In my previous post, I suggested that potential clients of OD be  “beware of optimistic, cheery consultants exuding “wow-wow we can do it”.  While there are times when optimism is useful,  a good organizational diagnosis and a solid implementation plan must factor in a lot of not-so-optimistic assumptions about human nature. Wearing “a smile you can see a mile”, is important for the trainers of the world, but not for an organizational consultant who you must trust to tell things as they are.”

In this post I want to spell out 4 more advantages of hiring pessimistic consultants.

1) It is very hard to change organizations.

I am 65 (now 71) years old and I have been “at it” for the longest time. The state of our practice is imperfect and there are many reasons for the massive resistance that change efforts encounter.

A more pessimistic consultant  is aware of the difficulties & will carefully chose where to apply pressure and where to back off. A cheery optimistic “yes we can” consultant will set unrealistic goals and either fail, or wallpaper over a serious problems in order to look good and display apparent effectiveness.

2) Within organizations, the chances are that  both the management team members and a perky HR business partner are promulgating good news, bombarding various management forums with optimistic forecasts/assessments.

The last thing a change program needs is an OD consultant, motivated by fear, to bullshit and play down the challenges that management and HR are ignoring.

3) Optimistic “yes we can” consultants come to be associated with the existing power structure and chances are that the troops will learn to mistrust them. Pessimistic consultants are more cynical, more pragmatic and may been seen as more trustworthy, which is a powerful asset to leverage.

4) Optimistic consultants tend to use “tools”, products and religious dogmas (in the organizational sense) to storm forward. Pessimistic consults generally are more eclectic and use whatever works; they are not in love with tools because in general, they have less rigid “belief” systems.

Here is a link for tips to manage pessimistic staff.

It is very common especially (but not only) in software development for the following dynamic to occur:

   1) A client goes shopping looking for a product that will vastly jump start competitiveness in a very short time frame.

   2) The clients “procurement department” pushes for very aggressive commitments from possible vendors, knowing full well that while vendors will “apparently” comply with what they asking for in order to win the business, there will be slips in delivery, quality and price of the what they have purchased.

   3) The vendors, competing to win the bid, over promise and under charge. They know full well that once they have their foot in the client’s door, they can ”manage the client” and renegotiate both the deliverables and the price (phased delivery).

Now, let us look what happens within the vendor organization. The Head of R&D (let’s call him Willie)  is given this commitment by Sales or the CEO; Willie sees his yearly bonus and perhaps his career depending upon the delivery of this “promise” to the client.

Willie puts massive pressure on his “engineering leads” to commit and the pressure gets “transferred” down to the trenches where the coders get even more pressure, because each layer has sandbagged. And the coders know full well that this commitment ain’t gonna happen.

Here culture comes into play.

• The folks who come from cultures where authority can be confronted will start pushing the obstacles, the hallucinatory  nature of the commitments and the bad news “up” to management.
• The folks who come from cultures where obedience is the norm will “feign” obedience, and drop discrete hints about what is going, and not going to be delivered.
• Folks who come from cultures where planning is a ritual will plan, plan and plan again.
• Folks who come from a culture of improvisation will start working without a clear spec.

When delivery dates approach and as the ugly truth surfaces that the promise to the client is going to be missed, there is a massive rupture of trust, caused both  by the aggressive promises themselves, severely exacerbated by the different ways that people from different cultures react.

The goal of this short post is to put the term under a magnifying glass for a few short minutes. Many Asian and Middle Eastern based people view North American based managers as overly “expedient”. In some language such as Hebrew,  the word expediency does not exist. Expediency is not universally valued.

I will define “expediency” as functional to the purpose at hand,adhered to for the sense of practicality.

Examples of Expediency:

Corporate declares 20% downsizing within a month. Many managers push back really hard. Steve says, “Come on guys, this whining is not going to get us anywhere-let’s talk about how to do it”.

Samuel believes that a customer request is very destructive to the product road map. His boss Tony says, “Sam, the customer is the customer. Just do it”.

The folks in the newly acquired Helsinki site believe that corporate wants to transfer their technology to Harbin, China and they are fighting tooth and nail. Their manager Fred tells them not to fight city hall and ensures them that they “will get new and exciting stuff to do.”

How do “others” often view  North American expediency?

1) As untrustworthy because of the willingness to compromise too early

2) As an unwillingness to stand up up for important things; lacking principles

3) As weