentucky”. “Americans must be ‘behind the wheel’, think they are in charge. Have patience. They will learn. They are smart. Clever. It may take them six months to understand this is not Kentucky, but they will learn”. Jobs in America tend to be structured around the idea of the individual (independence). Often included when people are asked to describe their jobs is “other duties as defined”. This phrase, taken from standard job descriptions, is intended to allow changes to be made to a person’s responsibilities, and also implies that people are expected to be flexible, handle change, the unexpected. All marks of an independent, self-reliant employee (and person).

Famous (last) words “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment”. (Ralph Waldo Emerson) “You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist”. (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) “Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom – and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech”. (Benjamin Franklin)

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NOTES 1 Ferraro, Gary P. The Cultural Dimension of International Business. Fifth edition (Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc. 2006), 103. 2 Wikipedia Contributors. “Religion in the United States.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed April 1, 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States 3 “About the ACLU”. ACLU. Accessed March 16, 2019.www.aclu.org/ about-aclu 4 Hofstede, Geert, Culture and Organizations, McGraw Hill, New York, 1997. 5 “Pay Equity & Discrimination.” Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Accessed March 16, 2019. https://iwpr.org/issue/ employment-education-economic-change/pay-equity-discrimination/ 6 Friedmen, Zack. Why Are Millennials Still Living with Their Parents. Forbes. June 27, 2018. www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/ 2018/06/27/millennials-student-loans-housing/#be2618a226aa 7 Fry, Richard. “Millennials Are the Largest Generation in the U.S. Labor Force.” Pew Research Center. April 11, 2018. www.pewresearch.org/ fact-tank/2018/04/11/millennials-largest-generation-us-labor-force 8 Jones, Charisse. “More Millennials Wants Free Lance Careers Instead of Working Full Time.” USA Today. April 15, 2018. www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/04/15/ millennials-more-interested-freelance-careers/512851002/ 9 Shelcy, Joseph “Five Ways to Build a Powerful Personal Brand.” Forbes. April 30, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ shelcyvjoseph/2018/04/30/5-ways-to-build-a-powerful-personalbrand/#3a5bab6f549e 10 Shelcy, Josephm Five Ways to Build a Powerful Personal Brand.” Forbes. April 30, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ shelcyvjoseph/2018/04/30/5-ways-to-build-a-powerful-personalbrand/#3a5bab6f549e 11 “Panda Express.” Panda Restaurant Group Inc. Accessed March 16, 2019. www.pandarg.com/our-brands

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CHAPTER SE VEN

Let’s be friends

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INTRODUCTION

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eople say Americans rush to do business before they know you. American’s informality and directness have more than once been interpreted as rudeness, and their casual friendliness is often seen as superficial. Americans find these observations surprising and unsettling. They want to be friends, to do business together and are unhappy to hear they insult people. In this chapter, we focus on the American ideas about friendship and business relationships.

SPEED READ • Americans see a link between informality and equality. • Americans want to be friends and there is a reason for their seemingly contradictory behavior that seems sometimes warm, sometimes cold. • General rules of relationships American style. • Why Americans are always smiling.

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ou attend a seminar and enjoy a conversation with another attendee. Before leaving you exchange business cards, shakes hand, expresses a desire to follow-up on the conversation. Your new acquaintance says, “I’ll give you a call and we’ll do lunch”. Then no call. What should you do? What does it mean? Your American friend tells you she’s having problems with her car and she may miss an important meeting because she’s not sure she can get her car fixed in time. You offer to lend her your car but she declines and asks if you’ll drop her off to pick up a rental. What’s this about? Why pay money when it would be no problem for her to take your car?

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THE BIGGER PICTURE MY FRIEND GEORGE Americans use the word “friend” easily and frequently. They are likely to use the term “friend” whether they are talking about a favored companion or closer to someone they hardly know. We talk about buddies and pals, my people and my peeps, but mostly we use the word friend when describing our connections to others. Whether we see someone daily or annually, their title is the same. We may define a relationship further by referring to someone as my “best friend”, but there is nothing in the language that approaches the clarity of the French form of address “tu” (informal pronoun for “you” when you know the person well) and “vous” (formal pronoun for “you” when you aren’t yet close) to indicate the closeness connection. American friendship often grows out of shared activities and interests. We talk about “my friend George at the gym”. He is called our friend, although we have only a vague idea of George’s last name or where he lives. It is likely that we know what he does and his entire workout and diet regime along with his favorite sports team. We see him frequently, but only at the gym. While some might label George an acquaintance, for Americans, he is our “friend” by being there, simply sharing a specific, though limited, part of our life. This may seem unusual for people other parts of the world, where friendship is seen as a relationship that forms over time through many mutually shared experiences, where one “becomes” a friend. Americans are willing to include many people as friends, in different parts of their life; however, there may be no overlap between these people. A close friend attends an annual New Year’s Day brunch hosted by a friend (one she sees frequently during the year). She said that one of the pleasures of attending the party is seeing people that she enjoys but encounters only at that annual event. She might well describe them as friends although she sees just once a year. For her friends they are – in that moment.

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WARM ON THE OUTSIDE, COLD ON THE INSIDE

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nfortunately, others do not easily understand the American approach to friendship. With their ready smiles, informal greetings, quick use of first names and sharing of information others consider private, they seem open and accessible, friendly to all. However, after the initial exchange, they may seem remote, unreachable and surprisingly private. Hence, the description, “Warm on the outside, cold on the inside”.

As odd and contradictory as these behaviors seem, they can be explained. In the book Riding the Waves of Culture, the authors present the work of Kurt Lewin, a German-American psychologist, which provides us with useful imagery to help us understand the differing ideas of friendship.1 He explains that people everywhere, regardless of their culture, form relationships with varying degrees of intimacy and describes these relationships and levels of intimacy using the terms “public space” and “private space”. The “public space” is what we easily share about ourselves with relative strangers. The “private space” is what we hold back, reserve for those with whom we share a more intimate relationship. Each culture, each person defines “public” and “private” differently. The impression that Americans seem warm but are cool links directly with such an interpretation of relationships – described in terms of open (public) and limited access (private) space. To illustrate Lewin’s ideas about the American division of space, we can use the analogy of a convention exhibit hall. To gain entrance, all one requires is a badge that serves as your basic introduction to everyone else. The space is large and people move around freely. There are warm greetings, smiles, quick, informal introductions. You’re in easily. You are at the convention for several days and have multiple conversations with other attendees sharing stories of your work,

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your family, your city and experiences. The large American space includes not only people, but also an extensive number of topics available for sharing. Americans will talk easily about where they are from, what they do, their families and their activities. However, if in your culture public space is comparatively smaller, maybe the size of a hotel suite rather than the convention center, some of the American conversational topics will be surprising and may make you uncomfortable. Where are the lines drawn and what topics are acceptable? Do family, religion, problems and pleasures fall into the public domain or not? For Americans, they can all fall into the public category. There may be some limitations but the general topics are acceptable. With this in mind, it’s easy to see why Americans can be perceived as rude when they move unknowingly into areas others consider private. But even in the open space of an exhibition hall, there are sections and boundaries. Areas for exhibitors, some open to all, others not. The same is true for an American’s relationship space. The large public space has divisions and boundaries. Are you connected to each other through work? Through your children’s activities? Do you take a class together? Your shared activities and level of intimacy may be restricted to things that flow from a specific relationship. Now we have an open space that’s not entirely open where movement may be restricted to certain areas. Then, we move on to private space, where there is very limited access. In our conference metaphor, this is the suite you can only get into with a personal invitation. It is space reserved for a few close friends who are an “inner circle”. It is with this small group that one shares opinions that may be controversial, the most personal information, one’s hopes and dreams. While the downside of this large open space is unintentional rudeness, it also sets up the problem of “Warm outside, cold inside”. Because the American’s public area includes areas (subjects for discussion) that would be labeled private for people

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in other cultures he/she can mistakenly convey the impression that the relationship is one that is private and special. Friends and colleagues have described their surprise and dismay at realizing the friendship they believed they had with a colleague was really warm acquaintanceship.

FORGET THE FORMALITIES Americans are known for their informality, casual approach to business and friendships, their avoidance of formal ceremony and apparent disinterest in traditional rules of behavior. To understand this preference for informality, it helps to look back at the history of the country. For our purpose, we can describe American history in a way that is familiar from films and television. This view, the popular story, is as follows: Brave people setting out to create a wonderful new world with equal opportunity for everyone built America from nothing. Their survival depended on their own hard work and ability to move quickly to overcome challenges and take advantage of opportunities as they appeared. The rush to survive, to create farms, communities, safety and shelter meant there was little time for formality, ceremony and social rules. “Just Do It”, Nike’s well-known marketing slogan, is illustrative of the attitude of the pioneers and the time focused Americans of today. Even more important than the survival imperative was the concept of the equality of all people. To underscore the intention to create a society, an open society, the founders eliminated many traditional, formal rules that were reminders of royalty, courts and the rigid class systems that they had left behind. Not only was informality symbolic of that basic American ideal – equality – but it also served as a way to blend a population with a variety of backgrounds. This is not to say that Americans are unconcerned about social behavior, or do not care about knowing the appropriate ways to

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behave. The earliest American books on that topic date from the 1800s, and today Amazon lists more than 20 pages of books under the heading “Etiquette”. Americans didn’t entirely abandon rules of behavior, they simply created their own.

LOOKING FOR FRIENDS – REMEMBER TO SMILE Generally, we want people to like us and announce that fact by our welcoming smile. For us, especially on the West Coast, in the South, it is part of an appropriate, polite greeting. A smile indicates that you are friendly, happy and open to meeting people. Children are told to “smile at the nice lady”, “smile at the camera”. A smile means friendliness, and welcome. For many in the US, making new friends is an ongoing necessity, rather than an interesting option. Although there are Americans who live in one area for their entire lives, for others life is a series of moves, transitions, new places and new people. “The US is one of the most geographically mobile countries in the World”, according to an Atlantic magazine article. Further, about one in four or 25% of Americans have moved within the last five years. Most of the moves were related to new jobs, transfers or to ease a difficult commute.2 Considering this, you can understand why Americans are sometimes called “a nation of strangers”. They move from state to state, city to city and place to place within a city. The American idea that friendships can be casual and flexible may, at least in part, reflect the mobility of the population. An individual has the right to agree to be a friend for an ongoing or specific period of time. It is understood between the parties that they are not necessarily linked forever, but by agreement for as long as they wish. For example, friends may change to match your differing interests at different stages of life, and as you move to different locations. You grow up in Seattle, attend college in Boston, begin working in

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Atlanta and finally settle, raising your family in Los Angeles. You will build relationships; make close friends in each place, connected to what you are doing at the time. Moving, life changes may mean you drift away from some friends but it doesn’t mean they all vanish. Thanks to technology – e-mail, text messages, WeChat, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – now you can easily stay connected to people in each place. Even considering what has been said about the flexible nature of American’s personal connection, don’t think that Americans have no long-standing relationships. There are people who regularly see their friends from grammar school and others who share an annual weekend holiday with college roommates 30 years after graduation. But it is important to recognize that Americans are likely to have a variety of friends and continue to build new friendships throughout their lives.

Remember, Americans LOVE casual – let’s head on in and put our feet up!

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he American way of being friends may seem quite obscure, but can be easier to understand if you think of them as linked to concepts of privacy, stages of life, value of time and self-reliance. There is even a subtle suggestion of a contractual arrangement governing time and activities.

FAMOUS PHRASES THAT CAN BE CONFUSING • I’ll give you a call • Let’s get together • Let’s do lunch All are said with great enthusiasm and sincerity but there’s no follow-up, no date is set to get together. Don’t be shocked or feel insulted if this happens to you. Think of these phrases as a coded message that translates to: “I’d love to get together. I think what you have to say is interesting. But my schedule is packed and I bet yours is too. I just want you to know that it would be great to get together – if we had time”. (For more about time, see Chapter 5.) In a situation like this, if you too would like to get together, reach out, suggest a date or ignore the suggestion, as you wish. It’s not unusual see someone monthly at a meeting, discuss getting together each time and not actually get together for a year – when there’s finally time in both schedules.

PRIVACY One facet of the independent American character is the desire for privacy. We do not like drop-in guests, interruptions in activities or conversation. This is true in both our business and personal lives. A friend who drops in unexpectedly might be welcomed nicely, but for most people their arrival is not a happy event. Americans value their time alone both as individuals and family units. They all have

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schedules, plans that an unexpected visitor changes. Do not be fooled by the American invitation to “Drop by anytime”. The wish to see you is sincere, but it is assumed you will follow the American rules and make a date in advance. Today, privacy means more than not showing up uninvited. As we all increasingly have a life online, drawing boundaries of what’s public and what’s private, to be shared just with those people who meet the traditional definition of a friend (a close companion), is challenging. Governments as well as individuals suddenly are stepping in to define what’s public and what’s private. The blurred boundaries, remembering that everything on line can be discovered, sometimes creates costly surprises. More than once, what was a funny post from one’s private life has cost a professional the possibility of a new position or staying on at their current post. What’s private and what’s public is being redefined for Americans and everyone else around the world.

VARIETY No matter how much you enjoy sharing a dinner, an evening at the theatre, or watching a children’s soccer game together, do not expect to share all the events that happen in the life of an American friend. This does happen, though rarely. Even close friends who regularly travel together often have other friends who share other activities. Friends for the symphony, friends for a movie, friends who are part of a book club or are football fanatics. Remember Americans divide their time and attention. It isn’t that they don’t want to include you; they just assume you have other people in your life as they do. The saying that best explains this: “Variety is the spice of life”.

RECIPROCITY With each relationship, there is an idea of reciprocity and exchange. Invited to dinner? Return the invitation. Gifts given? Give in return. This issue can be particularly challenging at holiday time. Do your 10 0

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friends celebrate Christmas, Chanukah or Kwanzaa? Will they give to me? Shall I give to them? Everyone has stories of the unexpected gift received, the rush to find something in return. It is difficult for Americans to receive something, express thanks and simply wait for an opportunity to return the favor. We feel there should be an immediate, even exchange. If invited to dinner, you need not instantly return the invitation, but do note that a dinner or some other invitation is “owed”. Sometimes the “payment” is not exactly in kind. If you are invited to a fundraising dinner for your client’s favorite charity, you may show your appreciation by making a donation in their honor. You can be creative in your expression but a return gesture is expected.

ASKING FOR HELP “Self-reliant” and “independent” can translate to refusing help even when there is a problem. You may see your friend coping with a problem, big or small, and offer to help, only to be refused. Americans are raised with the ethic “take care of yourself”. It is difficult for most people to accept assistance. In other cultures, it is assumed your friends will step in, do what is necessary and you will welcome, even expect, their help. Not so in the US. Ask before you rush to assist. In addition, Americans are often reluctant to ask for fear of “bothering” someone, upsetting their schedule, imposing on them. Something to note: If you need help, you can ask. Americans will be very cautious about offering to help, not wanting to appear to interfere or imply they doubt your ability to cope. But Americans do like to help, to fix problems, to be friends. Just remember that this desire to “be the good guy” will also be tempered by their focus on schedules and desire for privacy. Assuming that you really want to solve the problem yourself, they may offer advice rather than practical assistance. Touching again on the example at the beginning of this chapter, if your car is out of service, they may tell you how to rent a car, even take you to pick up the 101

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rental, rather than lend you their car, assuming that you wouldn’t be comfortable accepting that offer. Is your car public space or private space?

HI, I’M JASON In both your business and personal life, it is acceptable to introduce yourself. You do not need a referral to request an appointment or to introduce yourself at a business gathering. Americans find themselves in new places frequently. Out of necessity this informal, direct pattern has developed. Not only can you introduce yourself but also you can also expect to move quickly to the use of first names. The idea “all men are created equal” means titles, even honorifics, are not important once you are past the initial introduction. (See Chapter 17 for a guide to American introductions.) Although there are instances where titles are used (e.g. a student may call a teacher, Mr./Mrs./Dr./Professor), these situations are limited. There are some regional variations – for example, Southerners (e.g. in Georgia, Alabama) may be more formal than people in Southern California – where you can expect to be addressed by your first name as soon as introduced. The practice is so omnipresent that even waiters in a restaurant will introduce themselves with their first name! Informality of address really moved into the workplace in the 1960s and has advanced ever since, especially as organizations have downsized or “flattened”. Most companies encourage the use of first names to foster a sense of connection, teamwork and corporate spirit. We talk about Lebron (James), Tim (Cook of Apple), Oprah and Beyoncé though we see them daily. Americans don’t realize that people working with them may be startled by the easy informality of their American colleagues. We just think we’re being friendly.

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BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS

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mericans do build ongoing business relationships. Just as they want to be liked, to be friends, they want to do business with people they like and trust. While that wish is true for people around the world, what distinguishes the American approach is that having a relationship isn’t required before starting to do business together. If the business opportunity makes sense, they are willing to move forward and build the connection while working together. However, Americans believe in the importance of developing networks, connections to support their business activities. Networking can take many forms. In person, there are a variety of business groups with the specific purpose of helping their members find new business opportunities. Others, alumni associations, charitable organizations support networking by encouraging people to come together around shared activities. Even more today, people develop business connections online: With millions of members, to name just three platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook and WeChat all give people the ability to create global networks. A business relationship, no matter its genesis, is not immediately a social friendship, but is one that often develops out of working together on a specific project or transaction. The activities and conversations are often limited to topics from “public space”. People will happily socialize with their business colleagues, even invite them to their homes for dinner. But there will remain a certain limit in the relationship. A level of distance that may be sensed as coolness or result in surprise when the relationship doesn’t expand. Indeed, these relationships are often active for the duration of a specific project but become dormant once it’s over only to revive later with the advent of another project. For example, you may talk to someone daily, dine together regularly for a year. Then, suddenly the building is finished, the sale made and everyone moves on. Conversations become quarterly. E-mail goes from daily to

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occasionally forwarding jokes. Cards are exchanged at the holidays. Then, a new project, a reunion and the cycle starts again as if there hadn’t been a lapse. Business friends – connected but flexible.

Famous (last) words “A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down”. (Arnold H. Glasow) “Strangers are just friends waiting to happen”. (unknown) “One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives”. (Euripides) “A friend is a gift you give yourself”. (Robert Louis Stevenson) “Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity”. (Khalil Gibran)

NOTES 1 Trompenaars, Fons and Charles Hampden-Turner. Riding the Waves of Culture (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012), 102. 2 Chandler, Kevin. “Why Do Americans Move So Much More Than Europeans.” The Atlantic. October 12, 2016. www.theatlantic.com/ business/archive/2016/10/us-geographic-mobility/504968.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

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INTRODUCTION

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efore we consider how to communicate, it’s important to examine our goal when communicating. Our first thought is that we want to ensure that our message gets through, that the recipient understands the meaning spoken or written. While that is our first consideration, it’s useful to add that we also want to be mindful of the response we hope to receive. In a business context, the “right response” can range from something as simple as an agreement to set an appointment or as complex as entering into a strategic alliance. To obtain the response you want, you need to understand how people receive and process information and to grasp the full meaning of their reply, you need to know how they transmit information.

SPEED READ • There are two basic, significantly different communication styles in our world and each is deeply embedded in one’s culture. The difficulties that arise, misunderstandings or insults that are perceived but not intended, often derive from the differences in the delivery of a message rather than its content. • Learn why your American colleagues rely on memos and contracts and insist on having detailed information and love statistics. • To understand the American style of communication, it’s necessary to be aware of their view of time. • Americans can be considered emotional and volatile or cool and rational depending on your culture’s view of which feelings should or should not be expressed. • Americans believe in the right to speak their minds. Freedom of speech is guaranteed to all citizens by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

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conversation overheard in an office in Chicago:

It takes those guys in Paris forever to get back to me on anything. I’ve been waiting for two days. All I need is a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Can’t they just send a quick e-mail. Does everything have to be a mini novel?

You can’t imagine why your counterpart in Dallas keeps asking for memos recapping your most recent meetings with a client. You already talked about it. Isn’t that enough?

THE BIGGER PICTURE HOW WE COMMUNICATE: TWO WAYS IN THE WORLD Communication styles throughout the world can generally be divided into two patterns, each closely linked to a culture’s concept of time (is it scarce or bountiful?) and its views on the importance of personal relationships. Cultural researchers have labeled these differing styles as “high context” and “low context” communication. Context, in this sense, is the information already known, the background or the knowledge that one has about people, places and activities being discussed or written about. Low-context delivery is considered direct and explicit, focused on sharing data and facts. High-context is more subtle even indirect, with concern for maintaining relationships a guiding principal. As with other definitions, no culture or country always follows exactly one style, but the tendency and the overall style will be recognizable.

LOW CONTEXT: NO TIME TO TALK, I NEED IT IN WRITING Americans famous for their emphasis on schedules, time and tasks, directness of their comments and questions, are low context

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communicators. They intend to convey their meaning with the words they speak and write. While they may be the most obvious members of this group, the communication styles of the British, Germans, Swiss and Canadians are similar, falling within the low context group. Americans with their focus on “getting things done” and the fact that their relationships are often segmented, connected to projects and places require explicit information. Data and facts. Compared to others around the world they move frequently, change jobs, requiring them build new connections wherever they go. As a consequence, they often lack long-standing, close, information-bearing networks, and therefore they have fewer opportunities to obtain information informally. In a hurry, schedule-focused Americans look for specific information so they can make a decision and quickly understand the issues. It’s often said that Americans like their communications in “sound bites” – broken into pieces of information that are easy to digest and understand. Don’t be surprised to hear: “Just tell the facts.” “What’s the bottom line?” “Get to the point!” With their focus is on time and schedules, dealing with the next deadline, they are not likely to take time for spontaneous conversations – thereby missing opportunities for gathering information. One cannot rely on body language and situation to make the meaning clear to your American colleagues. They focus on the direct, explicit information provided and are not attuned generally sensitive to the more subtle signals that provide background and context.

HIGH CONTEXT: WE ALREADY KNOW High context is the pattern common throughout most of the world. It reflects the emphasis on close connections with a variety of people, and ongoing relationships with groups and individuals. Thanks to extensive often long-standing relationships, people often can approach each situation with knowledge applicable to the event, the people involved or the question under consideration.

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Related to this form of communication is the polychronic view of time, with its perspective that time flows endlessly allowing time for building and maintaining relationships, interrupting a scheduled meeting for a quick chat to share some news (see Chapter 5 for more on Americans view of time). How many times have you had a casual conversation that provides key information you would otherwise have missed? An important element of communication, especially, high context is an awareness of non-verbal clues that can be observed and understood by the participants. Meaning can be conveyed indirectly and subtly, even inferred by who is delivering the message. Is it the chair of the board or the newest person on the staff? How is the request phrased? How formal is the language? A person from a low context culture is not likely to be attuned to non-verbal messages and can easily miss subtle signals, thereby not understanding the full message being sent, reducing the possibility for the desired response. However, as the world of business becomes increasingly interconnected, styles of communication are changing. Even two countries, who share the same language and are both considered low context do exhibit differences. Comparatively, the British are more high-context than the Americans. Their use of understatement, implied ideas and qualified statements are more “high” than “low”. While the lines may blur, communication patterns are culturally based. The underlying values of time, people and task stay in place. Our natural inclination will favor one form over another.

RUDE OR EFFICIENT? In their effort to “stick to the facts” and to “keep it short and simple”, your US counterpart can seem rude, blunt, aggressive and impatient to people accustomed to a more subtle conversational or written style. Conversely, Americans think time spent in social conversation, the slow building of relationships, allowing the transfer of information, is inefficient. They say, “Can’t they just say it and get on with it?”

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WRITE THIS DOWN As much as it is known for its style of speaking, the US is equally famous for a preference for written communication, for memos, meeting agendas, minutes to recap what was said, and especially for creating detailed contracts. People look for numbers, hard data, facts stated clearly and concisely.

IT ISN’T ABOUT TRUST Americans are known not just as time-focused, but also as a litigious society, quick to sue if they feel something is wrong. With that in mind, people prefer written agreements, specifying all the terms and conditions of an agreement. That level of detail can be seen as designed to allow them to litigate if every detail isn’t adhered to. But that isn’t always the foremost consideration. The most important issue driving the requirement for a detailed agreement is the reality that the person crafting the agreement may not be the one to see the project through to completion. As we’ve noted before, Americans move from company to company, department to department within a company, from team to team, even across the world. A detailed contract allows the whoever manages a project, produces a product, leads a team to easily understand the project goals and their corporate responsibilities. Write it down so we know what to do – not who to sue.

LET’S BE REALLY CLEAR In case you were wondering, you aren’t allowed to bring a hand grenade on an airplane. While this may seem obvious, US Transportation and Safety Administration (TSA) isn’t taking any chances. They tell you on their website that you can’t bring one the flight or pack it in your checked luggage.1 If you do, there’s a fine of $13,333. The TSA website’s section titled “What Can I Bring?” lists dozens of items, in alphabetical order, beginning with aerosol 110

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insecticide and ending with yogurt. For each one, it answers the question: Is this prohibited or not? In the context of this chapter, it’s a clear example of the American preference for written information that is clear and direct. It isn’t enough to specify that hazardous materials can’t be taken on a flight; rather, TSA aims to be sure that a traveler knows whether baby formula, pencil sharpeners or safety matches can travel in carry on, checked baggage or not at all.

DON’T WRITE THIS DOWN While Americans are proud of their tradition of freedom of speech, and fight to preserve, there are some limitations in a business context (see Chapter 6). Disparaging another person, sending emails including what might be considered sexually suggestive material, even things that some consider humorous, are not acceptable in the workplace. Writing e-mails, letters, texts or leaving phone message that may be considered offensive can be costly personally and for the business. See Chapters 15 and 16 for more details.

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BUT I SENT YOU A TEXT! OR, YOU’VE GOT MAIL AND MESSAGES

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t’s easy to understand why Americans with their “just the facts” approach to communication adapted so quickly to e-mail and text messaging. But it isn’t just Americans who send and receive e-mails. In 2018, businesses and consumers sent 281 billion e-mails each day, and that number is to expected to reach 331 billion by 2022.2 Once reserved for personal communication, text messages and messaging apps are fast becoming a preferred method of sharing information. Research indicates that 33% of Americans prefer texting to any other form of communication, and it is the most used form of messaging for Americans under the age of 50.3 When Americans send e-mail and texts, and even when they leave voice mail messages, they expect an almost instant response. How many times have you heard “But I sent you a text” when you don’t respond immediately? If immediate isn’t possible, what’s considered an appropriate time to reply in order to be seen as interested, responsive and professional? Most say 24 hours, a business day, maybe 48 hours if you’ve posted a message saying that you’re out of the office. Wait longer, and you risk being seen as uninterested in the issue or opportunity. Even if you specify when the information is needed, responding on time may not be easy. Need the information by COB (Close of Business)? What time that is can be hard to tell even in the US with its’ six time zones. It wasn’t surprising to hear managers at a global company based in New Jersey complain about the weird response time from their teams in Arizona and Hawaii as much as their people the UK or Switzerland. COB? Based on whose time? (Note: If COB in New Jersey is 5:00 pm, that would be 3:00 pm in Phoenix, noon in Honolulu, 10:00 pm in Zurich and 11:00 pm in London.)

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In addition to considering time in terms of how long to respond, it’s wise to consider when to e-mail or text. Americans are known for not considering differences in time or day when sending that “urgent” message. Will your message land at midnight in the recipients in box? Will it be the weekend where they are? Already time-stressed Americans may not always be “online, all the time” willing to receive or respond to incoming messages.

WHEN TO CALL AND WHAT NUMBER TO USE? Although it’s easy to think that texting and e-mailing have completely replaced personal telephone calls, that’s not entirely true. When to call – for most people after 8:00 am and no later than 9:00 pm for work-related calls are reasonable guidelines. The 24-hour response time associated with e-mails is generally acceptable with phone calls. There’s one other issue to consider, and that’s what number to call. If a business card lists both the main number for the person’s business and a mobile number, which do you use? Is the mobile number included is that permission to text as well as to call? There isn’t a clear answer. In an informal survey, there was no consensus. Some said use the mobile number only if the matter is urgent; others said, “it’s there. You can use it to call or to text”.

BE COOL

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ommunication is not simply words written and spoken, direct versus indirect, high context and low context. When we consider how we connect with each other, share information and elicit responses, it’s necessary to consider the emotional content of the messages, and more particularly, the amount of emotion that it is considered appropriate to reveal. This matter of emotional display is important in understanding how people view each other. Is it appropriate to show strong emotions in

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a business environment or only in settings with friends and family? The answer depends in part on one’s culture. Among Americans you’re likely to find a mix ranging from emotional extroverts to quiet introverts. As a group, people in the US do show their emotions. They may yell and scream, laugh out loud, jump for joy, but seldom in the office. They can be emotional, yell about something, “rant and rave”, but then state “it’s not personal, I wasn’t yelling at you, I was just expressing myself, letting off steam”. But such intense expressions of emotion are not acceptable in most corporate environments. It’s not only the words, but also the tone and volume of voice that matter. As loud as Americans are considered to be, yelling or raising your voice is counted as unprofessional, a serious breach of office protocol. This of course varies from office to office because what for one person is shouting to another is expressing enthusiasm and intensity. But in most places you can laugh out loud, call loudly to someone, but yelling when you are angry, never. Be cool.

Famous (last) words “The most important word in the English language is ‘Please’. (unknown) “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do”. (Thomas Jefferson) “Men of few words are the best men”. (William Shakespeare) “Americans tend to use adjectives and adverbs that are, let’s say, very expressive… such as ‘awesome’, ‘extremely’, ‘wonderful’, etc. It surprises in comparison to the very pragmatic approach they have, and might be confusing to those not familiar with the American style”. (Canadian who teaches cultural geography in France.)

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NOTES 1 “What Can I Bring?” Transportation Safety Administration. Accessed April 4, 2019. www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/ all-list 2 Tshabitscher, Heinz. “The Number of Emails Sent Per Day in 2019 (and 20+ Other Email Facts)” Lifewire. Updated January 3, 2019. www.lifewire.com/how-many-emails-are-sent-every-day-1171210 3 Lernzy, Alexa. “52 Text Messaging Statistics for Business (Source Checked).” Text Magic. Updated June 22, 2018. www.textmagic.com/ blog/text-messaging-statistics-for-businesses

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PART 3

Business

CHAPTER NINE

American corporate culture

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INTRODUCTION

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ne reason US corporate cultures are so often studied and judged by both non-American and American business professionals is because of their substantial power to motivate, retain and attract talent as well as fuel outstanding organizational performance.

With Dr. Peter Drucker credited with suggesting that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”,1 it is clear that the links between “ways we do things around here” and achieving the commercial objectives are intimately intertwined. How a US company treats customers, staff, suppliers and investors reveals its philosophy about the right and wrong ways to pursue profits. The power of a strong, healthy, motivating company culture used to be straightforward, measuring the number of hours Americans gave their employers each week, year and month. Now with the growth of gig economy jobs with the likes of Uber, Lyft, Amazon and others, this is no longer a reliable indicator of loyalty or engagement as the worker is not fully in charge of these. What has been an interesting shift is the significantly increased number of Americans who feel engaged by their employer, driven largely by its culture, work practices and leadership. A recent Gallup study2 shows that 34% of US workers are engaged, up from a low of 26% in 2005. The disengaged are also a declining group, now at 13% from a high of 20% in 2007 and 2008. With two weeks/year still the typical annual vacation allowance, and three weeks for very senior management, it’s no wonder a longdistance vacation to a far-away land is nearly impossible to enjoy, especially after accounting for recovering from jet lag once you’d arrived. It’s no wonder that with the propensity to work, work, work, and limited vacation allowances, the American business culture is quite insular.

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SPEED READ

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n this chapter, you’ll discover • What is “corporate culture” and why it is important to understand the underlying values that drive company behavior? • What are the typical characteristics of US company cultures and what sustains them? • How American corporate cultures are shaped in today’s “always on” work environments and evolving gig-based ways of working?

PICTURE THIS

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ou’re on the plane heading for your company’s annual sales conference at the US HQ, where your American VP of Sales, VP of Marketing and CEO will be sharing the platform to get you “pumped up” for next year’s fantastic business prospects waiting to be converted – the low-hanging fruit. But how should you interpret the messages they’re delivering? Why are your American colleagues so energized by this over-zealous mania, this glorified evangelical sermon?

THE BIGGER PICTURE WHAT IS “CORPORATE CULTURE”? One of the most straightforward definitions comes from Harvard Business Review authors Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price and J. Yo-Jud Cheng in their article “The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture”,3 who suggest it is the tacit social order of an organization: It shapes attitudes and behaviors in wide-ranging and durable ways. Cultural norms

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define what is encouraged, discouraged, accepted, or rejected within a group. When properly aligned with personal values, drives, and needs, culture can unleash tremendous amounts of energy toward a shared purpose and foster an organization’s capacity to thrive.

WHY UNDERSTANDING A US COMPANY’S CULTURE IS IMPORTANT? Understanding the company’s culture means there will be some clarity about the implied “contract” between your opposite numbers and their organization. It tells you what behaviors, actions, tasks they will likely perform to achieve the company’s (and hopefully their own) business objectives. By understanding the culture of the American company with which you are working, its leadership principles, you can adjust your own behaviors, messages and approaches in order to mesh, or conflict, with their own attitudes, values and ways of working. Another reason for studying the characteristics of a company’s culture is its important role as a leading indicator of business performance. Empirical evidence4 supports the conclusion that companies with extremely well-defined cultures are far more likely to support the achievement of strategic objectives than those with very poorly defined cultures. And the achievement of strategic objectives usually translates to…business results. In the “talent war” era in which most US companies now find themselves, the corporate culture is increasingly paraded as a differentiator (a “unique selling point”) for attracting and retaining staff.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR TO ASSESS A US COMPANY CULTURE Taking stock of a culture can be done by paying attention to a variety of symbols and statements. Some ways you can understand these climates include:

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• Assess The Offices. Where is the office located? Heart of the city or industrial area? Suburban office park or view of the beach? Look at the colors, the quality of furniture, any artwork. Contemporary? traditional? Expensive treasures? Flea market finds? Stylish but uncomfortable? Personal photos or memorabilia on desks or computer screens? • How People Look. Does everyone dress alike? Is this a company where all the executives are the same size, with the same standard-issue computer case? If there are variations, are the differences specific to a department? Is the corporate look a common uniform of suits and ties, or shorts and sandals? • Read What They Say. Notice the mission statements, values, purpose, sustainability goals, corporate brochures and annual reports. Check for the stated commercial objectives and their current view of their own performance. What does success look like? Who are the people photographed in the corporate communications: men? women? older or younger employees? Ethnically diverse? Does the Board of Directors look like its customers and clients, or is it a panel of grey-haired white men? • Icons, Words and Symbols. Is there a vocabulary, words and acronyms that only “insiders” understand? Who are the heroes and role models (more on this in Chapter 15)? Which people get promoted up the organization? Are there physical indicators that someone is doing well (size of office, window view, more equipment)? • Congruency. Does the look and feel of the company’s annual report reflect the look and feel of the organization in person? If there is a published mission and/or values statement, do people treat each other and does the company treat its customers consistent with these mission/values? Are these values important and respected or just symbolic? • Procedures. In a meeting, watch the flow of conversation. Is there one person that everyone addresses, or is there an irregular flow back and forth involving everyone? How are tasks

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assigned and reports made? Does everyone speak? What is the mood – serious and quiet? Strained? Is there a light atmosphere with lots of jokes? • How People Are Treated. When sitting in the lobby, pay attention to the receptionist. How is the phone answered? How are people greeted? What’s the conversation with and attitude toward people?

TYPICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF US COMPANY CULTURES Regardless of the industry sector, you’ll likely find the following generalizations hold true about what we’re like to work with as a community of corporates: • American business professionals tend to be very focused on the end-game, the objectives and the transaction rather than the long-term, one-to-one relationship with you or your company. This deal focus is often evidenced by such mundane clues as the way you’re announced by a receptionist at a company you’re visiting as I often find: “I have a ‘StewartAllen’ in reception for you”, as if a new genus of homo sapiens arrived, never before encountered! • They tend to favor low-context, direct messages that are to be taken at face value, and which are not mixed with deep senses of irony or subtext (a challenge certainly for Europeans). • Responding swiftly to market conditions and trends which is sometimes viewed by outside observers as knee-jerk (witness the Starbuck’s mandatory racial bias training for every US store following a Philadelphia store’s call to police fearing two AfricanAmerican customers). • Believing it’s better to do the job “right first time” as well as quickly is a deep-rooted belief. After all, time is money and participating in a market – even if the approach is “ready, fire, aim” – shows our bias in favor of taking action rather than analysis paralysis.

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• Encouraging lifelong learning, with significant investments made in all seniority levels for staff to attend leadership programs. The leading US business schools – Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Wharton – run customized training for corporates which typically invest $500,000 per week for senior level leadership education. This perk is often a differentiator when aiming to attract the best talent in the marketplace. • Building “fun” into one’s company and one’s job is important as it helps achieve organizational and personal goals simultaneously. • There is a tendency toward micro-managing projects: frequent “report backs”, feedback and meetings are the tools used by managers to monitor and update on progress, especially valuable for Millennials in the workforce who expect regular information and communication. • As most US workplaces are high-feedback environments, in line with micro-managing projects, knowing where you stand and how well you’ve performed helps ensure the objectives are met. Asking for feedback is a regular, encouraged behavior where you’ll often hear phrases such as “Hey Bob, can I get your feedback on…” • The more successful companies are run by accessible leaders and senior managers who encourage direct contact and feedback, usually “managing by walking around”. • Businesses undertake a constant (if not regular) impact analysis of the operating environment so as not to be taken by surprise by events or be accused of slowness to respond to change. • There are regular evangelical sessions (“love-fests”) as a planned part of company-wide meetings, with senior leaders taking the role of “cheerleaders” to communicate and control the values and corporate culture. • Lots of management time is spent in meetings rather than “doing” (part of the American belief that you can never overcommunicate). The ritual of frequent meetings can be one of the more frustrating aspects of US company cultures.

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• Status is usually granted by the deference and reference of others. Sometimes, it can be inferred by where the managers sit in meetings (at the head of the table). At other times, their position can be identified by whether they are interrupted infrequently or listened to frequently. However, status is ascertained, it is certainly subtle in part because the “boss” often intentionally dresses like the rest of the staff to encourage a democratic, overtly lowstatus work environment traced back to the Founding Fathers’ aspiration for a country of equals, with “liberty and justice for all” as stated in the pledge of allegiance in schools each morning. • Conversations over the water cooler, in meetings or corridors often seem to consist of a series of questions rather than statements of answers, which encourages the exchange of as much information as possible in the briefest amount of time. • Information is seen as a freely accessible commodity rather than a status-determining one. It is freely given, taken and stored without an ego-driven sense of ownership. • Overt disagreement in meetings or other public arena with colleagues or managers is seen as shocking, surprising and something to be discouraged. Disagreement is seen as a destructive, unproductive behavior that takes the focus off the bottom-line, the tasks to be done. Usually, disagreements are aired “offline” in a more private setting. • Most US companies value “masculine” behaviors: quantitative analysis, task-oriented action, a focus on achievements, performance and results. Academics Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner describe American companies as having a “guided missile culture”5 – heading toward a welldefined target (increased market share, higher ROI, better same store sales, being first or second in the market, reduced headcount, increased productivity). • “Command and control” management structures and styles are most common. • “Innovate or Die!” is a slogan often heard in management corridors. As Apple’s Steve Jobs suggested,6 “innovation

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distinguishes between a leader and a follower”. The ability to change, to adapt, is one of the characteristics of American culture. This capacity to reinvent, to believe that we can change our environment is key to both our national culture of determinism and corporate success. • Humor as a management tool, as it helps offset the intense time pressures and goal orientations that are present in every American workplace. Even some job titles are reflecting this belief that humor is important, including7 Minister of Comedy (at a major accounting firm), Manager of Mischief, Vice President of Happiness and Director of Fun.

SHAPERS OF CULTURE Understanding not only what is the American corporate culture generally but also the shapers of that evolutionary culture is important in order to be able to predict where it’s heading and thus best align yourself with it.

Transparency Social media is an increasingly powerful force that has lifted the lid on how the country’s bosses operate, reducing the control of their PR and Communications teams and placing it firmly in the hands of employees, journalists, investors and many other stakeholder groups. Whether it’s a review on the Glass Door website – where employees past and present can score their employers on what it’s like to work in the company – or a #MeToo confession, or a Tweet from a rogue consumer with a bad customer experience, company leaders are now expected to be open, communicative, honest and ethical. Adding to the pressure are stories of gender pay gaps, which corporate leaders are fielding from current staff and college campus recruiters alike. An enterprise’s purpose – taking in its “ESG” agenda (environment, sustainability, governance) – is now seen as another way to describe

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the scope of the organization’s activities. Such a guiding principle allows a form of checks-and-balances on misbehavior while setting expectations for the broad range of stakeholders asking ever tougher questions of leaders. So you might wonder, where does trust fit into this equation? While the company’s purpose gives you a rough yardstick to gauge whether its activities are legitimate, it also can reveal something about its intentions: perhaps the social impact of its pursuit of profits, its carbon footprint or its treatment of workers in the increasingly popular “gig economy”. Evidence of employees’ desire to know that their employers do have a social purpose is a trend in evidence over the past several years in the findings of Edelman PR’s Trust Barometer that annually reviews these expectations.

Diversity and equality Linked to transparency is the encouragement of a diverse and inclusive workforce. One reason is the economic windfall that results from better decisions driven by diverse views and backgrounds as research8 shows. The view that talent comes in many packages – regardless of ethnic, religious, orientation or nationality – is widely held. Employers now even recognize that religion in the workplace – once the domain of private life – is to be accommodated with meditation rooms on offer for prayer. As for female talent, diversity in the boardroom and in more senior leadership levels is increasingly now mandated not just by investors, but by state law. California’s former Governor Jerry Brown was the first one amongst the fifty states to pass legislation9 requiring that all publicly traded companies with headquarters within its boundaries ensure their boards add at least one woman by the end of 2019. Equalizing the pay gap between men and women in their workforces is now a top priority for many of America’s CEO’s as pressure groups, the media (social and offline) and female talent are placing their loyalty and trust in those employers addressing the issue.

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My God, Ashton! Didn’t you get the e-mail?

Demographics The US workforce in corporate America today is a broad mix of generations, with Millennials the most populous employee generation, comprising 35% of the total, according to Pew Research Center’s analysis10: • Generation Z/Post-Millennials (born 1997 and later) • Generation Y/Millennials (born 1981–1996) • Generation X (born 1965–1980) • Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964) • Silent and Greatest (born 1945 or earlier) With this diverse mix, the multigenerational American manager must be good at navigating the varying assumptions about how the employer-employee relationship will work. Here’s a general overview of the various motivations from the latest literature11 on the subject:

SILENT GENERATION Motivators: Money, respect, recognition

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Preferred recognition style: Subtle, personalized recognition and feedback Welcomed benefits: Long-term care insurance, catch-up retirement funding Considerations: Pension plans and retiree health care, flexible work schedules, and symbolic awards

BABY BOOMERS Motivators: Money, flexible retirement planning, peer recognition Preferred recognition style: Acknowledgment of their input and expertise; prestigious job titles, parking places, large offices Welcomed benefits: 401(k) matching funds, sabbaticals, catch-up retirement funding Considerations: Boomers are often ambitious about personal and company goals. They are relationship-driven and prefer on-site, traditional office environments that promote teamwork. Provide infrequent, formal feedback. Remember that they often base their personal identities on their work lives.

GEN X Motivators: Bonuses, stock options, workplace flexibility Preferred recognition style: Informal, rapid and public recognition Welcomed benefits: Telecommuting and tuition reimbursement Considerations: These employees consider “long hours” and “paying dues” outdated concepts. Their job security comes from a strong resume and continual self-improvement. They generally prefer autonomy and may display tremendous drive and ambition. They dislike being micro-managed and typically want to work independently. They think in terms of organizational impact and seek recognition from senior leaders. And they expect flexible schedules and engaging cultures from their employers.

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MILLENNIALS (GEN Y) Motivators: Stock options, regular feedback. Preferred recognition style: Informal communication through company chat or social networks. Welcomed benefits: Flexible schedules, continued learning opportunities (according to the Society of HR Managers, known as SHRM). Considerations: 63% say their leadership skills are not being fully developed and 87% believe that a business’s success should be measured based on not just financial performance, but also on contribution to society. 70% believe their personal values should be shared by their employer. Millennials are much more likely to embrace non-traditional benefits and work/life balance than baby boomers. Millennials want to be mentored and coached. They are focused on collaboration, want to share a sense of purpose with their teammates and work together on meaningful projects. They are tech-savvy and appreciate opportunities to showcase their proficiency by contributing to technological solutions that support innovation. This Generation Y Millennial employee wants the company that hires them to apply their talents on non-menial tasks that challenge them, and will happily voice this demand. Used to getting what they want as cosseted children from time-poor/materially rich households, they expect wealth and opportunity, expecting ambitious salaries early. Impatient, bright and frustrated, companies need to manage these multi-taskers well, since this is the talent pool replacing the retiring Baby Boomers.

YOU’RE SPECIAL: POST-MILLENNIALS (GEN Z) As this will soon be the largest demographic group in the US workforce, it’s worth getting to know these important contributors a little bit better. Here’s what we know, thanks to a recent analysis from Forbes12:

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• Technology is good. Gen Z are the first generation of digital natives, with technology playing a key role in daily life. There’s an expectation that there’ll be an app for every aspect of office life – ordering a coffee, finding a meeting room, booking the company masseuse. • I’m here to change the world. This group of employees expect their jobs to be able to change the world, think big, solve the unsolvable problems. • You fit with me. Employers are assessed based on whether the Gen Z staff feel they fit in with the culture, it reflects them, it has a bigger purpose than just making money, and it provides lots of learning as well as exposure to an exciting variety of gigs. It should be entrepreneurial to allow participation on shortterm projects or rotations across the company’s functions and geographies. While your company may have a long-standing, tenure-based, linear process for how to gain a promotion, Gen Z won’t wait. Their need for autonomy, creative expression and desire to change the world comes first. • You’re reliable. Having been raised in the post 9/11 world – the 2008 financial meltdown and ongoing terrorism threats – this generation wants a reliable, secure environment that rewards their creativity and initiative. • You’re social. Companies that win with these digital natives will give them internal communications platforms that mirror their external ones – whether Yammer or other intranet tools since live, face-to-face exchanges are no longer the means to engage them. Generations X, Y and Z are unimpressed by cultures that allow “dead wood” colleagues to remain unproductive in their roles while still earning a paycheck. What’s important is making a difference to the world, changing people’s lives, having a sense of purpose – to improve society instead of serving as a corporate slave to a bland mission statement. They value direct, upward communications, shun bureaucracy and politics and see work as allowing them to focus on other aspects of their lives. Clear goals, the right resources to

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do their jobs and being allowed to just “get on with it” are of great importance. And while it may seem this desire for purpose is only true for younger populations, in fact all generations want their work to be fun, and to have fun while they work. Those who contribute most to ensuring the culture is fun are the executive teams expected to be the guardians and ambassadors of the culture – to walk the talk. As they are held up to be example setters, better companies ensure these enthusiasts are regularly onmessage about “what’s important around here”. Other shapers of the corporate culture include the following: • The US national culture and values of self-reliance, determinism, vocation as a calling and a belief in meritocratic and democratic processes. “Live to work” is part of what determines our identity. • Silicon Valley’s romanticized image that entrepreneurial cultures are cool, trendy, attractive to Generations X, Y and Z, which many leaders emulate outside California’s tech bubble. • The heritage of the brands and the values they defend. Most Americans can accurately describe the culture of Nike, Apple, Amazon or Netflix. • Explicit statements of the mission and values of the company which act as reference points for insiders and outsiders. • Departmental orientations: Marketing has its focus on the customer, finance has its eye on the best sources and uses of funds, while engineering has its allegiance to the best form and function, each of which is a microclimate within the organization’s culture. • Fear of being dispensable: a reorganization or restructuring while you’re away on vacation is one of the most common American anxieties among managers. Whether it is the speedy return to work after having a baby or cutting short the planned time off, presentee-ism is an enduring and common cultural characteristic.

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Famous (last) words “Fortune favors the brave”. (Latin Proverb) “The road to success is not easy to navigate, but with hard work, drive and passion, it’s possible to achieve the American dream”. (Tommy Hilfiger) “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage”. (Jack Welch, Former CEO of General Electric)

NOTES 1 Ross, Bernard. “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast”.The Management Centre. 2015. Accessed April 27, 2019. www.managementcentre.co.uk/ culture-eats-strategy-for-breakfast/ 2 Harter, Jim. “Employee Engagement on the Rise in the U.S.” Gallup. August 26, 2018. Last modified 2018. Accessed April 27, 2019. https:// news.gallup.com/poll/241649/employee-engagement-rise.aspx 3 Groysberg, Boris, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price, and J Yo-Jud Cheng. “The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture.” Harvard Business Review 96, no. 1 (2018): 44–52. January–February, 2018. Accessed April 27, 2019. www.spencerstuart.com/~/media/pdf files/research and insight pdfs/the-leaders-guide-to-corporate-culture.pdf 4 Craig, William. “As Company Culture Improves, So Does Your Business.” Forbes. March 6, 2018. Accessed April 27, 2019. www.forbes.com/sites/williamcraig/2018/03/06/ as-company-culture-improves-so-does-your-business/#4f4ff39a2d36 5 Trompenaars, Fons, and Charles Hampden-Turner. Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business. Third edition (London, United Kingdom: The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2012), 193–222. 6 Griggs, Brandon. “10 Great Quotes from Steve Jobs”. CNN. January 4, 2016. Accessed April 27, 2019. https://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/04/ tech/innovation/steve-jobs-quotes/index.html

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7 Catron, Emerald. “30 Weirdest Job Titles in Corporate America”, Smarter Living, BestLife. May 29, 2018. https://bestlifeonline.com/ weirdest-job-titles/ 8 Hunt, Vivian, Dennis Layton, and Sara Prince. “Why Diversity Matters.” Mckinsey & Company. January 2015. Accessed April 28, 2019. www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/ why-diversity-matters 9 Fuhrmans, Vanessa. “California Becomes First State to Mandate Female Board Directors”, Management & Careers, The Wall Street Journal. September 30, 2018. www.wsj.com/articles/californiabecomes-first-state-to-mandate-female-board-directors-1538341932 10 Fry, Richard. “Millennials Are The Largest Generation In The U.S. Labor Force”. Pew Research Center. April 11, 2018. April 28, 2019. www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/11/ millennials-largest-generation-us-labor-force/ 11 Da Costa, Celinne. “The Millennial Workforce Needs Mentors, Not Managers.” Forbes. May 25, 2018. Accessed April 28, 2019. www.forbes.com/sites/celinnedacosta/2018/05/25/ the-millennial-workforce-needs-mentors-not-managers/#1a68c6df127a 12 Forbes Coaches Council. “Generation Z: 12 Important Things Companies Need To Understand.” Forbes. March 3, 2017. April 28, 2019. www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/03/03/ generation-z-12-important-things-companies-need-tounderstand/#da6fb7d1fe3d

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CHAPTER TEN

Who’s the boss?

business

INTRODUCTION

W

hat do Americans mean by “the boss” today? Is it the venture capitalists who call the shots and give you the money? Is it the CEO? Is it the vice-president of the Knowledge Management department? Is it the Chief Marketing Officer, or maybe all of these simultaneously in a matrix organization structure?

A literal definition, according to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,1 is “an employer or a supervisor, one who makes decisions or exercises authority”. These masters, authorities, directors find themselves now in the most VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) business environments ever experienced in US and world history. The challenges they face include such tasks as retaining talented people who’d rather be paid less to own their own lives, managing activist investors and other members of the financial community with voracious appetites for news and ever-improving results, heeding the calls for sustainability and robust ESG policies (environment, society, governance), all the while compressing five-year plans into one year because – as the boss – you may not be around longer than this to see it through. With forecasts so unreliable that budgeting and planning must be done weekly, it’s a stressful time! But, let’s go back to some fundamentals about leading and managing in America. Abraham Maslow’s observations in the mid1950s – that people have a “hierarchy of needs”, each level of which comes into play once the subordinate need has been met – shaped the agenda for American business leaders and managers to allow those they lead to “self-actualize” (meaning to know, understand, systematize, organize and construct a system of values) in the workplace. This could only happen once their physiological needs (water coolers, coffee machines), safety needs (ensuring that the ceiling over their desks isn’t going to collapse) and social needs

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(recognizing them with “employee of the month” awards) were met, in this sequence. Also to be taken into account are the shapes that corporate structures have taken over the past decade – like watching amoebas on glass microscope slides regularly changing their shapes. The steep, multi-layered pyramids that previously dominated the landscape are now flattened significantly. In their place are virtual, matrix structured teams, committees, working groups and task forces that allow for immediate, fluid communication and action (and a lot less hierarchy thankfully too!). The matrix organization – first installed in top US companies by management consulting firm McKinsey in the 1960s – which aligned employees to two bosses [one for their functional team (e.g. marketing, finance, engineering, etc.) and one for their product, service or geographically based team] – meaning that bosses had employees with two (and sometimes more) allegiances instead of just one. Moving from these historical shapers to the capabilities needed in order to run and lead corporate America today, these leaders/ chiefs are expected to be great communicators, evangelists, entrepreneurs, change agents and compromisers. As an increasingly large chunk of their total pay is sought to be tied to meeting strategic and operational goals, they’ll be encouraged to take a longer-term view on making sure their plans bear fruit.

SPEED READ • The American boss now plays many roles inside an organization, not just those of the traditional resource controller and team leader. • Many forces are shaping what American companies’ leaders and bosses now actually do.

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• The CEO and Managers perform a more complicated juggling act than ever before, with a variety of global economic events and domestic industrial restructurings and process revolutions shaping their activities.

PICTURE THIS

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espite your regular quarterly review meetings with the CEO at your headquarters in St Louis, he still doesn’t seem to pay attention to your warnings that the international business is under threat: Brexit, Euro exchange rate volatility, local data protection laws, grey imports from outside the European Union, the vigilante customer making ever more sophisticated demands means that the international division needs some attention. But how can you focus your CEO on these international events which you think are important? Why can’t he seem to respond to these urgent issues?

THE BIGGER PICTURE WHAT TO CALL THE BOSS Spurred on by job titles found in the tech start-up economy, traditional American corporates are increasingly using newfangled titles of their own. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal,2 modern job titles include “Data Wrangler” used by financial-services firm OneAmerica, with other companies seeking a “Customer Service Ninja”, “Head of People” or even a “Growth Hacker.” Regardless of their exact job title, what is clear is that American bosses are getting to choose their own job titles or being given newer ones in line with the wide-ranging number of new roles they play in the disruptive times in which US companies now compete for talent. In theory, this fluid boss can play the role of

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manager, leader, mentor, coach, strategist or even cheerleader – all at the same time. You might also call the boss “rich”. According to a recent Bloomberg IMF ranking of CEO pay by country, Chief Executives of large US companies are now earning over $14 million per year on average, a long way ahead of the next highest paid from Switzerland ($8.5 million), Netherlands ($8.24 million) and the UK ($7.95 million). The US’ highest CEO compensation package goes to Broadcom’s Hock Tan, with a package of over $103 million.3 Pay for female CEOs has also risen significantly,4 with Martine Rothblatt of United Therapeutics at $36 million, Weight Watchers’ Mindy Grossman at $33 million and General Motors’ Mary Barra at $21 million.5 These CEOs are, however, the exception to the rule when it comes to pay for most women in US organizations, who experience a gender pay gap. Attitudes toward female bosses have also been changing according to a recent Gallup poll,6 with 55% of Americans having no preference about the gender of their boss, with men (68%) more likely than women (44%) to lack a preference. This is a far cry from 1953, when 66% of Americans preferred a male boss.

WHAT DOES THE BOSS ACTUALLY DO: LEAD OR MANAGE? It seems successful bosses do both. According to John Kotter,7 an author of many works on leadership and former Harvard Business School Professor of Organizational Behavior, management is about coping with complexity, keeping chaos under control with order and consistency. Leadership is about coping with and initiating change. Both functions involve three types of activities: deciding what needs to be done, accomplishing an agenda and ensuring people actually implement that agenda. Defining these categories in the table below, you can see these two roles have different emphases when applied to a typical US boss.

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Emphasis

Manager

Leader

What needs to be done

Planning and budgeting

Setting a direction

Accomplishing the agenda

Organizing and staffing

Aligning committed people to the vision and forming coalitions

Ensuring people implement the agenda

Controlling and problem solving

Motivating and inspiring

A more sardonic view about what American bosses do comes from Scott Adams’ comic strip hero Dilbert,8 who proposes Leadership skills are quite different from management skills. When you ‘manage’, by definition, you’re trying to distribute resources where they will do the company the most good. When you ‘lead’, by definition, you’re trying to get those resources distributed to yourself. Obviously, leadership is a better way to go. It’s easier too. Thankfully, this approach is not the norm. The literature on leadership styles suggests American bosses vary their approach depending on the context. Daniel Goleman identifies six styles for the effective leader9: • LET’S DO THIS TOGETHER. The “authoritative” (not authoritarian) style states a clear vision for people and motivates them by making it clear how their work contributes to the vision. Staff see why their work matters and are given flexibility in achieving their goals. This is the most positive style and works in most situations – unless the leader has less experience than his followers. • HOW DO YOU FEEL? Goleman labels this the “affiliative” style, where the leader appeals to the employees’ emotional concerns, offers ample praise and gives them greater freedom in doing their jobs, with intense loyalty the biggest benefit. This style is effective for rebuilding teamwork, morale and trust. It can leave some feeling rudderless, so best used in combination with the authoritative style.

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• WHAT DO YOU THINK? The “democratic” style, which builds trust and commitment by soliciting people’s ideas and opinions. Not surprisingly, morale and productivity rise, but it can take a fair bit of extra time to build consensus. The downside is if it is used to avoid decision-making. • TRY THIS. This “coaching” style of leadership helps employees identify their strengths and weaknesses, by offering feedback and delegating tough assignments to help people grow. While the leader’s focus is on long-term results (the employee’s growth), coaching delivers solid short-term pay-offs because employees tend to rise to the level of the boss’s expectations. • DO AS I DO, NOW. The “pacesetting” style and second least effective. This leader is obsessed with doing things better, faster, but doesn’t make expectations completely clear. “If I have to tell you, you’re wrong for the job.” Responsibility and initiative evaporate because people focus on second guessing the leader’s expectations. Pacesetting can be effective with highly motivated, competent teams, however, if used with other styles. • DO WHAT I TELL YOU. The “coercive” style, and the least effective of the six. Nobody likes to be bossed around, though in a crisis it mobilizes people quickly.

MANAGING THE MANAGER Looking again at Kotter’s three roles of the manager – planning and budgeting, organizing and staffing, controlling and problem solving – this boss has a more tactical focus on getting things done. Corporate objectives are usually achieved by cascading down, across and sideways through the matrix to get the most buy-in and enthusiasm. Many of the manager’s team are likely reporting to many bosses at once and getting a decent share of their attention can be a challenge, so rely on the four-step “performance management” method to define what’s to be achieved (planning performance),

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tracking it as it happens (measuring performance), assessing how well it happens (reviewing performance) and rewarding those that achieve (rewarding performance). Where “rewarding” performance was straightforward in the past – more cash or salary – today’s Generation X, Y and Z prefer “high peace” over “high pace”, opting for quality of life over the 80-hour work week. Time is now one of the most effective incentives in the manager’s bag. The use of “hard” approaches (performance management, 360-degree feedback instruments) and “soft” approaches (using the organization’s purpose, values, culture, ping pong tables and free beer to incentivize the right behaviors) is making American managers more rounded. Given the high rates of staff burnout in the 24/7/365 US business climate, managers must rely on better and creative ways to elicit the performance they need. This is made all the more challenging by flattening hierarchies, especially in white collar industries, with managers having to push responsibility for decisions down and across the chain to much more junior staff comprised most often by Generation Z, new to the workforce and happy to voice their disagreement with corporate policies and procedures. For example, Google staff walked out in 2018 to demonstrate their dissent against the company’s alleged sexual misconduct case, while a significant number of Microsoft employees are publicly airing their disgust with the company’s supply contract for the US Army of augmented reality headsets as the talented engineers in both these organizations leverage their clout that comes from skills in short supply. While in the past such insubordination would have been punished, now minor deviance is tolerated as extreme corporate responses will raise the likelihood and intensity of bad PR for the company and its bosses. And of course, these employees expect ethics to trump commercial pursuits, or at least to be of equal importance.

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Welcome aboard, Swenburn! And remember – you must never, ever put your hand on MY shoulder.

SPINNING PLATES Regardless of which specific roles your American boss plays, all are today required to spin several plates, including: • GLOBALIZATION: which is forcing US companies to serve many markets simultaneously, each at a different marketing and economic stage, while trying to localize the offerings and avoid reinventing the wheel every time. • INITIATIVE OVERLOAD: too many change programs under way at the same time [data mining and analytics, sustainable use of resources, corporate social responsibility, restructuring the organization, strategic alliances/joint ventures, etc.]. • DISRUPTION: characterized by new entrants, business models and technology forcing new ways of managing business life cycles and the talent needed to win. Whether it’s robots or AI, white-collar jobs are being replaced or fundamentally changed

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by the advance of quantum computing and the reliance on networks to get the job done. • CHANGING EXPECTATIONS OF WORK: fueled by Millennials and their older Gen X and Gen Y counterparts, these talent pools seek more meaning, fulfilment, excitement, gigs, community, spirituality and fewer hours at work, all the while challenging the authority and lessening their loyalty to employers. • Keeping up with the latest thinking: management books and thinking touted by any of a number of the business guru rock stars is easily a full-time job, with the majority of these “thought leaders” based in the US.10 • Succession planning. According to a recent Equilar study,11 the median tenure for CEOs at large-cap companies was five years, a decrease in one year since 2013. And their departures are often driven by scandal or duress as in the cases of Wells Fargo and Equifax. The good news is this provides the chance to broaden the diversity of the C-suite, though female CEOs are not being filling these vacancies at a meaningfully higher rate than in the past. With female quotas in the boardroom starting to gain traction (witness California’s 2018 legislation requiring public companies to have at least one woman on the board by 2019, and two by end-2021), the boardroom complexion is changing. Not only does this lack of continuity force share price fluctuations, but more fundamentally often means the outgoing Chief Executive takes a significant bit of knowledge and corporate history with him, information which may not have been logged or captured adequately before his departure. • Manage stakeholder expectations. These are steadily becoming more complex, coming from activist investors, employees, suppliers, customers and the media to name just a few of the many ecosystem members requiring attention. • Splitting the role. Corporate governance pressure now means the role of the CEO and Chair should be separated to provide

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more checks and balances on company decision-making. It also allows a non-executive Chair to act as a mentor and gobetween with the Board, a long-standing British practice that challenges the American view of “having it all” to include the roles of CEO, President and Chair.

TRAITS OF THE GOOD CEO Research by Elena Botelho and Kim Powell,12 starting with 17,000 US leadership assessments with deep analysis of 2,600 of these, found that CEOs are a combination of nature and nurture, displaying the following four critical behaviors: 1. Ensure others buy in on your idea. This is not about trying to be liked but about engaging and inspiring stakeholders, a critical success factor to deliver results. Going about it requires three methods: • Communicate clearly about your intent, the goals and vision • Make sure you appreciate the financial, physical and emotional drivers of the people who will help you deliver those results • Build relationships via habits and routines that translate into action 2. Adapt to the circumstances. According to the research authors, “to get to the top, aspiring leaders have to learn to navigate the uncharted”. Whether it’s Borders, Kodak or Blockbuster, these companies failed because their CEOs could not adapt while the winners are more comfortable being uncomfortable. They are able to focus on the future and less on the past. 3. Make decisions quickly. Successful CEOs are decisive, and 12 times more likely to be high performers, according to the data. 4. Deliver consistent results by being reliable. Once a CEO is known for this, their odds of getting hired double. And of all

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of these four leadership behaviors, it is “relentless reliability” that comes out as the most important for success as it also increases the odds of excelling.

EXCEPTIONAL BOSSES Tim Cook, CEO, Apple With a market capitalization of over $1 trillion (about the equivalent GDP of Mexico13), Tim Cook, leader of the world’s most valuable company, shared his views on leadership at a recent CNBC conference14: “The chief is a prominent spokesperson for diversity and inclusion issues and has made headlines for speaking out on some of America’s most controversial political policies. But that position of power comes with a major caveat: It must be backed up by specific expertise and the scope to add value, according to the 57-year-old tech titan. Before speaking out, therefore, Cook said he always questions: ‘Is it something that Apple has a special expertise on?’ and ‘Do we have a right to talk about the issue?’ Speaking at Fortune’s CEO Initiative, Cook said he doesn’t want Apple to be ‘another talking head.’ But, as a leader, he said he believes he has a responsibility to speak out for both the company’s values and the values of those it employs. ‘I don’t think business should only deal in commercial things. Business, to me, is nothing more than a collection of people. If people have values, then companies should,’ Cook told his audience.”

Indra Nooyi, former CEO PepsiCo and Non-Executive Director, Amazon After 24 years at PepsiCo, 12 of which were served as CEO, Indra Nooyi anticipated the need to move the company into healthier

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drinks and food, as well as sustaining the market shares of its flagship brands Cheetos, Doritos and Mountain Dew. Nooyi, who earned $31 million in 2018, her final year with the business, was born in the South Indian city of Chennai in 1955. Nooyi, who played in a rock band as a young girl, recalls being a rebellious child from a close-knit and conservative family. “I’m still a bit of a rebel, always saying that we cannot sit still,” she told Harvard Business Review in 2015. “Every morning you’ve got to wake up with a healthy fear that the world is changing, and a conviction that, to win, you have to change faster and be more agile than anyone else.” Having been accepted to attend Yale’s School of Management at age 22, her mother nearly scuppered the plan since she was 22 and still not married, despite the hefty financial aid package that the university offered her. After graduating and taking roles in large consulting firms, at 39 she took a role at PepsiCo as Chief Strategist. where one of her most controversial and early decisions was persuading its CEO to offload the restaurant division, which included Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. While the business flourished during the 1990s and 2000s, it suffered market share losses just as she took over in 2006 as CEO. Her challenge was to judge whether it was better to achieve shortterm or long-term success. “I could have gone pedal to the metal, stripped out costs, delivered strong profit for a few years, and then said adios,” she said in 2015. “But that wouldn’t have yielded longterm success.” One of her campaigns was to help the business become more design-focused, with her weekly market visits to judge first-hand how the company’s products were merchandised in store. Another component of her long-term strategy was prioritizing healthy products, leading to analysts doubting her leadership. Analysts scoffed at her strategy for years: “They kept telling me, ‘Why are you Mother Teresa? Why are you trying to change your portfolio to

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healthier products?’ Because that’s where the market was going. That’s where we needed to go.” And since 2016, PepsiCo beat quarterly expectations, generating $63.5 billion in revenue in 2017: Leading PepsiCo has truly been the honor of my lifetime, and I’m incredibly proud of all we have done over the past 12 years to advance the interests not only of shareholders, but all our stakeholders in the communities we serve. Nooyi revealed in press interviews her plan to take a break – but not for long. She wants to help develop more female talent to ensure better representation of women in top leadership roles. “My job is in fact just beginning once I leave PepsiCo because I can do things now that I was constrained to do when I was CEO of the company.”15

JOKE The American boss is given two cows. She sells one, leases it back to herself and does an IPO on the second one. She forces the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. She’s surprised when one cow drops dead. She spins an announcement to the analysts that she has reduced her expenses. Her stock price goes up. The French boss has two cows. He goes on strike because he wants three cows. He goes to lunch. Life is good. The Japanese boss has two cows. He redesigns them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce 20 times the amount of milk. The cows learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school. The Swiss boss has 5,000 cows, none of which belong to him. He charges for storing them for others. If they give milk, he tells no one. The Italian boss has two cows but doesn’t know where they are. While ambling around, he sees a beautiful woman. He breaks for lunch. Life is good.

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Famous (last) words “Leadership is the lifting of a man’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a man’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a man’s personality beyond its normal limitations.” (Peter Drucker) “The ultimate leader is one who is willing to develop people to the point that they eventually surpass him or her in knowledge and ability”. (Fred A. Maske, Jr) “Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without the strategy”. (Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf)

NOTES 1 ©Houghton Mifflin Company, “The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition”. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2019). Accessed April 28, 2019. www. ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=boss. 2 Cheng, Te-Ping. “Who Wants to Be a Ninga? Job Titles Get a Rebranding”, Management & Careers, The Wall Street Journal. November 14, 2018. www.wsj.com/articles/ who-wants-to-be-a-ninja-job-titles-get-a-rebranding-1542204005 3 Suneson, Grant. “From AMC Network’s Josh Span to Broadcom’s Hock Tan: These Are the Highest Paid CEOs of 2018”, Money, USA TODAY. December 21, 2018. Accessed April 28, 2019. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/12/21/ highest-paid-ceos-2018/38756663/ 4 Ibid. 5 Skantzos, Kathy. “Women of Influence: Angelina Jolie, Mary Barra, Amal Clooney and More”, Business, CEO MAGAZINE, 27 February, 2019. Accessed April 28, 2019. www.theceomagazine.com/business/ coverstory/women-of-influence/

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6 Brenan, Megan. “Americans No Longer Prefer Male Boss to Female Boss.” Workplace, Gallup, November 16, 2017. Accessed April 28, 2019. https://news.gallup.com/poll/222425/americans-no-longer-prefermale-boss-female-boss.aspx 7 Kotter, John. What Leaders Really Do (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, December 2001), 1–12. 8 Adams, Scott. Dogbert’s Top Secret Management Handbook (New York: Harper Collins, 1996). 9 Goleman, David. Leadership that Gets Results (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, March–April 2000), 82–83. 10 Thinkers50, “T50 Ranking-Thinkers 50,” Thinkers 50, last modified 2017. Accessed April 28, 2019. http://thinkers50.com/t50-ranking/ 11 Marcec, Dan. “CEO Tenure Drops to Just Five Years”, Equilar, January 19, 2018. Accessed April 28, 2019. www.equilar.com/blogs/351-ceotenure-drops-to-five-years.html 12 Umoh, Ruth. “4 Behaviors that Transform Ordinary People into CEOs, According to a Study of 2,600 Leaders.” LEADERSHIP, CNBC, March 16, 2018. Accessed April 28, 2019. www.cnbc.com/2018/03/16/4behaviors-that-transform-ordinary-people-into-ceos.html 13 Bajpai, Prableen. “The World’s Top 20 Economies.” MARKETS & ECONOMY, Investopedia, Updated April 12, 2019. Accessed April 28, 2019. www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies/ 14 Gilchrist, Karen. “Apple’s Tim Cook Shares a Rule that Leaders Should Live By.” LEADERSHIP, CNBC, June 26, 2018. Accessed April 28, 2019. www.cnbc.com/2018/06/26/apple-ceo-tim-cook-advice-forleaders-on-speaking-out.html 15 Premack, Rachel. “Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi Is Stepping Down After 24 Years with the Company-See Her Life and Career, from Moving to the US at Age 22 to Earning $31 Million Last Year.” Business Insider, August 6, 2018. Accessed 28 April 2019. www.businessinsider.com/ indra-nooyi-pepsi-ceo-2018-8?r=US&IR=T

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CHAPTER ELE VEN

If it’s new, it’s great: innovation and entrepreneurship

business

INTRODUCTION

I

f you visit one of your favorite American supermarkets six months after your last trip, you are likely to feel confused and amazed at the same time. Not only will most of the aisles have been moved around the store to keep things interesting, the number of “new and improved” products on its shelves will be significant, not to mention many that are no longer there. Innovations of all kinds assault your senses while pushing your cart around the store. For instance, there’s the coupon dispenser’s small red flashing lights on a nearby shelf beckoning you near, sensing you’re close enough so it can speak its marketing message aloud: “today only, buy two and get the third free”. The belief that anyone in the US can legitimately try their hand at launching an innovation is widely held in the country. With over 10 million patents issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office by mid-2018,1 this milestone is certainly beyond what even the Founding Fathers might have expected when they incorporated the establishment of a patent system in the Constitution to “promote the progress of science and useful arts”. Leading the world league table in number of patents granted is IBM with 9,100 in 2018,2 followed by some distance by Samsung with 5,850.

Despite this volume of new ideas, we know that a necessary byproduct of innovation is failure. Analysis from market researcher Nielsen reveals that 80–85% of all consumer goods launches flop,3 which might explain the number of books sold in the US examining how new products and services can be successful. A quick look at Amazon.com’s best-selling business books on “innovation” or “entrepreneurship” offers over 100,000 titles, proving interest in how to crack these codes for staying ahead of the curve is undiminished.

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SPEED READ • Entrepreneurship is a core and celebrated American business value. • Creating new business models are as important to successful innovation pipelines and entrepreneurship as new products themselves. • Technology is the key enabler for companies of all sizes to be able to conquer new market opportunities.

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itting in the Frankfurt office of your US parent’s subsidiary, you’re debating how best to get funding from the bosses in San Francisco for your new idea that you know will revolutionize offices around the world: the “internet of things” stapler that communicates with the printer. Asked to present your proposal at the next global product development meeting in California, you’re worried they won’t give you the time or budget to take it beyond the prototype stage. How likely are they to support your innovation?

THE BIGGER PICTURE

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here is a national hunger in the US for innovations that serve up anything “new and improved”. There are many drivers of this desire, starting with the Manifest Destiny wagon trains of the 1800s urging ordinary Americans to “claim as much land as you can, as fast as you can”. Anyone could claim some of this abundant resource, provided your wagon train was fast enough, and agile enough, to navigate the mountainous impediments along the way.

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This drive by the wagon train entrepreneurs to acquire more, better, faster is still alive and well in American business today. A characteristic impatience – originally born of a new life started in a new, young, richly resourced country – helps too. It’s easy to understand – given this history of converting raw prairies into fertile farms – how “new” and “better” have evolved to become synonymous. The value placed on exploring and exploiting opportunities is deep rooted in the US business psyche, with the label “entrepreneur” serving as a compliment that calls out one’s initiative, staying power, risk-taking and commercial savvy. While in the past, European business cultures featured the entrepreneur and innovator much less positively due to the more conservative attitudes there to risk-taking, though now such mavericks are held up as good examples of how to break away from their socio-economic backgrounds: no longer are prestigious college educations, a wealthy family or past business failures required to generate new jobs and wealth.

VALUES DRIVE CHANGE As entrepreneurs within and outside of corporate walls push for new ways to balance commercial exploring and exploiting activities, they are driven by some core US cultural ideals (more on these in Chapter 4) that run deep, including: EVOLVE OR DIE. If there is a national religion in the US, it’s Darwinism. If a company or executive is not evolving, then it or she will soon be a dinosaur. And it’s this expectation to improve through mutations that drives Americans and their companies to create the big new thing. Ensuring your survival through spotting and exploiting trends both advances and sustains a US business, which is why finding routes to disrupting your commercial models before a competitor does it for you is the route to survival.

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PREDICT THE FUTURE. Striving for real-time data on how consumers or clients want their value propositions served up is why corporate spending on research and development activity is a significant expense item, viewed as the best way to prepare for industry disruption or obsolescence. Amazon tops the list, with a gigantic $22.62 billion spent in 2017, equal to nearly 13% of its net sales.4 Another aspect of focusing on the future has to do with the desire to de-risk that future by predicting what could derail our best-laid plans to build in contingencies from the start (read more on this in Chapter 12: Lots of Plans and Lots of Advice). Besides this approach feeding our belief that we each master our own destiny, it lets us assert our individualism via our imprint on the business plan. FAIL FAST, FAIL OFTEN. While the new product failure rate mentioned above would likely put off most enterprises, the American corporate will seek to apply the learning from its market tests in order to rapidly improve the next iteration. Persistence, combined with these test-and-learn cycles, allow the “go to market” strategy to be executed and profits captured from the target customer or client. And it is these iterations that are the fuel which drives the innovation engine, enabling it to exploit opportunities left on the table by the weaker, bigger and less agile players currently in the market.

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S ECOSYSTEM While the entrepreneurs that rise to fame (and get funding) are more likely than not to be white males which narrows the search for new business ideas, they all rely on financing and clear business models to get their “go to market” strategies off the ground. The ecosystem factors that will predict their success include: PROXIMITY TO IDEAS. While we typically focus on the “new is better” innovations embraced by American consumers and clients, we also are influenced by where new commercial ideas are born. Where the ecosystem is located geographically matters a lot. Some microclimates are highly productive, especially Silicon Valley, which

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culture has inspired others around the country – and indeed the globe – to recreate this locale’s legendary ability to create unicorns (companies valued at $1 billion or more), though many find its lack of diversity and “echo chamber” insularity problematic. As a result, the US has newer hubs in Austin, Seattle, Boston and Santa Monica, all sharing the aim of hosting high-growth scale-ups that create jobs and boost their local economies. As the Financial Times’ Management Editor Andrew Hill observes, in the bloodstream of American entrepreneurship is the idea of disruptive innovation so evident in Silicon Valley, which to a large degree informs how other companies think about how they should innovate. The success of entrepreneurs there, and indeed across America, is based on taking an idea and scaling it, with the genius of US entrepreneurship being how these businesses systematize it. US companies stay close to the prevailing academic wisdom on innovation, so ideas from Harvard’s Clayton Christensen on disruptive innovation, or Eric Ries’ on lean start-ups feed the American entrepreneur. Under GE’s Jeff Immelt, the company picked up on Ries’ idea and brought that into their product and service innovations. This is a good example of a big company using the idea of innovation and spinning it out to the rest of the company. And while credit for innovations is mostly given to the private sector, Hill observes “businesses have been born as a direct result of US Government agencies such as DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] looking for civilian applications to seed their innovations which is counter-intuitive”. PROTECTING THE CLIMATE. Typically, large corporates will seek to insulate the innovation project or company from the mothership in order to protect the entrepreneurial culture from bureaucratic taint. Andrew Hill’s analysis suggests

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the disruptive innovation idea put forward by Christensen is that companies need to disrupt themselves, but smashing your core business is not the answer. They must maintain that core while bringing on the innovation which might be the company’s future. BAE Systems’ purchase of data analytics business Detica has been kept at arm’s length, as has Google’s purchase of mapping app Waze. INNOVATIVE BUSINESS MODELS. New revenue models such as Amazon GO, Uber, Task Rabbit, WeWork, Deliveroo and Blue Apron show the creative ways value chains are reassembled to capture customers not served by the incumbents. And what’s being served are not just tangible products but time savings, convenience, personalization and premiumization. Time-poor and cash-rich consumers are a growing slice of the working population, with the money to pay others to do tasks on their behalf. ADVISORS AND FUNDERS. Besides the structures, processes and cultures that support innovation and entrepreneurship, a host of other factors contribute to make real the dreams of business founders. Ecosystem members including venture capitalists such as Kleiner Perkins, corporate venturing departments of big companies such as IBM, the management consulting firms’ own venture operations such as Bainlab and McKinsey’s Accelerator, and even specialist incubators such as the Women’s Technology Cluster in San Francisco, all help founders and their ideas along the commercialization chain (more on this in Chapter Twelve). These partners are chosen carefully for what they bring to the party: cash, office space, networks, management talent and often all of the above. Blackbox Connect in San Francisco is one such accelerator that claims to “create equality of entrepreneurial opportunity by connecting them to the mentorship, knowledge, resources, and networks they need to succeed and inspire”.5 There are also entrepreneurs who help other start-ups not necessarily in their own

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sector. According to Laurence Kemball-Cook, founder of green energy company Pavegen, most of the deals I’ve closed in the US have been as a direct result of other founders and CEO’s. Founders can help other founders with introductions and a big hug as they’ve had help throughout their journey and believe in giving back to others on similar journeys, to pay it forward. It’s easy for them to see their younger selves in a new founder and feel an affinity toward that individual. An introduction from a founder to an investor is always going to be more valuable than an introduction from the professional services firms as you earn more respect from the investor. I’d advise building relationships with founders who can help you with introductions to investors, clients, potential employees and a wider network by going to the US, hanging out, go to events, use the local co-working spaces, give keynote talks as they’ll find you more easily that way too.6 SUPPLIERS. Whether it’s data-driven insights, academics, executive talent or manufacturers of components, the successful entrepreneurs ensure they know where and how to access these resources. With data being one of the most valuable resources, finding ways to obtain it given the growing dominance of the data miners we know as the FAANGs (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) is key.

HEROES AND VILLAINS While at one time Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Uber’s Travis Kalanick and Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes (former leader of the now-defunct blood testing business) were celebrated for their ability to create “unicorns” (companies valued at over $1 billion), each has suffered reputational damage, as have their businesses, due to hubris or poor business decisions.

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What characterizes the innovation heroes is obsessive attention to solving customer problems ethically and creatively. One example is the not-for-profit healthcare venture Haven, which is lowering the costs of healthcare for employers and employees alike by cutting out the middlemen in that complex system. Founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and JP Morgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon, it is simplifying the systems, technologies, contracts, policies and other barriers to supplying programs for their workers with the intent to widen the pool to include other US corporates looking to save money and have direct control over their healthcare system.

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY INNOVATIONS Today, there are at least as many business model innovations as “new and improved” physical products. In the “artificial intelligence” category, there is Allstate Insurance’s Drivewise plug-in device and app to monitor safe driving in exchange for lower premiums and alerts about when your car requires servicing. Then, there’s the Oral B Genius X toothbrush using sensors that track where in the mouth the toothbrush is placed, plugging this data into an algorithm which gives users their score each time the brush is used. The associated app provides personalized tips on how to improve brushing and track their score over time. Similarly, skincare brand Neutrogena offers its 3D-printed, customized face masks using a customer’s iPhone X camera to scan their face, after which they receive a mask by mail for a perfect fit on their face. Choosing from six separate ingredients for the mask means the user’s unique skin issues can be addressed while monitoring their skin’s progress over time via their app. Rosa Foods’ meal replacement Soylent appeals to those who view food as a “time-consuming hassle” according to founder and software engineer Rob Rhinehart. His 35 chemical ingredients mixed

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with water turn this powdered drink into a vegan delight for those wishing to use their time for other pursuits. While Tesla’s electric vehicles have revolutionized the auto industry by providing pollutant-free transportation, Google’s Waymo is making self-driving cars appealing for users and cities alike. Then, there are the host of absurd innovations, including the “Panty Hose x 3”7, which allows women three-legged pairs to rotate legs should a run develop in one of them. You might prefer the “Toilet Landing Lights”8, which fit around its rim to help you find the seat in the dark. Or if dignity is your priority, why not opt for the “Hospital Happiness”9 modesty flap at the back of the hospital gown to protect your backside when guests come to visit? New parents might like the baby diaper alarm that flashes when wet, alerting parents a change is needed without needing to tuck your finger inside it to check.10

Famous (last) words “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed”. (William Gibson) “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”. (Thomas Edison) “Ignore the people who tell you it won’t work, and hire people who embrace your vision”. (Michael Dell) “The earlier changes are discerned, the earlier the opportunities they create can be converted into innovations”. (Peter Drucker) “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new”. (Steve Jobs)

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NOTES 1 Cohen, Robert, Elizabeth Dougherty, Seth Kaller, Howard Chandler Christy, and Currier and Ives. “Patents Through History.” United States Patent and Trademark Office. Last modified December 10, 2018. Accessed April 28, 2019. https://10millionpatents.uspto.gov/ 2 Statista Inc. “Most Innovative Companies in the World in 2018 | Statistic.” Economy, Statista, Accessed April 28, 2019. www.statista. com/statistics/227230/worlds-most-innovative-companies/ 3 Malek, Kamal and Ramon Malgarejo. “Three Common Causes of Innovation Failure.” Nielsen, May 25, 2018, Accessed April 28, 2019. www.nielsen.com/sa/en/insights/news/2018/three-common-causesinnovation-failure.print.html 4 Bajpai, Prableen. “6 Companies Spending The Most on R&D.” Nasdaq, August 8, 2018. Accessed April 28, 2019. www.nasdaq.com/ article/6-companies-spending-the-most-on-rd-cm1004333 5 Shells, Jasmine. “Blackbox-Our Approach”. Blackbox, Accessed April 28, 2019. www.blackbox.org/approach 6 VanCleave, Ted. “Archive – Totally Absurd Inventions: America’s Goofiest Patents!”, Totally Absurd Inventions, August 1997. Accessed April 28, 2019. http://totallyabsurd.com/inventions.htm 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid.

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CHAPTER T WELVE

Lots of plans and lots of advice

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INTRODUCTION

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o discussion of the US business culture would be complete without exploring how American business leaders go about planning, and how those plans are informed by expert advisors. The approaches to mapping the future is one of the key ways leaders manage the “ready, fire, aim” tendencies that characterize the US preference for action over deliberation, as the latter consumes time (which we know is money!) and presents the risk of missing market opportunities. After all, the early bird gets the worm. In most organizations, plans are much more fluid in today’s hyperspeed age of social media, shareholder activism and scrutiny. Whereas at one time an annual operating or business plan sufficed, now quarterly detailed analyses of progress against those plans are routinely compiled in an effort to clarify the commercial path to profits and allow for course corrections to be done often and accurately. On the scene during this process are the advisors, with an epic range of specializations from which to choose. You may opt for a traditional accountant, lawyer or management consultant. Then again, you might choose from the specialists in the realms of employee engagement, compensation, organizational design, operations, cyber security, diversity & inclusion, market research, business strategy or actuarial experts. Should their advice go wrong, there are also the outplacement consultants. Although the US has 4% of the world’s population, it has 1.3 million lawyers,1 equivalent to 1 in every 300 working Americans, a 15% rise since 2008.2 Your American legal advisor is likely to be a specialist belonging to one or more of roughly 100 categories – from insurance defense litigator to probate. Unlike the UK environment that differentiates between those who can procure business – “solicitors” – and those who can only represent the client in the courtroom, “barristers”, the US system makes no such distinction as fee earners play both roles.

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Another significant set of experts are accountants and auditors, typically classified as either financial or management, with far fewer specialist categories than the legal profession. Professionally qualified as CPAs (Certified Public Accountants), there are about the same number as lawyers: 1,240,000 in 2018.3 As for consultants, there are over 800,0004, with at least as many subcategories as for lawyers, depending on their functional roots (IT, HR, Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales, Finance, etc.). So in total, over 1% of the entire US population works in one of these three professions! One thing is certain: these three groups of professional advisors are either loved or hated, and most Americans in business have a view of their usefulness one way or the other – there is no neutral ground. It’s no wonder there are so many websites dedicated to chronicling the jokes and client stories about these advisors (you can read a few at the end of this chapter). As for how respected these occupations are, a recent Harris Poll5 reveals which occupations Americans view as honest and ethical, with lawyers scoring “very high” or “high” by just 19% of those surveyed, while accountants hitting 42% and business executives a mere 17%. Despite this, there is a definite role for the advisors and no doubt they can and do perform valuable roles within the corporate structure, adding value when they are properly managed by their clients.

SPEED READ • Americans see planning as an inalienable right: it’s in the blood of every American, or American-educated, business professional because time must be conquered, the future must

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be created, the forces of business must be controlled, new lives must be built … recalling the original settlers, once again. • Planning has a language of its own, borne from the constructive, action-oriented event, delivering substantive results, business cases, solutions, returns on investment and clear closure rather than unguided, seat-of-the-pants, meandering, unsatisfying arguments with no clear outcomes for controlling the future. • The process of planning usually varies from team to team, company to company, and tries to control dissent while “firing up” the planning teams so that the objectives can be accomplished and the strategies implemented. • There are a variety of ways and roles that advisors play when working with clients, often to endorse a point of view or validate quantitative analyses. • When and how to make best use of the professional advisor is key to ensuring they deliver meaningful value and help bring the business plans to life successfully and profitably. • Getting the most from your relationships with the experts requires focus and clear mandates as well as clarity about what extra benefits to extract, including tapping their vast networks.

PICTURE THIS

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ou need a range of advice on the ground in the US for your American business plans to succeed, and have a choice of local experts who can help. Each of them adds an essential perspective and dimension, but your budget isn’t endless. Because you’ve heard stories about expert advisors costing companies millions of dollars, without always giving them the kind of help they need, you wonder if you can minimize the expense and compile the plans with fewer of them. What should you do?

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THE BIGGER PICTURE WHY WE PLAN The American focus on controlling the future and what happens – in the office and at home – points to the fact that a favored tool for control is planning. As Benjamin Franklin’s proverb suggests, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. More recent trends that have added weight to the importance of planning and the need to blueprint our futures include the disappearance of “a job for life”, the receding social security nets to look after employees in their golden years, and of course unpredictable acts of terrorism. Where only a decade ago the optimism of US business was rooted in a belief that life would still get even better, we now live in a more sober and VUCA [volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous] era of downsizing, restructuring and industry disruption. The general perception in the US is that if you’re not first in the race to conquer your market, to stake your claim in the Manifest Destiny, it’s not worth doing. The pace of commerce is fast, and the frontier spirit is alive and well. Mastering one’s destiny is a shared cultural view, an insight into our “free will” culture: we believe we do control most (if not all) of the world around us – and through planning of any kind, you can master most of the elements in your environment. Fatalism is the old world; free will is the new. And one of the best ways of realizing one’s goals and expressing that free will is through lots of very good planning. Everything in the American business culture is goal-oriented, action-oriented, outcomes focused with a perceived meritocratic pay-off based on results. To ensure the effective workings of a true meritocracy, it is necessary to track the achievement of the goals – which planning allows (assuming the goals have been clearly articulated). When Americans acknowledge the construction of plans as a valued behavior in their culture, they are not saying that not planning is

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destructive, but it is viewed as being poorly organized and a signal that winning the race is not that important to you. Another driver of planning in US companies is the linkage of personal performance to organizational performance – a management practice known as “performance management”. By ensuring company goals (a byproduct of the planning process) and individual goals are interdependent, US enterprises try to ensure individual acknowledgment and rewards stay merit-based. Accelerating decision-making is a favorite pastime in the US business world, since this fuels an ingrained need to take action, to do things. Sports company Nike’s long-serving strapline “Just Do It” is evidence of this strong desire, communicated very well. Other motives for planning include avoidance of the accusation that anyone is following a “seat-of-the-pants” strategy – an irresponsible, profligate, unfocused, unmethodical set of steps towards pursuing the holy grail of business: profits. Planning is also viewed as necessary when allocating corporate resources, be they human, cash or intellectual property, in order for it to be done in a responsible and considerate way. The planning process is also thought to minimize the risk of becoming just another statistic in the graveyard of failed corporate missions – the “plan or die” ethos must prevail. The prioritizations which result from planning – making and communicating choices – are ingrained in Americans in business early in life, and to believe decisiveness means proactiveness, that indecision brings the loss of control. With decisiveness comes a perception of self-reliance and independence. “The buck stops here” religion reveals the importance Americans attach to making independent decisions, whether for business or private life. It is also important to plan – alone or with a team – in order to construct the business case that will win budgets, increased territory, authority and recognition from peers. He who crafts the plan usually controls the resource purse.

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TYPES OF PLANNING The variety of categories of plans in current use reveals the pervasiveness of the practice throughout American life. Strategic, operational, contingency, business and financial plans are all eagerly propounded by the Entrepreneur (patron saint of business). Planning permeates every aspect of life at work and at home; when not planning what to do for lunch, Americans will plan their holidays, investment strategies, careers, parties and even their whole life. As if further evidence is needed, an entire industry has emerged in the US over the past few years, “Life Planning”, with counselors helping busy workforces to juggle the demands of home and work, helping prioritize life’s demands for a happier, healthier, shinier, longer existence. The most prevalent category of plan you are likely to come across is the strategic category, peppering most business meetings, and which disaggregates into “action plans” for realizing the overall, ­bigpicture vision.

THE LANGUAGE OF PLANNING When Americans talk about planning, they often use the vocabulary of battle: getting armed or equipped; leading or defending; attacking competitors; winning customers; slaughtering the competition; winning the war. Whatever strategy is employed, clear winners and losers are likely to emerge. There are also the planning acronyms: MBO (management by objectives), SWOT (strengths/weaknesses/ opportunities/threats) and STEEP analysis (sociocultural/ technological/economic/environmental/political). Another phrase that’s taken root, thanks to Steven Covey’s bestselling book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, is to “begin with the end in mind” – a plea to visualize the prize that comes with good planning. But to seize the prize, a well-constructed business case – an often-heard phrase – best shows how the ‘ROI’ (return on investment) can be achieved.

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WHO DOES ALL THIS PLANNING? Planning is typically an event, a project undertaken in purposefully formed teams whose prime source of cohesion is the need to complete the planning task at hand. Usually, junior level management and above, across all functional departments and SBUs (strategic business units), participate on a planning team of one sort or another. Often the group is managed like a sports team which can alienate those women members not familiar with the locker room pep talks or sports analogies.

THE BEST LAID PLANS… …do go wrong. Especially when it comes to US companies growing in overseas territories. Despite an intense hunger for factoids, figures and almanac trivia, the carrying out of in-country research abroad is an often-neglected part of planning activities. It is rare to find anyone employed by the US company physically situated within the 50 states who speaks the local foreign language, or deeply understands the local cultures. It’s often felt to be just too difficult to plan for more substantive information gathering in any real depth. This unwillingness to carry out proper research abroad has resulted in some real (and expensive) marketing mishaps: Chevrolet “Nova” cars become “Doesn’t Go” in Spanish-speaking markets; Kentucky Fried Chicken’s strapline “Finger-Lickin’ Good” becomes “So Good You’ll Suck Your Fingers Off” in China, to name just two. Thus, the American company will often assume overseas territories must be a lot like America, and will enter and grow that market accordingly. These frequent approaches demonstrate the value of getting good, on-the-ground professional advice from the business consultants, accountants and lawyers who know the lay of the land.

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DECISION-MAKING Planning the “attack” on the market is the front-end of the business cycle; selling it internally to decision-making colleagues is the critical, implementational part of the planning process which allows business professionals to demonstrate their acute “action” skills. This hunting/gathering view of business planning encourages the masculine, macho behaviors often seen during this cycle of business activity. Team members charged with making the decisions about a plan typically play the role of spokespeople, advocating a clear position, aiming to convert the rest of the organization, defending their collective point of view and playing down weaknesses in their arguments. While minority views are tolerated, they’re often discouraged or dismissed. Because planning is a one-off event, it minimizes the quality of decision-making by ensuring it is not an ongoing, iterative process. Instead, the event, with its finite start/stop, can take on a significance, drama and status all of its own. This resistance to overt conflict means decisions are often less well-informed of all possible routes, scenarios or options, as they will not have been debated by a wide-ranging, diverse team. Once a decision is made, rarely is it or the decision-making process re-examined during the fiscal year, as this could mean possible mistakes resulting in a loss of face for those who made the decision. After all, there are reputations to uphold. The American business view that dissent is often destructive means that there’s a bias in favor of those who support a team decision and advocate it. Members who question a decision and the assumptions it is built upon can be viewed as negative, unhelpful, politically motivated or subjective unless they frame their observations as a route to a better, stronger, evolved proposition. What is surprising is that given the volume of US business experts writing on decision-making and planning, and the number of

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MBA programs that preach best practice, there is no widely accepted procedure for making decisions – each team often has its own approach, based on the team’s leader and their abilities of persuasion – so within one company, it is common to find many teams using many different procedures.

WHEN ADVISORS SHOULD INFORM THE PLAN American expert advisors (often referred to as “guides” in the US) are used in a variety of ways, depending on what their client wants them to achieve. It’s not unknown for them to have multiple roles, be it an advocate, evangelist, coach, teacher, shrink, hatchet (wo)man, friend, confidante, endorser, informant, data provider, researcher and/or plug-in source of expertise. When used well, these professional experts give a form of insurance, perhaps in relation to a strategic decision to be made, or to compensate for areas where your firm has management or skills gaps or where planning routines could be improved. You might find these experts serve as useful catalysts during your company’s US restructuring, or during the pursuit of alliances or acquisitions. They can also give you confidence, teach your team a new skill or build their knowledge base. There are other valuable roles that an advisor might perform including benchmarking your company against the best in class, providing facts or industry intelligence you can’t readily get on your own and helping you prove your business case. Recognizing these advisors are experts, independent, objective, have dedicated time to help you, and are a flexible resource without a long-term commitment means you can focus this concentrated brainpower on specific management areas. If your need is immediate and well defined, you are likely to find the costs of hiring an employee with this legal, accounting or management expertise – whether found in the US or in your local market – are lower than taking on a full-time employee as the costs of private healthcare

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plans, paid vacation time, pension contributions and other benefits for such a full-time resource can be high. The analytical tools, methodologies, audits and insights which these apolitical, objective advisors bring to companies doing business in the US can be invaluable, provided you manage your advisors well.

HOW PROFESSIONAL ADVISORS WORK WITH CLIENTS It is clear that these advisors serve many purposes, but knowing what you want them to do, and recognizing when they are no longer doing, it is key. With fee levels usually well over $500 per hour for senior experts in these professional service firms, it’s wise to use them strategically. According to World Courier’s Vice President of HR John Tobin, their use really depends on your context. If it’s about a large business transaction such as a merger or acquisition, you won’t break the grip of the advisors once they’re retained. But you can use them to get behind the question you need answering, particularly on due diligence. There’s usually deep loyalty to the advisor in these situations, yet they sometimes don’t ask the client about why she or he needs certain questions answered and miss the context. Massive data requests in the due diligence process means the advisors are buried in paperwork, looking for evidence but don’t fully get behind the problem the client is looking to have solved. There are as many specialist types of US consultants, lawyers and accountants as there are variety of business tasks – rather like doctors, they specialize in helping their patients depending on the ailment the patient thinks he/she has. The diagnoses will vary depending on the specialist’s own areas of expertise, so try and ensure your diagnosis is the right one.

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Tobin’s observations based on extensive experience working for US companies includes being acquired by an American business: If you’re being bought by an entity based in the States, you have to understand you don’t hold any of the cards but you can ensure their US advisors tell you what questions they’re aiming to have answered. As they won’t know your business or industry as well as you do, best to get them to open up about what they want to achieve so you can direct them in the most efficient manner. If an advisor misdiagnoses or offers the wrong treatment, the American client will seek damages in the courts. Lawsuits against these advisors have grown massively in recent years, with professional liability insurance a standard part of being a practitioner. Interestingly, management consultants are the only professionals of these three types of advisor who are only voluntarily regulated or licensed. The American Bar Association (ABA) governs lawyers, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) governs accountants, and there is a voluntary body, the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC), for consultants. Despite the AICPA code of conduct however, according to Tobin, auditors can sometimes get too close to their clients which may give rise to conflicts of interests. They are supposed to be objective yet there’s a very real danger of equating their client’s satisfaction to retention and thus billings - the ultimate measure of success. Given they’re driven by billable hours, this is a prime area of focus as if they don’t deliver satisfactory revenue growth, they may be out of the company. It’s worth noting that all outside experts are usually among the first to feel the effects of economic downturns, leading to late payments, frozen or canceled projects, and lay-offs, since their clients see their use as a discretionary spend.

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Your chiropractor, your acupuncturist, your quigong instructor, your nutritionist, your feng shui consultant and your pet psychologist called. I’ve cleared your work schedule for the week.

GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR RELATIONSHIP Key to having the most satisfying and cost-effective relationship with your US advisors is knowing what motivates them: the fees, knowing they’ve given you a good service and the promise of repeat business from you and/or referrals. Since rewards in their firms are focused on outputs more than outcomes, be clear when to turn off the tap to minimize your company’s dependency given the ease with which you can plug in these expert resources.

Other tips for managing your advisor relationships include • Briefing them clearly and well, with clear terms of engagement, clear deliverables, specific and measurable objectives.

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By managing and controlling your advisors, recognizing that they need input from you to do well, both of you should get what you’re expecting. • Requesting their qualitative analyses, context and decisions on top of any numbers being analyzed. There is a tendency in the US to focus too heavily on the quantitative impact of decisions (you’ll often hear in any US meeting, “what’s the bottom line?”) which often leads to short term and bad decisions. • Applying the “WYSIWYG” approach (what-you-see-is-whatyou-get) to ensure that the advisors’ business developers who presented the projects to you are also the workers on those projects. Better to pay $500 an hour and have something done by an expert than $200 per hour and the job take three hours. • Expecting lots of questions at the start of their engagement than answers given, in part because it’s the American conversational style, and because your answers make it easier to accurately diagnose the scope of the work the practitioners will be doing. • Appointing super specialists (which may mean hiring a nobrand firm of advisors), instead of the large corporates, as they usually have more in-depth expertise and are very often more cost-effective in the longer run. • Asking for introductions to others in your advisors’ networks of clients and prospects. • Being aware of the US tendency for most large companies to hire advisors in their own image who aren’t always necessarily the best experts in a particular area. It’s rare for a large corporate to hire a small, no-brand specialist advisor as the US company and that decision-maker may well be using them both for their competence as much as what that advisor’s brand communicates internally. As a well-known European client tells us, “no one here was fired for using McKinsey”. • Staying close to your projects so you know when the advisors are beyond their area(s) of expertise, and you know when a project is completed.

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• Controlling the number of these practitioners working in your organization as there is a tendency (if not closely monitored) to multiply and spread their tentacles throughout the company.

JOKES Accountants • What’s an extroverted accountant? One who looks at your shoes instead of his own while he’s talking to you. • Why did the auditor cross the road? Because he looked in the file and that’s what they did last year. • What’s the definition of an accountant? Someone who solves a problem you didn’t know you had in a way you don’t understand.

Lawyers • In the US, everything that is not prohibited by law is permitted. In Germany, everything that is not permitted by law is prohibited. In Russia, everything is prohibited, even if permitted by law. In France, everything is permitted, even if prohibited by law. In Switzerland, everything that is not prohibited by law is obligatory. • What’s wrong with lawyer jokes? Lawyers don’t think they’re funny, and nobody else thinks they’re jokes.

Consultants How many management consultants does it take to change a light bulb? Multiple answers: 1. How many did it take last year? 2. It depends – how much money is in your budget…?

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3. None. A consultant would recommend replacing the light fixture. 4. None. Consultants don’t know how to do anything; they can just tell you how you should do it. 5. One partner. He holds on to the bulb and the whole world revolves around him. 6. That’s difficult to say. First, we need to do a study to see if you really need light in that area, determine historically why the light burned out, and an analysis to determine whether it’s the right kind of light anyway. Then, maybe we can recommend appropriate action – although we may need to do additional studies to determine the light sensitivity of employees visiting the area. After that, we can develop RFPs and RFQs, evaluate the abilities of various maintenance workers to perform the task, recommend personnel selection and supervise the activity. 7. Have you thought about rewiring your whole house?

Famous (last) words “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today”. (Proverb) “It’s better to be first than best”. (Proverb) “Begin with the end in mind”. (Stephen Covey) “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. (Benjamin Franklin) “You don’t have to focus on everything to be successful. But you do have to focus on something”. (Al Ries) “Advice giving is an art, not a science”. (David Maister) “Advisors advise and ministers decide”. (Margaret Thatcher) “The sign of a truly educated man is to be deeply moved by statistics”. (George Bernard Shaw)

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NOTES 1 Statista Inc. “Number of lawyers in the U.S. 2007-2018 | Statistic.” Services, Statista, Accessed April 28, 2019. www.statista.com/ statistics/740222/number-of-lawyers-us/. 2 American Bar Association. “New ABA Data Reveals Rise in Number of U.S. Lawyers, 15 Percent Increase Since 2008.” Americanbar.org. May 11, 2018. Accessed April 28, 2019. 3 Statista Inc. “Number of Accountants and Auditors Employed in the U.S. 2012–2018| Statistic.” Business Services, Statista. Accessed April 28, 2019. www.statista.com/statistics/317587/ number-of-accountants-and-auditors-employed-us/ 4 Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. “Occupational Outlook Handbook: Management Analysts”, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Last modified April 12, 2019. Accessed April 28, 2019. www.bls.gov/ ooh/business-and-financial/management-analysts.htm 5 Brenan, Megan. “Nurses Again Outpace Other Professions for Honesty, Ethics.” Politics, Gallup, December 20, 2018. Accessed 28 April, 2018. https://news.gallup.com/poll/245597/nurses-again-outpaceprofessions-honesty-ethics.aspx

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Superstition is the way

business

INTRODUCTION

D

espite being a people who believe they master their destiny; many Americans place some stock in superstitions which belies this “in charge” characteristic. While the range of superstitions is broad, many US professionals typically believe there are other forces at work that determine their good or bad fortune. It might be a wishbone, a four-leaf clover, a lucky penny found on a sidewalk, a black cat crossing their path, the bad news that comes in threes, the number 13, the Native American dreamcatcher and the rabbit’s foot, to name a few. However they place their bets, Americans believe in taking chances that their calculated risks will pay off favorably, and a little help along the way by knocking on wood can’t hurt.

SPEED READ • Looking back in time at how Americans found superstition, starting with the country’s history. • Discovering the range of numbers, objects and places used as the basis for superstitious behavior. • Highlighting which Americans are most and least superstitious by location, gender and age.

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ou are about to give a significant presentation to a group of influential decision-makers in the Boardroom, where only senior leaders and other VIPs are admitted. With great anxiety about the event, you decide to clear your throat four times before starting to help settle your nerves. At the end of your pitch, the audience compliment your preparation, lucidity and agree to your proposal, which you link to the fact you cleared your throat at the start. This 18 4

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reinforces in your mind the connection between throat clearing and a positive outcome. Congratulations! You’ve now created a new superstitious ritual.

THE BIGGER PICTURE WHAT IS SUPERSTITION? The American go-to reference, The Merriam-Webster Dictionary1, defines the term as “a belief or way of behaving that is based on fear of the unknown and faith in magic or luck, a belief that certain events or things will bring good or bad luck” on which business professionals and the wider American population would agree. Psychologists attribute the origins to the linking of a random behavior to a meaningful outcome, which in the view of Nobel-prize-winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman, is described as favoring the automatic, unconscious, fast, emotional form of thinking (which he calls “system 1”) over deliberate and rational approaches (“system 2”).2 These rituals provide comfort in situations where we think we have low levels of control. And the range of such rituals is infinite. You’ll have seen the tennis pro who wipes her racket’s handle in a strange yet precise way before and during the match, or another who sports a pin or charm on a necklace, ever-present signs that help us cope in ambiguous events.

HOW DID AMERICANS FIND SUPERSTITION? One theory is they found it through the superstitious rituals used by “witches”, who were seen as interfering with God’s word and the laws of nature. At this time, New England’s settlers – religious refugees with an ideal of building a pure, Bible-based society – viewed anyone seeking to disrupt these foundations as a grave threat. In all, 200 practitioners, mostly teenage girls, were rounded up and put on trial in 1692 in colonial Salem, Massachusetts, with

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19 of them executed with much accompanying publicity to deter others from seeking to interfere with the natural order of things.

AMERICAN SUPERSTITIONS Many US business professionals believe in “karma” – a spiritual score settling process where a good (or bad) deed is reciprocated in some way though the specifics of how and when are down to belief in the “what goes around comes around” school of life. Which is why “paying it forward” is an often-used way of raising your chances of good fortune. And the pursuit of good fortune is serious business. While 40% of Americans regard themselves as superstitious according to recent research3 from gambling industry monitors Casino.com, if you had to categorize how they mark these beliefs, many seem to be about numbers and objects.

Numbers 3 – the number of times when meaningful bad events or news occurs 4 – the number of leaves on a clover that will bring good luck 7 – the number of years to expect bad luck when breaking a mirror. In ancient Rome, “it was believed that a mirror reflected the soul, with life renewing itself every seven years”. So if you had broken a mirror, you had also broken your soul, with changed luck after seven years. 13 – this is seen as an unlucky number, with US buildings numbering its floors without this number and US airlines similarly omitting row 13. There are many theories about the origins of this superstition,4 including the following: • Jesus’ Last Supper, with 13 people around the table including the 12 apostles and Christ. Judas is widely viewed as the 13th member to join the table.

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• Knights Templar: On Friday, 13 October 1307, King Philip IV of France ordered the arrest of the Knights Templar, most of whom were tortured and killed. • Full Moons: A year with 13 full moons instead of 12 posed problems for the monks in charge of the calendars as it upset the regular arrangement of church festivals. 666 – called the “number of the Beast” in chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation of the New Testament, it refers to the Antichrist and used to invoke Satan

Objects Wood – knocking on this material wherever it can be found is done by nearly one in three Americans. With its roots in pagan tradition, this practice to avoid bad luck is believed to ask the helpful spirits inside certain trees for protection. Ladders – walking under a leaning one is expected to bring bad luck. It originated over 5,000 years ago in ancient Egypt, when a ladder leaning against a wall formed a triangle, a shape the Egyptians regarded as sacred. Triangles represented the trinity of the gods, and to pass through a triangle was to desecrate them.5 Criminals in England in the 1600s were forced to walk under a ladder on their way to the gallows.6 Rabbit’s foot – a good-luck charm, it appears to originate in African American hoodoo folk magic. To ensure it will give the owner that sought-after good fortune, the foot must be obtained by following specific protocols7: • it must be the left hind foot • the rabbit must have been shot or otherwise captured in a cemetery • the rabbit must be taken in the full moon (though some argue it must be a new moon)

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Places A still-smaller category includes places. The Bermuda Triangle is held in high regard as a place where planes and ships disappear forever, while military base Area 51 in New Mexico is regarded as the location of a crashed UFO and other supernatural events. Alongside these are the millions of Americans claiming they live in “haunted houses” inhabited by the ghosts of past residents.

WHO’S SUPERSTITIOUS? According to the US survey conducted by Casino.org,8 Millennials are the truest believers in luck over every other generation, rating crossing fingers and beginner’s luck highly. However, across the board, Generation X are the most superstitious generation of them all, with a broad range of beliefs, including the power of wishbones! By region, the South has the percentage with the highest percentage that holds a superstition (42.3%), whereas the West has the fewest (37%).9

Famous (last) words “When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer, superstition ain’t the way”. (Stevie Wonder, lyrics, “Superstition”) “I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn’t been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn’t have been lucky”. (Oprah Winfrey) “Science stands for rational thought, faith for superstition and unreason”. (Deepak Chopra) “May the force be with you”. (General Dodonna, Star Wars)

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NOTES 1 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. Merriam Webster Dictionary Online. (Dallas: Merriam-Webster Incorporated, copyright © 2015), s.v. “superstition”. Accessed April 28, 2019. www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/superstition 2 Upfront Analytics Market Research Company NYC. “System 1 vs System 2 Decision Making for Market Research”, Market Research, Upfront Analytics. Accessed April 28, 2019. http://upfrontanalytics.com/ market-research-system-1-vs-system-2-decision-making/ 3 Sheldon, David. “Superstitious States: Which US States Are Most Superstitious?” Casino.org. Accessed April 28, 2019. www.casino.org/ superstitious-states/ 4 Wikipedia®. “13(number)”. Wikipedia. Last modified April 15, 2019. Accessed April 28, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/13_(number)#Unlucky_13 5 Wolchover, Natalie. “The Surprising Origins of 9 Common Superstitions.” Culture, Live Science, September 19, 2011. Accessed April 28, 2019. www.livescience.com/33507-origins-of-superstitions. html 6 Ibid. 7 Wikipedia®. “Rabbit’s Foot”. Wikipedia the Free Encyclopaedia. Last modified April 4, 2019. Accessed April 28, 2019. https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Rabbit%27s_foot#cite_note-ellis-1 8 Sheldon, David. “Superstitious States”. 9 Ibid.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

See you in court… maybe

business

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ere’s a question: what slogan best describes American business bust-ups today? An obvious choice is the ominous “sue the bastards!” – an often-heard threat in boardrooms and on factory floors alike. While many believe it was coined by an irate business leader, angry consumer or excited lawyer, it reflects the fact that litigation is an integral part of American corporate life. And just about anyone with a grievance is likely to threaten to seek out their nearest lawyer.

SPEED READ • To an observer, it seems Americans love litigation. Going to court is as natural for Americans as stopping by Starbucks for coffee. It harks back to the inherent American sense of justice and individual rights, borne of the country’s rebellious history. • That’s the bad news. The good news: American businesses often sue or threaten to sue as a tactical move to reach an amicable, out-of-court settlement or financial payment. It’s simply part of the assertive way American business is conducted. However, there are ways to avoid courtroom dramas through independent arbitration or mediation, much less painful ways to get results. • Foreign companies can often be targets. Newcomers still learning the lie of the land, how contracts are structured or the peculiarities of workplace legislation can be at risk unless they seek local knowledge going into transactions and buttoning up the details. • A contract isn’t always watertight. And an American contract is more complex, explicit and detailed than a European, Middle Eastern, African or Asian one. The moral is this: if you’re doing business with Americans, seek US local legal expertise from lawyers who understand your business, your US business partners and your commercial objectives.

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magine you are a franchisee of an American fast food company in Hungary. Your market research shows there’s a big opportunity among Magyars for milkshakes, cheeseburgers and truffle fries, as they’re fond of US restaurant formats. As part of the deal, the contract specifies your staff must also look the part – with red, white and blue uniforms and American flag pins on their lapels. One day, the American boss arrives for a “mystery shopping exercise” and sees that one of your staff flipping burgers is wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt. “Get rid of him”, urges the American manager. What can you do?

THE BIGGER PICTURE WHO SUES WHOM? The statistics are certainly staggering. More than 277,000 civil cases were filed in 2017 in federal courts, eight suits for every 100 Americans, according to the Administrative Office for US Courts1. Anyone is fair game. Employees sue employers after they are dismissed. Investors sue financial advisers when the stock market dips; activist shareholders take on company management if performance slumps. Even outraged consumers are frequent litigants. They sue fast food chains and consumer goods giants over allegedly faulty products, such as a customer who successfully took on McDonald’s after being scalded by their hot coffee. Prisoners sue the prison system, and children sue their schools for poor test performance and educational standards. The US government gets in on the act too, taking on corporate giants for monopolistic behavior. Ever heard of religious harassment? The Civil Rights Act of 1964 offers broad protection to the religious, with US courts dogged

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about companies not allowing any employee to create hostile work environments by harassing colleagues about their religious faiths. While several cases may appear frivolous, lawsuits are deadly serious. Think big tobacco, gun manufacturers, asbestos makers, big pharma and medical device manufacturers: all have been embroiled for decades in complex legal actions aimed at improving or safeguarding public health. These landmark legal tests, while costly for the corporations, have resulted in significant changes to how these industries operate. For the cigarette companies, consumers benefit in the form of clearer risk labeling, advertising restrictions and healthier lifestyles. Given this, US and overseas companies alike are unsurprisingly wary of plaintiffs’ motives. For example, a California man attempted to initiate a class action lawsuit (one where several people join the suit against another party as they share the same complaint) against Starbucks in 2016 for being short-changed on the amount of liquid in the brand’s iced and cold drinks. The claimant suggests Starbucks’ practice of adding ice to its cold beverages significantly reduces how much liquid is left in its cups. Damages for fraud, unjust enrichment, breach of express warranty as well as violation of California’s unfair competition law were the bases of his claims. Thankfully, the federal judge threw out the case on the basis “no reasonable consumer would think that a 12-ounce iced drink, such as iced coffee or iced tea, contains 12 ounces of coffee or tea and no ice”.2 In another case, a Boston customer filed an expensive lawsuit in 2017 after receiving his Dunkin Donuts bagel spread with “fake butter” though he believed he was ordering real butter. The plaintiff filed two class action suits, claiming more than 20 different Dunkin Donuts stores in Massachusetts were using a butter substitute despite describing the spread as “butter”. These class action suits represented any customer who “ordered a baked product, such as a bagel, with butter, but instead received margarine or butter substitute between June 24, 2012, and June 24, 2016”. The franchises and the plaintiff reportedly reached an out-of-court settlement3.

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But it’s not just the legions of lawyers who fuel the litigation bandwagon. Some suggest it’s the American craving for individual freedom that prompts usually sane people to seek remedies in a court of law for anything that appears to violate their rights. After all, lawsuits rack up hefty legal bills and drain management time. With these and the many other lawsuits filed in US federal and state courts, it helps to show why those doing business in the US need wide-ranging liability insurance policies in place. Many other countries resolve disputes without the threat of a court case. Stereotypes abound: orderly Germans form committees and eventually reach a reasonable compromise after considerable intellectual debate, French businesses prefer settling their disputes personally, preferably over a bottle of a decent Bordeaux, while the British prefer writing erudite letters to The Times. In fact, Great Britain is becoming more of a litigation culture, with people everywhere relying on the courts in increasing numbers.

WHY AMERICANS SUE? This American aim to protect the rights of the individual is in fact one of our historical threads linked to the country’s origins: America’s birth followed the rejection of a higher – at the time, royal – authority, reinforcing the rights and power of individual citizens and the ongoing quest to ensure one’s rights aren’t violated. America must certainly be the world’s most litigious nation. There were over 1.3 million lawyers in 2018, a 15% increase in 2008 according to the American Bar Association4. And clearly, proactive and effective business development is an essential skillset in such a crowded market of professional practitioners. Another factor contributing to the craving for courts: numerous laws enacted after the 1960s, including those guaranteeing civil and consumer rights, opened up the legal battlefield of class action suits against federal, state and local authorities. This “strength in

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numbers” is even more easily mobilized today against any brand thanks to social media. Courts are used as the first threat to accelerate the resolution of conflicts as opposed to other business cultures that get there incrementally after much dialogue, diplomacy and a slow build-up to recognizing the need to use the established legal system. Driven by the American need for speed (there’s that key value again: time is money!), Americans will aim to predict all eventualities in their business contracts which also avoids ambiguity when it comes to identifying infringements. Committing it to paper (see Chapter 8, Write it down) means all parties will be on the same page, literally. There’s a more serious reason why the US files so many lawsuits: sympathetic juries hand out big cash settlements. In 2016, a federal judge in San Francisco approved a $14.7 billion settlement with Volkswagen on the back of its diesel emission fraudulent “defeat devices” installed in its cars, which included money to buy back its vehicles at market value as well as payments for 475,000 diesel car owners in cash.5 Their unethical, unlawful conduct not only cost the company in cash terms but reputation as well. Quite often the sum is substantially reduced during the appeals process, or in an out-of-court settlement. Even so, the prospect of winning billions in civil or class action suits is an incentive to lawyers and their clients alike seeking redress for alleged damages. While US jury awards are increasing, by comparison in Europe, there’s no automatic right to a jury trial in most civil cases, making settlements there much smaller.

HOW THE LEGAL SYSTEM WORKS American law derives from the British common law system (except in the state of Louisiana, which is still based on the French civil code). While American lawyers don’t wear wigs and gowns like British barristers, there are similarities in the legal structure.

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Counsel will please refrain from clucking derisively whenever the witness is speaking.

Courts operate on various levels. The state supreme court is the ultimate arbiter in each of the 50 states, subject of course to legislative changes. Lawyers are licensed by their respective state bar associations, not the federal government; each state has its own civil codes, which is why you can buy alcohol in some states on a Sunday, but not in others. Then comes the US Supreme Court, with its seven members nominated by the President, which panel has the final say on all federal law and constitutional issues. The US Constitution, frequently debated and only rarely altered, is regarded as holy. It holds sway over all other laws, providing a framework for how the country is governed. It defines the powers and limits of government and dictates how the law is applied equally to all citizens, a value Americans hold dear and enshrined in the Constitution.

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As a key part of this ecosystem are the legal firms, now working in new ways mostly driven by tech advances. For example, firms are offering online services such as legal document templates or virtual consultations via video conference. Another set are those operating new low-cost business models where document production and processing are done in lower-cost emerging markets (India being one of the biggest beneficiaries of US law firm outsourcing) with the savings passed on to the client in the form of lower fees. There are also those that offer multiple professional services under the same roof, such as the “MDPs” (multi-disciplinary practices) where legal, accounting and financial services are offered. The implications of this leaner delivery, drawing increasingly on AI means lawyers must now move beyond just knowing the law, but to having more skills in the areas of business strategy, project management, consulting, collaboration, data analytics and the all-important “people skills”. Remember that the law is always in flux, taking into account how the nation thinks and feels, scientific and tech advances besides attitudinal shifts in public opinion and morality.

ETHICS Cynics say lawyers have no ethics. But that’s too harsh. While the profession has its share of swashbucklers, there are strict codes of ethics promoted by the American Bar Association and by state bars. When acting as advisers in business dealings, American legal experts will help their clients discover the range of legal and ethical ways to make a transaction work. They also view their role as a way to help pre-empt trouble, advising on ways to structure deals that are legally compliant domestically and internationally before they’re inked to ward off problems later. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and its latest 1998 anti-bribery provisions apply not just to the legal counsel but also to foreign firms who “cause, directly or through agents, an act in furtherance of such a corrupt payment to take place within the territory of the United States”.6

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HOW TO FIND A GOOD LAWYER Lawyers are easy to find: just follow an ambulance goes the saying. Unfortunately, lawyers do seem get a raw deal, and in America they are often the butt of jokes by late-night TV comics – as are distinguished judges. “Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke”, quipped Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the Supreme Court judge. Good lawyers used to be difficult to find, like doctors. In the older days, established law firms protected their exclusivity, and their services were inherited by families or companies from one generation to another. However, legal tech has changed all that: you can now find a reliable lawyer online via a simple Google search, though their allowable promotional activities are dictated by their professional and state bodies, the American Bar Association and State Bar Association, respectively. Given the intensity of competition in the legal sector, specialisms are now a key source of differentiation. Whether you need someone with deep knowledge of aviation, fashion, equine or transgender law, state bar associations have them all. The best way, however, to find a lawyer remains word-of-mouth from a trusted friend or business associate.

IF YOU ARE SUED… First of all, don’t panic. Consider this: the overwhelming majority of commercial lawsuits are not decided in the court, mainly because the process is typically long and legal fees exorbitant. The parties usually settle cases after the lawsuit has begun. Our Hungarian fast food franchisee is a good example. The contract states that staff should be swathed head to toe in Americana – that’s part of the deal. The boss’s exhortations are really aimed at seeing more red, white and blue. That’s because Americans like to play by the rules, and they’re offended when others don’t. The American mindset is to follow the law.

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There are ways to settle disputes without resorting to court appearances. Americans do value straight talking, so it’s worth trying to discuss and hopefully resolve the dispute without dragging in lawyers. Another option: dispute resolution services including conciliation, mediation or arbitration. Basically, you agree to try to work out the problem amicably for everyone’s benefit. Broadly defined, conciliation means facilitating communication between the feuding parties to informally resolve a dispute. Mediation goes a step further, adding a professionally trained mediator to the group who guides the parties to a solution. If all that fails, an arbitration hearing is called before an impartial third party – hopefully, before the fists start flying. According to the Economic Policy Institute7, more than half— nearly 54% — of non-union private-sector employers mandate arbitration procedures as a means to finding resolutions, with over 65% among employers with more than 1,000 workers. A significant number, one in three of employers requiring mandatory arbitration, also have their staff waive their right to class action claims, with most of these in the contracts of large rather than small companies. Interestingly, this mandatory arbitration trend is more common in industries comprised mostly of women and in low-wage workplaces. By state, mandatory arbitration is most common in Texas, California and North Carolina.

CONTRACTS Americans place their faith in contracts, which is why a contract with an American company will be as voluminous as a phone book. There will be appendixes and attachments. There will be lists of assets and regulatory filings. The idea? To pre-empt the unexpected and protect your rights. So you should cherish that trusty piece of paper if something does go wrong.

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While in Europe, the contract is a more simple, stripped-down document clear to all in their more homogeneous and relationshipbased national cultures, while in the more mobile workforces of the US, the contract can make changing jobs even easier using this transactional tool, laying out in detail what is and is not in scope for the role, thereby avoiding misunderstandings. Another difference is the European custom of signing contracts at the bottom right of each page, while Americans affix their names only at the end. Don’t be afraid to ask for initials on every page however – it’s just as important that Americans learn other protocols too.

A voice of experience Lee Turlington is a recognized authority in the sport and fashion industries with over a quarter century shaping the product and business strategies as a senior leader for Patagonia, Nike, The North Face, Fila Sport and most recently Canada Goose as its Global Design & Merchandising head. When asked for some wise words on managing international business relationships, he had this to say: Make sure you spend the time to establish a relationship. Make it a priority and be willing to sacrifice your time zone to meet theirs when communicating or meeting. Most Americans aren’t sensitized to or understand the multitude of international holidays ranging from Bank to National to religious. Another piece of advice I’d offer is make sure you all share your intentions for achieving a positive outcome that will be mutually beneficial. We’re all a little more wary in the post Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) Public Company culture where governance and documentation give cause for severely-limited relationship building and where the “legal” experts are involved from very early on. It’s now a standard process that can’t be avoided, but the foundations of having built a relationship,

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even while necessary to live within the SOX guardrails, can make the difference between a ‘smooth’ versus a ‘rough’ outcome. If it gets ugly and comes to litigation, I always advocate arbitration/mediation as the first option in conflict resolution. This can and should be spelled out in new agreements, with ‘legal action’ in the form of ‘Suit’ or ‘Charges’ only when the party is completely unreasonable or non responsive. Jurisdiction can become complicated when your business entity is outside of the US. If you don’t have a Global or US presence, it is important to establish ‘on the ground’ representation nationally within the 50 states, with relations in or near the legal community to solve a problem. If you have limited legal resources or no international or US legal connection, be willing to spend the money to find the resources to protect your business and brand interests away from home. The best law firms and lawyers know the best and most credible arbitrators in their community who have successful track records. The larger US law firms have offices in every major state capitol and ‘business’ city in the world, and the American Bar Association or American Arbitration Association are great resources to use in cases of limited networks or budgets.

Famous (last) words “Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character”. (Robert E. Lee) “You can disagree without being disagreeable”. (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) “A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer”. (Robert Frost)

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NOTES 1 Administrative Office of the United States Courts. “Judicial Fats and Figures 2018.” United States Courts, September 30, 2018. Accessed April 29, 2019. www.uscourts.gov/statistics-reports/ judicial-facts-and-figures-2018 2 Bonner, Marianne. “What Is a Class Action Lawsuit?”, Liability, The Balance Small Business Plan, August 30, 2018. Accessed April 29, 2019. www.thebalancesmb.com/ what-is-a-class-action-lawsuit-3623787 3 U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform (ILR). “Massachusetts Man Files Class Action Lawsuit over ‘Fake Butter’.” Faces of Lawsuit Abuse, April 5, 2017. Accessed April 29, 2019. www.facesoflawsuitabuse.org/2017/04/ massachusetts-man-files-class-action-lawsuit-over-fake-butter/ 4 American Bar Association. “New ABA Data Reveals Rise in Number of U.S. Lawyers, 15 Percent Increase Since 2008.” Americanbar.org, May 11, 2018. Accessed April 29, 2019. 5 Gillin, Andy. “The Largest Class Action Lawsuits & Settlements.” GJEL, April 4, 2019. Accessed April 29, 2019. www.gjel.com/blog/largestclass-action-settlements.html 6 Fraud Section, Criminal Section of the U.S. Department of Justice. “Foreign Corrupt Practices Act”, Fraud Section (FRD), The United States Department of Justice. Updated February 3, 2017. Accessed April 29, 2019. www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/foreign-corrupt-practices-act 7 J. S. Colvin, Alexander. “The Growing Use of Mandatory Arbitration.” Economic Policy Institute, April 6, 2018. Accessed April 29, 2019. www. epi.org/publication/the-growing-use-of-mandatory-arbitration-accessto-the-courts-is-now-barred-for-more-than-60-million-americanworkers/

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PART 4

Creating connections

CHAPTER FIF TEEN

Wait your turn, I’m talking now

c r e at i n g c o n n e c t i o n s

INTRODUCTION

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n the extroverted, assertive, individualistic US business environment, ensuring your vote gets cast and that you are heard is very important. Silence can be a powerful tool in this environment where airtime must be filled. Conversations run like tennis matches – call and response, back and forth, one ends, the next person begins, excited for your turn to speak and make your mark. Americans are explicit, low-context communicators (more on this in Chapter 8, Write it down), since conveying information in simple terms is efficient and fast which fits the need for speed. Building on our preferred “what you say is what you get” approach, meeting your US audience and speaker expectations in pitches, meetings and conference calls can make the difference between success and failure.

SPEED READ • The truthful, open, direct approach of US business professionals means their agenda is clear from the start, taking away the guesswork about their motives. • Great care is taken to include all those in the room or on a call, as even unintentionally alienating clients and colleagues has commercial side-effects in the porous and networked organizations that are today’s standard. • Formal “debating” is not part of the US state school curriculum, so disagreements must be broached with care to avoid them being taken personally.

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When reviewing your recruitment interview questions with your US-based VP of Human Resources, they are shocked to read you will be asking candidates about their age and marital status, both forbidden by US law.

THE BIGGER PICTURE WAIT YOUR TURN An American conversation is much like a tennis match: back and forth, back and forth. Each party takes their turn serving conversational tidbits, returning the serve with quick replies. Interruptions are not generally appreciated. Europeans accustomed to pauses for thought and background context usually find the US approach fascinating and frustrating. Learning to “wait your turn to speak” starts at an early age, teaching the value of fairness and sequence. Interruptions are usually regarded as rude and aggressive. Unlike southern Europe, where many people talk at the same time over each other, this chaotic and noisy custom distracts Americans from advancing the purpose of the conversation, whether in professional or social settings.

PATTERNS – OVERVIEW Casual conversation whether among friends or business acquaintances may seem like an exchange of information, a briefing of facts and data, rather than a theoretical or intellectual discussion. Verbal debates for the pleasure of the exercise and to poll wide and dissenting perspectives is not the norm. In business, the talk can be heavy on statistics and specific details about the subject at hand. This may reflect another aspect of Americans’ independent nature: with lots of information about everything, they can form their own individual opinion (which may in the end be the same as all the other individual opinions). 209

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Directness is usually valued over politeness, especially in business. This approach is connected to the American focus on speed. You’ll hear expressions including “let’s move along”, “what’s next?” or “where are we headed?” applied to conversation as well as activities. In addition, speaking one’s mind is considered a virtue and telling the truth (even if delivering bad news), a characteristic of a sincere and honest person according to cross-cultural researcher Geert Hofstede.1 Judging how much truth to tell can be complicated, even for Americans. The amount of directness and truthfulness must be calibrated carefully. Generally, making comments or asking questions that will make people “uncomfortable” is avoided. Clarity and brevity (get to the point! stay focused!) are valued, while conversations filled with nuances and differing shades of meaning are less so. Business meetings are not the place to use abstract literary references, as these may only confuse your colleagues and risk consuming valuable time in your explanations. Directness is valued not only in words but also in the physical aspect of a conversation. “Look people in the eye when speaking”, advises American etiquette expert Letitia Baldridge.2 Not doing so is usually interpreted as shifty with something to hide. You don’t need to keep the eye contact throughout the conversation but holding most of the time reveals relays trustworthiness and confidence. This is especially useful in a situation such as a reception, where there are many people around you as you work the room, moving in and out of several conversations. It is considered uninterested and therefore rude to look away or scan the room frequently for others to meet. Your conversation partner wants to feel valued and that they have your full attention. Avoiding direct confrontation and debate on business topics is good advice as it prompts withdrawal and confusion about whether you are launching a personal attack. Such displays of passion are best saved for conversations about sports, where great passions can

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be ignited safely with the noise and energy that make Americans famous. Silence is a tool that can be used with great effect, provided it’s used strategically. Long pauses are generally uncomfortable for Americans as it communicates confusion, dissent, an absence of direction or even leadership. Unlike cultures where silences convey respect such as Japan or China – a symbol of giving the speaker respect and authority by reflecting in silence on the profundity of what the person has said – most Americans find it uneasy.

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? Americans are on high alert when it comes to off-the-cuff remarks that can alienate or offend. While the notion of “political correctness” was born in the US, it has been exported to non-US companies and their leaders alike. The #MeToo movement has encouraged companies to make this an issue to be talked about for staff and

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victims of sexual harassment, so more clarity is given about what is and isn’t acceptable behavior at work. More generally, reinforcing whistleblowing in company cultures is seen as a fundamental way of putting a range of topics on their tables that were previously taboo, as pre-emption is a better (and cheaper) employee satisfaction earner than remedial clean-ups. Diversity and inclusion is now a formalized area of professional practice in most organizations as they face battle in the war for attracting and retaining talent in all its forms. Hence, classifying others by race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion or any number of additional bases in casual or formal conversation is to be avoided (even though these are the foundations of the individualism we so highly value in the national and business culture). When it comes to geography, every city has its own special topics: freeway traffic jams in LA, weather in San Francisco, commuting in New York. But aside from the local focus, Americans overall share a willingness to talk about: • Work • Sports • Weather • Restaurants • Food, diet, exercise • Films, theatre, clubs, music • Sports, teams, favorites You can always ask: • What do you do? • Where do you live? • Where are you from? • What do you get up to when you’re not at work? • Have you seen any good films recently? • Where do you like to go on vacation? • What car do you drive? (In Los Angeles in particular, this will reveal a lot about status)

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In the business world, sports are often an easy conversation starter. The year is divided into sporting seasons: • Football (American): August–January • Basketball: October–June • Baseball: March–October As with so many other things, American men and women have their favorite sports: football, basketball and baseball, often keeping a strong allegiance to their college teams long after graduation. Those who follow cricket, rugby or field hockey are hard to find. You’ll have better luck with soccer given the success and media coverage of LA Galaxy, Manchester United, Arsenal and the many youth clubs and leagues across the country. Given the importance of sports in business life and conversation, even the Wall Street Journal provides news and analysis! European sporting events generally earn US coverage when Americans are involved, whether it’s the Tour de France, Ryder Cup, Monaco Grand Prix racing or Wimbledon.

SPEAK WITH CAUTION As described above, it is risky to assume that the American reputation for openness and directness allows all topics to be discussed. There are conversational limits with some themes viewed as “private”. Be cautious when testing the boundaries by avoiding national politics, religion and sex. Whether you want to gauge their views on fake news, Fox News, Breitbart or political pundits, you’re better off avoiding these contentious topics that will be seen as the basis of making personal judgments. One friend observes that in France, it’s okay to talk about sex but not money. The reverse is true in the US! (In fact, although Americans are considered extremely focused on making money, it is

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still a delicate topic.) While some will be comfortable telling you how much they earn, not everyone wants to reveal this. Nor about their sexual orientation or age. Generally, people who are married, have a partner or children will disclose this in the course of your conversations. There is an expectation that those who are married or with a partner do have children who will feature in the course of your conversations. Disagreement should also be handled with care. As the process and art of debating is not part of the US educational system up to age 18, choosing to engage with dispassionate, structured arguments should be done more indirectly. Best to compliment your counterpart’s point of view and couch your alternative perspectives as those you’ve heard from others so they are anchored an anonymous third parties. This makes your alternative perspectives less directly threatening and alleviates the risk of a confrontation that’s taken personally.

STARTING POINTS In a business situation, it is appropriate to introduce yourself and start a conversation with a stranger as we value signs of extroversion, sociability and informality rather than waiting to be officially introduced whether at receptions, conferences, meetings, volunteer activities or other official business events. Being at the same conference establishes a common interest and serves as the basic introduction. You are therefore no longer strangers, but colleagues sharing an experience. All you lack is the name of your new friend. To know what to discuss after the introductions, first catch the news headlines online for an idea of the latest business news. Before traveling to your US business event, take a look at the local news to see what events may be important to people in that location. A new local unicorn born of its recent IPO? The end of the drought in California? Hurricanes in Florida? State elections? Local sports teams winning a recent game?

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SAD BUT TRUE It’s best not to expect your American colleagues to know what is happening in your country or region. US newspapers and news programs are famously insular, with relatively little coverage of international news unless it’s a major economic or geopolitical event. The leading US television networks fit international news into two to three minutes during the evening bulletin. The BBC website for the US produces “One-Minute World News” films updated several times a day with other online platforms doing similar. The Tyndall Report3 tracks how many minutes of international news is covered in the US each year by the three main terrestrial US networks (ABC, NBC, CBS). There were 1,490 minutes in 2018, continuing the downward trend since their tracking began in 1988. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict earned 29 minutes of coverage during the year, and the Thai cave explorers rescue earning 98 minutes. Thanks to Brexit, more Americans have seen coverage of the European Parliament, the House of Commons and British MP’s than at any point in history, though likely equally as unclear as their UK counterparts on what it all means. While the UK’s Guardian online readership is largest in the US (as it is for other UK tabloid journals), should you prefer to consume your international business and other news in print, you’ll be glad to know the Financial Times’ US edition is widely found in major cities, as are the dailies from several cities around the world.

HEROES AND VILLAINS Usually, the conversations around you are about people rather than things, as Americans relate to the trials and tribulations of other individuals much like themselves, as we mentioned in Chapter 9. The hero is often a self-made entrepreneur, the doer rather than the thinker. Popular examples include tech titans, Wall Street activists, sports figures and entertainment industry moguls.

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The “rags to riches” stories especially appeal to our sense of the possible, whether Steve Jobs or Dolly Parton. While intellectuals or artists can be business heroes, more often than not they’re mavericks, rebels, innovators, dreamers, visionaries, inventors, pioneers and trailblazers who made their dreams become a reality. An example from history that fits many of these qualifications is President Abraham Lincoln, who lived in a log cabin, taught himself to read and rose to the position of President. Similarly, Benjamin Franklin, the renowned renaissance man and Constitution drafter, was an accomplished inventor of bifocal glasses, a stove, the lightning rod and the flexible urinary catheter (though he refused to seek patents). In times of tragedy, our heroes also appear as soldiers, public servants and citizen activists taking charge in dangerous or threatening circumstances.

IT’S ALWAYS BUSINESS Get to the point. Don’t waste time. If the purpose of your gathering is business, then do the business! This approach can seem cold and even rude, though for Americans it is the clear purpose. The focus is on time, tasks, projects and results. In meetings, beginnings are brief. There will be greetings, discussions of your journey – local or long-distance – combined with enquiries about your hotel stay, but after this cursory conversation, you’ll move to the business of the day. More extensive conversation about you will follow the task at hand rather than precede it. If business is done over a meal, there will be general conversation at first but then straight down to business sooner than you might expect. As always, if you are the guest, best let your host bring up the business agenda. As the host, best wait until everyone has ordered their meals. Often, the conversation moves from general to specific business with the arrival of the main course. The French approach – never before the cheese – does not hold true here.

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Europeans may find Americans impatient, especially if the meal is breakfast or lunch. The earlier on in the day, the sooner you can get started with the business conversation. Generally at social events, “talking shop” is not welcome. Introduce yourself, talk about what you do if asked, then indicate you’re contactable to talk business at a later date. You may exchange cards, even set a time to meet or follow-up with a phone call.

ARRANGING A MEETING Americans are interested in building their networks and generally open to new opportunities. If you know someone who can make an introduction to someone you’ve been wanting to meet, take advantage of the connection. Overall, Americans like to help, to meet people, to say “yes”. As one of our international clients reminds us, “There’s no need to be ‘placed’, to have your credibility established by someone speaking for you. You simply are who you are and that’s enough for setting up an appointment”. This contrasts sharply with more formal approaches in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, where the meeting request needs validation from a credible introducer. If you find yourself confronting a “gatekeeper” (receptionist or executive assistant who schedules appointments for your intended host), don’t despair. Just recall some of the basic elements of the US value system: equality, lack of status, respect for all. Treat the gatekeeper as an equal, a colleague, a respected professional to increase your chances of fixing that meeting.

BUT IT WAS FUNNY Humor is abundant and clearly evident in American offices. It’s a tool used to communicate and relieve the stress of constant pressure. Unfortunately, the humor of one culture is not always clear to

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people from another – probably because jokes are rooted in shared understandings and experiences. As frustrating as it may be, it’s wise to be cautious in attempting to insert humor in business setting. People may not understand the joke, may feel uncomfortable and thus find in it a personal attack. Equally, don’t be surprised if you don’t understand all of the American humor even after a colleague might explain it. Time and exposure will provide the insights and lead to shared laughter. Famous (last) words “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time”. (Leo Tolstoy) “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek”. (Barack Obama) “The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression”. (Samuel Johnson)

NOTES 1 Hofstede, Geert, Gert Jan Hofstede, and Michael Minkov. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, Third Edition (New York: McGrawHill Education, May 2010). 2 Baldrige, Letitia. Letitia Baldrige’s New Manners for New Times: A Complete Guide to Etiquette (New York: Scribner, November, 2009). 3 Tyndall, Andrew. “Tyndall Report: Year in Review 2018.” Tyndall Report. Accessed April 29, 2019. http://tyndallreport.com/yearinreview2018/ international/

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What can we say?

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INTRODUCTION

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anguage, spoken and written, is our primary means of communication. Listen carefully to the words people use. This tells us what is considered important to them. Developing an awareness of Americans’ vocabularies will give you insights into their thinking, clues that help you understand how they conduct both their business and personal lives. Although the First Amendment to the Constitution – added in 1791 – (more about this in Chapter 8) codifies the right to free speech and lays the foundation for the American “WYSIWYG” (what you see is what you get) style, there are limits to what is considered appropriate subject matter. One’s income, sexual, political or religious orientations are avoided in social environments and especially in the workplace, as are sharing views on world events given their potential to inflame – whether on North Korea, Brexit, Muslims, immigration or the legalization of marijuana. Today, those unspoken rules are expanded, creating a domain of “politically correct” topics designed to maintain privacy and minimize offense. Being politically correct includes spoken, written and all forms of corporate communication. Yet, the message may still be mixed, as in December, company parties – once “Christmas” parties – are now “holiday” parties. Ignoring these conventions come at a price. The cost of not watching what you say, courtroom admissibility of electronic media, and the risks of exposure thanks to cyber hacking means Americans are more cautious with the written word than ever before. Despite “political correctness”, American English is still very alive and dynamic with new words and phrases invented as a matter of course, evidence of our verbal vibrancy.

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SPEED READ • Even English-speaking countries don’t always understand each other. Australians, South Africans, New Zealanders, British and Canadians each have different business expressions that can be misunderstood by Americans and conversely, they may miss the meaning of American expressions. If you learned British English, American English can be a surprise. • Many English language words have their own meanings in the US. Being aware of these differences will ensure you are an effective communicator and will get your points across effectively. • Language differences can lead to confusion, especially when it comes to business matters. Simple everyday tasks such as arranging meeting dates and times require local US knowledge (read on to be prepared).

PICTURE THIS

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our colleague tells you to meet her at two for a presentation that will be a slam dunk, especially after last week’s bomb. She’s glad it’s firmly in the calendar, removing the chance you’ll be eighty-sixed. You’ve just finished dinner at an American colleague’s home and ask if you can “wash up”. Your colleague shows you to the bathroom, not the kitchen!

THE BIGGER PICTURE WORDS AS WINDOWS Language, especially the way in which it is spoken, fulfils several functions. For starters, it reflects the realities and priorities of a society. By way of example, Arabic has more words for camels than

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the Inuit language of Eskimos, which has more words for snow than Americans, who generally have more words than either for cars and technology. Generally, America’s vocabulary is filled with words from the business and sporting worlds, while the French reveal a focus on food. Our vocabularies reflect the topics that occupy our attention and further reveal what is important to us as a society. Even if we all did speak the same language with simple differences in our vocabulary to reflect our respective cultures, there would be difficulties communicating. Communication is not only a matter of words. Equally important is the method of delivering the message – something that significantly adds to the challenge of building effective communication across language barriers.

HOW AMERICANS SPEAK When doing business with Americans, it’s important to bear in mind their style of communication and where it came from. Americans, known for their independence and individualistic culture, communicate in ways that reflect those basic values. Their exchanges are direct, informal, transactional and factual. In business situations, their conversations can vary from friendly and relaxed to laser focused. They require explicit information for effective communication. (This is known as low-context communication – more on this in Chapter 8). This style can be difficult, even unsettling, for people in high-context cultures where information is exchanged indirectly and more formally. Americans are taught to be direct and concise when speaking and writing. The focus is on clarity and brevity. Children and adults alike are instructed to “Get to the point!” “Stay focused!” “Don’t ramble!”

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To facilitate quick understanding, they rely on abbreviations, acronyms and expressions that are generally understood. Some are familiar such as “FYI” (For Your Information), MBO (Management by Objectives) or “411” (to provide information, as this is the phone number which when dialed anywhere in the US, will connect you to an information operator to give you a telephone number).

THE SOUNDS OF ENGLISH In addition to being direct, the volume of American conversation is considered by many non-Americans to be rather loud. Since everyone speaks at a similar volume, people are not aware they appear noisy. In fact, often US executives think they are speaking quietly when, to a Japanese or German ear, it seems they are shouting. Another point to bear in mind is that not all American English sounds alike. There are regional accents, expressions and patterns that can affect your understanding in certain situations. You won’t be alone in that challenge; there are times when even Americans don’t understand each other! Americans generally have a view of their regional neighbors: • People from New York speak fast; they’re abrupt, rushed and rude. • People from the South are slow and lazy in their speech. • People from New England are reluctant to speak. • People from the West Coast are informal with limited vocabularies. There is, of course, some truth to the above. There are noticeable accents in the East (New York and New Jersey), in the South (Tennessee, Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi), a different sound in New England (Maine, Rhode Island) and a distinctive twang in Texas. In all parts of the country, you can find differences in the choice of words rather than just the speech patterns. The South, famous for

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its charm and hospitality, is best known for the phrase “y’all come” (“All of you please come and join us”). Southerners likely will use the words “sir” and “ma’am” more than people elsewhere. Some of their colorful analogies also add to perceptions of quaintness, for example “If you can’t run with the big dogs, you’d better stay on the porch!”

WHAT IT’S NOT You will not find clues to the relationships between people by studying their forms of address. Unlike in Spain, Italy or France, Americans do not have different forms of respectful address for children and adults or ways of gauging the closeness of a friendship or distance between ranks. In the United Kingdom (UK), although it is becoming less so, it is still the case that you can be judged by your accent. People make assumptions about someone’s social class based on their pronunciation of certain words (“bahhhth” versus “beth” for bath). This is not so in the US.

WHY SHOULD WE BOTHER? “Everyone speaks English, don’t they?” This commonly-asked question reveals how ethno-centric Americans can be and is the usual justification given for the country’s famous lack of multilinguists. It is often an eye-opener when the response there is “No, they don’t”. Several factors contribute to this attitude: • The sheer size of the US in physical and economic terms mitigates against learning other languages. You can travel for days, do business throughout your entire career (until recently) and never hear tongues other than US English. Little motivation therefore to learn another language.

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• The immigrants who first came to the US knew that to succeed there, you must learn English as a way of assimilating and getting ahead in this new country. The common language was the key that allowed people to realize the American dream. These were the parents, grandparents and great grandparents of today’s business professionals. One way they expressed their pride in being part of this new country and shedding the old was to discourage the use of the language of their country of origin. Succeeding generations received this message that only US English was important. • Another (perhaps more tenuous) explanation, expressed by a multilingual European executive who has lived and worked with Americans for over 30 years, is that “Americans want to get things right. They’re perfectionists and aren’t happy making mistakes so publicly. There’s no way to learn a language and avoid mistakes”. As US business is now more interconnected and global than ever before, English continues to grow as the language of business – thanks, of course, to the web, with 25% of all internet users around the world using English, followed by Chinese at 19%.1 Notwithstanding France’s efforts to keep their language pure, American business English even slips into the French business world with such Franglais words as “le website”, “le parking” and “le planning”.2 A story recently heard tells how in Estonia, English has become the language for communication between the Estonians and the Russians. Neither will learn the language of the other for reasons tied to their history and politics. Since most people know some English, it has become the neutral tool for communication. So, don’t be surprised when you travel around the States to see very few signs in multiple languages, even in major airports. Everyone speaks English, don’t they?

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This is not to say everyone in the US speaks only English. According to the American Community Survey,3 over 40.5 million Americans are Spanish speakers (slightly less than Spain’s population of 46.5 million), 11.1 million Indo-European language speakers and 10.6 million Asian & Pacific Island languages. In East Los Angeles, more than 98% of the population is Hispanic,4 with Spanish-language television, radio stations and outdoor advertising the norm. Additionally, there are areas with large Korean, Chinese or Vietnamese populations that are easily identifiable by the signage of buildings and billboards. Throughout the country’s larger cities, you will encounter a variety of languages spoken and written. California’s postal ballots and instructions are created in seven languages. However, it is still a minority of the total US population that speaks any language other than English.

TRANSLATIONS FOR DAILY LIFE Two areas that are critical to understand are time and date. For both, America has its own style.

What time is it? Americans do not count time on a 24-hour clock, but instead, on the 12-hour clock, distinguishing am from pm. Generally, 1,600 hours is meaningless so using “am” (midnight to noon) and “pm” (noon to midnight) is the protocol. The UK phrase “half nine” means 9:30 am while in Germany, “half nine” means “1/2 hour before nine” or 8:30 am.

What day? Dates are written in the order month/day/year rather than ascending day/month/year. This is especially confusing for most countries around the world, which use the ascending method.

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Exactly when? If you tell Americans “we’ll have that with you in a fortnight” (originally from Old English as “fourteen nights”), they won’t know when it will arrive unless they’re told “bi-weekly”, as the word doesn’t exist in US English. Clearer, but still awkward: “I’ll be there Tuesday week”. Your American colleague will ask: Does that mean next Tuesday? (The first Tuesday following this week)? Or a week from next Tuesday? What’s the exact date? Americans speak about days and weeks. Something will happen in two weeks, ten days, within a couple of days (which generally means two, no more than three).

Where is it? On which floor is your company reception area? Where’s your office? The first floor in the US is at street level most commonly, except in an office building where street level is called the lobby. Often the next floor above street level will be the mezzanine, and thereafter starting with floor 2 will be the offices. There won’t be a floor 13 in any case as superstition has it this is an unlucky number so you won’t need to bother looking for this one (see Chapter 13 for more on superstitions). For retail stores and private residences, the first floor is always street level, and floors above begin with the 2nd floor.

Good or bad Bad, unsuccessful: • A bomb, or the verb “to bomb” in the US is a big disaster or failure of noticeable proportions. A Broadway play that closes after one performance is a bomb. • Tanked • Flopped • Died Very good, successful: • Home run • Touchdown

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• Score • Slam dunk (also used to mean easy or simple to do, as in “That sale will be a slam dunk!”)

EXPRESSIONS THAT REVEAL DIFFERENCES IN OUTLOOK Certain expressions reveal cultural/attitudinal differences: • In America, one runs for office while in the UK, one stands for office. The idea of running for (toward) something reflects Americans’ focus on achieving goals, enthusiastically achieving what they want. They are willing to expose their strong desires and in politics it’s important to demonstrate that you badly want to hold the office. In the UK, one presents oneself and then lets others decide, or so the words suggest. The notion of not indicating too much ambition or the importance of the race. • “What goes around comes around” versus “Be nice to everyone on the way up because there’s no telling who you’ll meet on the way down”. The American expression presents the idea of a circle, a series of connections between people. It also suggests the idea of everything existing on the same level or plane, an important element in the networked organization. The second statement suggests the traditional hierarchical model with a ladder to be climbed up, and possibly slid down at a later date.

INFORMAL US EXPRESSIONS “Whatever” has become synonymous with “Who cares?” “I don’t really care, you choose”. “It’s not worth going into the details”. “Blah blah blah” is replacing “and so forth”, “etc.”, “you fill in the blanks”, “and they went on and on”.

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MONEY US paper money is called “bills” rather than notes and expressed as dollars. The most common denominations are one dollar (also called “a buck”), five, ten, twenty, fifty and hundred dollars. Coins range from a penny (also called one-cent, 100 = $1), a nickel (5 cents), a dime (10 cents) and a quarter (25 cents). Most ATMs give cash only in $20 bills. When quoting prices, for example $1.50, would be expressed as “a dollar fifty” and $5.99 as “five ninety-nine”. Note there is no reference to dollars or cents specifically.

TIME OUT The acronym “PTO” is commonly used to refer to Paid Time Off which can be used for any purpose: sick leave, vacation, a dentist appointment or watching your child play soccer. In many companies, Americans are given a block of time to use as they need. The good news about this approach is it treats staff as adults to use the time however they wish; the less good news is it’s not so easy to manage it well. Some organizations instead offer “unlimited time off” though some employees still aren’t always comfortable with the idea of time off.

TEMPERATURE When trying to ascertain whether the day will be warm or cold, you may have to carry out some calculations because Americans use the Fahrenheit scale rather than Celsius. To estimate closely enough to know if you need to wear an overcoat, begin with the Fahrenheit temperature, then subtract 32 and divide the answer in half. If the weather forecast is for 60 degrees during the day, you’ll know to expect approximately 14 degrees Celsius.

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WEIGHTS AND MEASURES It is highly unlikely that an American can tell you what a “stone” is or even a kilometer. Americans instead use Imperial measures, with weight described in pounds and ounces (multiply by 0.45 for a kilogram), distance expressed in miles (one square mile is about 2.6 square kilometers), feet and inches (12 to the foot). When putting gas (not petrol) in your rental car – which could mean gasoline or diesel – it’s useful to note that 2.64 gallons are the equivalent of 10 liters.

PAPER When making copies or buying paper, note that the size A4 does not exist. The two sizes in general use are letter-size, used for most business correspondence, measuring 8.5 inches wide by 11 inches long. The other size, used mainly for legal documents, is slightly longer measuring 8.5 inches wide but 14 inches long, called “legal” size.

SENSITIVE INFORMATION Besides the use of “For Your Eyes Only”, “Private” or “Confidential” to convey sensitive information, don’t be surprised if you’re told “LDL” (let’s discuss live) rather than putting such remarks in writing, given the admissibility in court of social media posts and e-mails.

GREETINGS AND RESPONSES The standard greeting almost everywhere is “how are you?” with expected, polite answers as “great”, “excellent” or “fine” or “peachy”. Your answer is expected to be brief, positive and exuberant. It is also fine to say you’re very busy, rushed or other words that reveal how successful and in demand you are, but keep it brief. Discussions of personal or family problems, illness or other worries are not usual and should be reserved for conversations with close friends and colleagues.

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Famous (last) words “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart”. (Nelson Mandela) “From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put”. (Winston S. Churchill) “The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity”. (George Orwell)

NOTES 1 Statista Inc. “Most Common Languages Used on the Internet 2017: Statistic.” Demographics & Use, Statista. Accessed April 12, 2019. 2 Partos, Hannah. “The Case for Language Learning: A Quick Guide to Speaking Franglais.” Education, The Guardian. March 11, 2015. Accessed April 29, 2019. www.theguardian.com/education/2015/ mar/11/a-quick-guide-to-speaking-franglais 3 Gambino, Christine. “Inside the American Community Survey: 2016 Language Data Overhaul.” Census Blogs, U.S. Census Bureau. September 14, 2017. Accessed April 29, 2019. www.census.gov/ newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2017/09/inside_the_american.html 4 Wikipedia®. “List of U.S. Cities with Large Hispanic Populations”. Wikipedia the Free Encyclopaedia. Last modified March 29, 2019. Accessed April 29, 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ List_of_U.S._cities_with_large_Hispanic_populations

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INTRODUCTION

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e have our ways. The typically independent attitude of Americans extends to all facets of their lives including their own definitions of appropriate behavior. In this chapter, we look at Americans’ preference for building relationships by sharing activities, their approach to meeting people and what it means to be polite in the US.

SPEED READ • Why Americans like to join organizations. • The importance of philanthropy in American lives. • Tips for meeting, greeting and eating the American way.

PICTURE THIS

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ou meet someone at a seminar and they suggest you get together to discuss areas of mutual interest. When they suggest breakfast, you agree but are shocked to learn they mean breakfast at 7:30 am. Wanting to seem cooperative, you agree. You arrive at 7:30, sit down, and before coffee is even poured, your host starts talking about possible transactions. By 8:30 am, breakfast is over, you’ve mapped out a preliminary plan and set another date, but you barely know a thing about him. Is this normal? The deal sounds good, but who is he really? Within hours of a hurricane or wildfire, your phone is filled text numbers to donate to the Red Cross, and the local diaper bank is overwhelmed by contributions. Americans believe in helping each other – something that can be traced to the country’s founding. You are surprised when you colleague at a business lunch orders the restaurant’s special turkey sandwich, but without the bread, and

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the waiter doesn’t seem to be surprised or troubled by the request. What’s this about being gluten free?

THE BIGGER PICTURE GETTING TO KNOW YOU Americans are known for behaving in ways that can be startling to people from other cultures. This is true when it comes to how Americans create relationships, meet and greet one another. As discussed in previous chapters, in business Americans don’t expect to know you before they starting with you. They assume you’ll get to know each other as you work together. They are also known to be mobile – moving from place to place for new positions, opportunities and family reasons. Thus, they are often required to create new relationships, build new friendships and networks. Building on their underlying traits of independence and informality, Americans have developed an approach to these situations that can be called “connecting through doing”. In order to meet people who may share their interests. They create or join existing organizations, take classes, participate in charitable activities. In each case, they do things with others in the group – getting to know them, as they work together. This patterns leads to the label: “joiners par excellence”. For those new to the US, following the American pattern of joining organizations is a practical and highly recommended way to engage with the local business community. A patent attorney from Russia says, “don’t just stick with the other expats, join a local business group. Get to know the people, understand the culture. You’ll be welcomed”. Robert Hickey, author of Honor & Respect: The Official Guide to Names, Titles and Forms of Address, points out that “In most cultures around the world, formality equals respect and respect is the gateway to good communication. In the US culture informality

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equals lack of barriers and closeness and these are the gateways to good communication”.

SOME RULES OF MEETING AND GREETING WHY RULES? Every society has sets of customs, rules that define proper behavior, how to conduct oneself in a variety of circumstances. We’re taught these rules by direct instruction, experience and observation beginning at the same time as we learn to walk and to speak. Although the rules vary from society to society, they exist everywhere – giving structure and predictability to interpersonal encounters large and small. The rules, when we understand them, tell us what to expect of other people and what is expected of us in a variety of situations, personal and professional. It’s important to note that these rules of “appropriate, polite behavior” evolve over time and vary depending on the circumstances. Behavior with friends and family is likely to be less formal, more flexible than in a business situation. Here, we’ll try to capture some of the American rules that might be surprising.

CAN I TALK TO YOU? Although children are taught not to speak to strangers, that prohibition is eliminated for adults in business. Joining a new group, starting a class, attending a conference? Generally, one does not need to be introduced. Rather your intention to participate is sufficient. Your attendance, participation tells the group that you share an interest and that allows you to introduce yourself to the others. No requirement to be introduced by a third party. People are happy that you share their interest.

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GUIDELINES FOR INTRODUCTIONS Ever casual, Americans use informal language even for the formula of introductions. The traditional introduction: “May I present (name)” is often replaced by “I’d like you to meet (name)”. From an American perspective, more important than the order of naming is to remember that the purpose of an introduction is to connect people. A good introduction provides enough information so that the people involved understand why they’re being introduced and provides some grounds to start a conversation. From that viewpoint, it is acceptable to include some personal information about the people such as a common hobby, that they attended the same university or both recently traveled to China. Don’t be surprised when after a brief introduction Americans move directly to using first names and omitting titles. As a partner in an accounting firm with international clients said, “We’re more informal than other places, as in a quick move to first names in business”. Another American says, “We don’t use titles when greeting people”.

GREETINGS A standard greeting is “Hello-How Are You?” or “Hi-How Are You?” Either are said as one phrase. No matter that it sounds like a question, it isn’t. It’s a greeting. Many people knew to the US start to answer, to describe how they are at that moment, only to see the discomfort on the face of the person who posed the question. It’s useful to remember: “How-are-you” is a greeting, not a question.

WHERE TO STAND? WHERE TO LOOK? Remember that Americans like their privacy, and this influences the size of the personal bubble they expect to surround them when speaking. Generally, people are comfortable standing and talking

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with about two feet between them, that is, an arm’s-length space, barely close enough to touch. If you observe people standing closer together, it often indicates a private conversation between people who know each other well. The directness of language extends into the physical aspect of conversation. To be seen as polite, look directly at the person you are addressing. It’s wise to focus on the face of the person speaking and not let your eyes roam randomly around the room. People have been known to comment, “Well, I just can’t trust him or her. They never look at me when they talk to me!” Remember that Americans want to feel that they are important to you, that you are paying attention to what they have to say and a simple way to communicate that is look at them when you are talking.

HANDSHAKE – MAKING A FIRST IMPRESSION This gesture can be traced to a time when all men carried arms and when battles were fought based on allegiance to a king or a duke. The question “Are you with me or with my enemy?” was answered by the style of the handshake. Firm and quick meant “we are together” but limp and slow suggested “look for another ally”. Today, we fight over market share and our weapons are advertising dollars, not swords, but a handshake can still provide signals to sort out allies from false friends. An American handshake is firm, quick and two or three pumps. Children are advised: never a limp, soft nor a bone-crushing handshake. The standard advice is, make it firm, quick and solid. Look directly at the person, make eye contact and smile. It is the accepted business greeting for both men and women. A word of caution: For religious reasons, some people do not shake hands with people of the opposite sex. If you initiate a handshake and the person does not respond, simply nod, smile and carry forward with a verbal greeting, a smile and move the conversation forward.

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No longer is a hug or an “air kiss” considered an appropriate greeting in a business setting. You will see people who know each other well exchange a quick, light embrace but it is not the norm. The best approach is to limit physical touching to the formality of a handshake and avoid any gesture (hug, pat on the back, air kiss) that could be misinterpreted, seen as too personal.

BUSINESS CARDS Business meetings often open with an exchange of cards. However, especially in events that combine business and social elements, don’t rush to hand out your card or request one from someone you’ve just met. Sarju Naran, chair of the employment law practice at a San Jose law firm, made clear what is now a common perspective: When someone leads a conversation by asking for my card— before we’ve talked and established a connection—I know it’s just an excuse to give me their card, and it’s obvious they just want to sell me something. That’s a huge turn off. I will be polite and give them a card and take theirs, but I won’t keep it. Business cards are a gift. I’ll only ask for someone’s card if I’ve made a connection with them first, and I don’t give mine away unless someone asks for it. Once given casually, more and more cards are given selectively. Don’t push, don’t rush.

GIFTS While we all love gifts, business-related gift giving should be undertaken with care. The issue isn’t simply what gift will the please the intended recipient but more importantly, will they be able accept what you give?

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In 1977, the US enacted the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which prohibits the payment of bribes to foreign officials to assist in obtaining or retaining business. Although the legislation related to foreign transaction, it brought about a shift corporate attitudes related to gift giving even for companies that were not actively doing business outside the US. Increasingly, companies have formal policies regarding gifts covering what can be given as well as received. It has to do not only with the amount the Internal Revenue Service will allow to be deducted as a business expense ($25 per person, per year1). It also has to do with perceptions of fairness and ethical behavior. As stated in an article on the Balance Careers website, a reason to have a company policy is that “No matter how well-meaning or well-intentioned a gift, the potential exists for impropriety or the appearance of impropriety to be present because of the existence and acceptance of the gift”.2 This is not to say that all gifts will be refused, but rather to advise caution. It’s wise to check before you send a gift to find out what’s acceptable. Don’t have the uncomfortable moment having a gift returned. Notwithstanding the above, taking someone to lunch or dinner is still a common way to thank them for assistance with your business. If you invite someone and their company has restrictions, they will tell you. If you are invited to someone’s home, it is customary to bring a gift. Wine, flowers or chocolates are the usual choices. Caution: red roses are a symbol of romance and are to be avoided. Don’t be insulted if you take wine and it is not opened. Your host may have selected a special wine to compliment the meal.

AND NOW WE EAT

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lthough Americans are known for the brevity of their meals. A three-course dinner can be served and consumed in barely more than an hour and a two-hour dinner is considered lengthy. At

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lunch, some restaurants guarantee you can be done in an hour (the time many companies allow for a lunch break) or your meal is free. Notwithstanding the pace of meals, “breaking bread” together is still an integral part of how we do business, discover opportunities, find jobs, move projects along. According to a business development executive, the length and timing of a business meal reveals quite a lot about the business and the relationship between the parties. He goes on to say: “Breakfasts are short, business-oriented, impersonal and easy to obtain. A dinner invitation, on the other hand, is a definite indication that you are ‘in’ with your contact. Lunch falls somewhere in between”. Don’t be surprised if wine isn’t offered at a business lunch. Sebastian Ferrando, private client wealth manager from Australia, now working in US, said: When I moved here, it became clear very quickly that the Americans do not generally have a drink at lunch. In many other countries, England and Australia among them, it is quite common to have one beer or maybe a glass of wine over lunch. Rarely multiple drinks but to have one is quite common. His observation is accurate. Today, most people do not drink alcoholic beverages at lunch other than an occasional glass of wine during year-end holidays or if there is a special reason for a celebration (birthday, contract signing, promotion). No matter the meal itself, breakfast, lunch or dinner, a business meal will still be focused on business (there’s that task emphasis again!) rather than being a leisurely way to build a relationship. When to start the business discussion varies. At breakfast, or even lunch, the topic may be broached as soon as the menus are taken away. At dinner, it is more likely the topic will come later, after the main course has been served. As in any place in the world, it’s best to let the host (if you’re the guest) initiate the discussion.

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Business dinners held in restaurants generally conclude at the end of the meal. People do not carry the conversation into the bar. Early morning starts, long commutes, penalties for drinking and driving, combine to bring an early end to business evening. (Although you may see some changes in that pattern as people take advantage of Uber and Lyft to handle the driving when attending business dinners.)

WHERE SHALL WE EAT? Restaurants are the most popular venue for a business-related meal, but once past the initial meetings don’t be surprised if you are invited to someone’s home for dinner. Americans like to invite people to their homes. According to a GfK (Growth from Knowledge) survey, 50% of Americans entertain at home at least once a month.3 Again, this is an area where the American way is quite distinctive. The reasons the invitations are extended are several. First, the idea is that the meal will be less formal, more relaxed outside the structure of a restaurant. It is a way to show more about “who we are”, what interests us. Also, Americans are proud of their homes often providing a tour, and not designating private or public space, a practice that can be disconcerting for newcomers.

WHAT SHALL WE EAT? When asked for an example of American food, the answers might surprise you. American food, like American attitudes, can be traced back through history, to the founders. What we consider American food is often the food of immigrants, adapted to their new environment. A food writer and historian said, “American food is foreign until it isn’t. For example, there’s the famous Creole cooking of Louisiana that combines French, Spanish, African and native elements”.4 What’s American food? People will say burgers, fried chicken. In some places, it’s tacos, pizza and sushi. All have their origins someplace else and now have become local, food of home.

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Americans love their food. No matter where it’s from. (Remember the all-you-can-eat buffets in Chapter 2.) We watch hours of the Food Network to find new recipes and new techniques – even people who don’t cook. As a conversational topic, food is as common as the weather or the challenges of the daily commute. People compare restaurants, diets, recipes and grocery stores. Hundreds of websites on the topic exist, shelves are full of food-related magazines, and Amazon has seemingly endless pages of cookbooks. We joke that people who travel may not know much about the culture of the countries they visit, but they will know which are the best restaurants in each city. But people’s involvement with food isn’t just watching it made on TV or reading recipes. According to the Food Network blog FN Dish, “82 percent of the meals Americans eat are prepared at home, a much higher percentage than a decade ago, according to research from NPD Group Inc”.5 There are a variety of factors driving that shift. For people who like to cook but hate to shop, there are choices of meal service plans like Blue Apron, Amazon Fresh and Home Chef. These subscription services deliver everything you need to make a specific meal, including all the ingredients needed, already measured, to your door. A home-cooked meal just waiting to be cooked when you, the independent, schedule focused professional is ready for dinner. Want to eat at home, but not cook? Delivery services like UberEats and DoorDash will bring your favorite dish from your favorite restaurant to your doorstep. In addition to this focus on convenience, there is an increasing emphasis on healthy eating. That translates into demand for organic produce, gluten-free baked goods and fat-free products. Farm to table restaurants are appearing around the country. Grocery stores continue to expand their offerings to provide choices for those who are vegetarians, vegans and pescatarians or who follow a Keto, Paleo or other specialized diets. Americans as we’ve said before want choices in all aspects of their lives, especially when it comes to food.

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OK, we’ve got the two gluten-free, the two vegan, the two flat-belly diet – and who’s the one Paleo?

For all the focus on healthy food and home delivery, the US need for speed still influences how we eat. We love our fast food. We combined that with our love of cars and created the Drive thru restaurant. You don’t need to leave your car to grab a burger or a taco. Just look for McDonalds, Burger King or Taco Bell. In 2018, 31.5% of Americans ate fast food between one and three times a week (down from 37.5% in 2016).6 That statistics is one of the issues that contribute to the continuing increase in obesity rates in the country. In the years between 2007–2008 and 2015–2016, the report says the rates of obesity rose significantly among adults, from 33.7% to 39.6%.7 Food – what we eat and where we eat is as varied as the size and people of the US.

IT’S NOT COLD “There’s no ice!” is a frequent lament of the American traveler. In the US, ice is everywhere. You are served a glass of ice water as 24 4

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soon as you sit down in a restaurant. Cold drinks come filled with more ice than liquid. Next to Coca-Cola, iced tea is America’s best-known beverage. (It’s hard to explain to an American tourist that they may not be able order iced tea in London, Hong Kong or Mexico City.)

THE RULES

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t its most basic, the rules governing eating say that it should be noiseless and done cleanly and neatly. But as we know, this is just a beginning. Following are a few tips on the American style of eating:

AT THE TABLE Where to put your hands? At the table, your wrists can rest on the table if you wish. American children are still admonished, “no elbows on the table”. The general advice is to keep your hands in the lap when not eating (using your silverware or drinking).

DON’T BE SURPRISED Although the etiquette books (over 1,800 listed by Amazon.com) say it’s not acceptable, Americans use their fingers to eat a variety of foods. Most popular are French fries, even when served on a plate, at a sit down meal. Next are pizza, barbecue ribs and fried chicken, whether it’s at a picnic or not. The one food that should always be eaten with your fingers, asparagus, is usually eaten with a knife and fork.

KNIFE AND FORK The way Americans use their utensils looks awkward by European standards: constantly picking them up, putting them down and 24 5

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changing hands. For the Americans it’s normal, natural. Don’t worry about adapting to that style. Just remember, neatness counts.

WHO PAYS?

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he general rule is that the person who extends the invitation pays the bill. Between friends, it is normal to divide the bill no matter who has suggested getting together. It is considered polite to simply divide the total cost by the number of people eating without considering what each person ordered. In small groups, each person in the group may provide a credit card and ask that the waiter divide the bill among them. Or one person may pay and each person reimburse them easily using an app such as Pay Pal, Venmo or Zelle. Simple, fast and less work for the server. Don’t forget the tip (gratuity). Unless it’s a large group where the restaurant adds a service charge, a tip is not automatically included on your bill. The amount is left to the discretion of the customers although you may find suggested amounts shown on the bill when it’s presented. A general guideline is 15–20% of the total bill, depending on the service and restaurant.

IF YOU’RE NOT, HAPPY SPEAK UP

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f you don’t like it, speak up! Americans will be quick to voice their complaints in a restaurant. This can be somewhat shocking. Americans will send food back, request it be warmer, colder or different. The Customer is king, and nowhere is this attitude more evident than in a restaurant. Sometimes, a restaurant makes a mistake and there is a problem. If so, calling that to the attention of the staff is quite acceptable. A restaurant would prefer to know there is a problem and fix it than have a customer leave and never return or worse – blast the fact across social media and all the review sites. If something’s wrong, say something to someone who can fix it for you.

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SMOKING & DRINKING

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moking is not allowed in public buildings, offices, restaurants in most, but not all of the 50 states. Some prohibit smoking, but not in bars. Each city and each state has its own rules. A quick glance around a new environment will let you know whether it’s safe to light up or not.

DRINKING (AND NOT DRIVING) Specialty cocktails, craft beers, small production wines, tequila and sake are all popular in bars and restaurants. There are shops and restaurants where you can taste, buy or drink an extensive variety of alcoholic beverages. What you drink is almost as popular a conversational topic as what you eat. Yet, there are restrictions about drinking alcoholic beverages. Remember, this is the country that completely outlawed liquor at one time. The 18th amendment to the Constitution made alcohol consumption illegal. This lasted for more than 20 years and ended with the ratification of the 21st amendment in 1933. (What a public way to admit a mistake, by amending the Constitution!) Today, federal and state laws regulate the age at which you can drink, where you can drink and, in some places, where you can buy what you drink. In all 50 states, the legal drinking age is 21, and prior to that, one cannot legally drink or buy alcoholic beverages. There are serious penalties for bars, restaurants and stores if they are caught violating the law. For the businessperson, two issues related to alcohol are important. First, the matter of drinking and driving. The laws about drinking and driving differ from state to state, but everywhere, the penalties for drinking and driving “under the influence of alcohol” are becoming increasingly severe. Penalties include expensive monetary fines, revocation of a driver’s license and even jail sentences. It’s common

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for one person in a group to be the “designated driver” and not consume any alcoholic beverages during an evening. As an alternative mentioned previously, instead of driving, one travels to a dinner or an event using an app-based service such as Uber or Lyft, the two most common in the US.

WE LIKE TO HELP

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oted as being materialistic, Americans are also donors to causes large and small. Active philanthropy responds to two aspects of the culture. On the one hand, donating money is a socially acceptable way of proclaiming your success, showing that you have sufficient resources to give some away. (Of course, there is also the possibility of reducing your tax burden, “writing off” part of the donation can be an incentive.) No less important is the participation in philanthropic activities, the desire to “give back”, to “do good” for your community, return some of what one has received and to aid those perceived as less fortunate. People give time over the weekends to staff food donation centers, devote countless hours to stage gala events in order to raise money for a charity, spend evenings teaching adults to read and weekends staffing Special Olympics competitions. Again, no matter what your interest, there is a choice of organizations to join and time to be spent participating. Give one evening a week, ten hours a month, a Saturday, three weeks as part of a holiday. As we have already seen, Americans value having choices and they exist in this area too. This desire to help, impulse to give is on display anytime there is a natural disaster be it a fire, hurricane, tornado or flood – in the US or anywhere around the world. As soon as a tragedy occurs phone numbers, text numbers for charities are announced on line, via text message, in newspapers and as part of the new coverage. Individuals create private GoFundMe pages to raise money for

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friends touched by a disaster or illness. Americans organize relays where people walk for 24 hours, run in marathons or ride their bikes to raise money for causes they support. The American approach to philanthropy touches their desire to “give back” and illustrates again the American urge to move forward, get things done, while retaining independence – “I’ll Do It Myself, My Way”.

Famous (last) words “In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires”. (Benjamin Franklin) “No man can be wise on an empty stomach”. (George Eliot) “Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need”. (Kahlil Gibran) “To succeed in the world, it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be wel- mannered”. (Voltaire) “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world”. (J.R.R. Tolkien)

NOTES 1 IRS. Accessed March 24, 2019. www.irs.gov/faqs/smallbusiness-self-employed-other-business/income-expenses/ income-expenses-8 2 Heathfield, Susan. “Why You Need an Employee Gift Policy and a Sample Gift Policy.” The Balance Careers. September 6, 2018. www. thebalancecareers.com/gift-policy-1918897 3 “Half of Americans Entertain Guests in Their Homes at Least Once a Month.” GfK. July 25, 2017. www.gfk.com/en-us/insights/press-release/ half-of-americans-entertain-guests-in-their-homes-at-least-once-amonth/

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4 Tobias, Ruth. “Is There Such a Thing as ‘American’ Food?” Tasting Table. July 3, 2018. www.tastingtable.com/culture/national/ defining-american-food-cuisine 5 Reiter, Amy. “Americans Are Cooking More Meals at Home, Eating Out Less.” FN Dish, September 2018. www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/news/2018/9/ americans-are-cooking-more-meals-at-home-eating-out-less 6 “United States: How Often Do You Eat Fast Food (Any Quick Service Restaurant) in Any Given Week (on Average)?” Statista. The Statistics Portal. Accessed March 24, 2019. www.statista.com/statistics/561297/ us-average-fast-food-consumption-per-week 7 Simon, Stacy. “Obesity Rates Continue to Rise Among Adults in the US.” American Cancer Society. April 6, 2018. www.cancer.org/latestnews/obesity-rates-continue-to-rise-among-adults-in-the-us.html

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Working with Americans – why bother?

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You may wonder what motivated us to write both editions of Working with Americans, to tell the world about US business professionals and what you’re likely to encounter? Well, we thought we’d take the chance to write the first-ever book to examine the question “do fish know they’re in American water?”, given how extremely difficult it is to clearly see the shape, size or temperature of our fishbowl as we’re all immersed in it. Hopefully, we’ve been able to convey herein useful and valuable insights that will help you as you navigate those waters, which is our ultimate goal. Being asked by so many executives consistently over the years, “what’s the best way to win in American business?” presented us with the exciting challenge to find ways to help both the fish and those outside the fishbowl better understand their environments. While it’s difficult to see your culture clearly when you’re immersed in it, thankfully we’ve been able to gain and test our perspectives not just through our respective experiences living and working internationally; our international networks of executives, clients and friends around the world have been telling us their stories over the past three decades of what it’s like when working, laughing, dining, traveling, meeting and Skyping with Americans too. Compiling the observations and lessons over these 17 chapters in this edition on how you can be successful in the American business culture has given us the chance to add even more insights into the culture since the first edition. We know from gathering your stories that there have been many fantastic, life-changing moments in the course of encountering US executives; we also have been told of their less fun moments, frustrations, surprises and bewilderment. Combined, we created a book so you can benefit from their experiences and our knowledge. We hope you might similarly recognize these distinctive ways we work with others: • You can expect a “3E” experience: educational, sometimes entertaining and always energetic. It’s generally a positive one

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–

why bother?

for the majority of professionals who work with Americans, and like all business cultures that are new to you, there’ll be some learning about the rules of the culture’s business game that accompany that experience. • We believe in “fun”. Provided you’re curious about the world, working with Americans can be fun. We’re open, friendly, inviting, willing to engage in conversation, extroverted and encouraging. • You can expect directness. We’re informal, quick to move to first names, interested in learning about you with conversations filled with questions. We believe in the right to free speech for everyone as granted by our Constitution’s First Amendment while balancing that openness with care to avoid offending others. • We’re time-driven – Americans are clock-watchers, schedulemakers, goal-setters, forward-looking, achievement-oriented people in a hurry, anchored in the belief that it’s possible to create and realize any goal – personal and professional. Time is fleeting, so let’s use it wisely. • You’ll find us willing to give things a try. Innovation, newness, experimenting are all valued and encouraged. If you try something that doesn’t work, it’s okay to try again. What’s important is the value of the learning that comes from the experience which you can apply to the next opportunity. • We like to help you succeed. Working with us can be profitable personally and professionally. We will introduce you to new ideas, new business models and new people. While Darwinists at heart (if you’re not evolving, you are at risk of dying off), we’re always seeking ways to adapt and improve our businesses stay alive. If you’d like to let us know your stories of working with US executives, we’d love to hear them. Please visit our book website www.workingwithamericans.com or contact us directly, allyson@ intermarketingonline.com and [email protected].

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We’d be delighted to hear from you, answer your questions, learn your insights and discover yet more ways to successfully and profitably build profitable business relationships work with Americans.

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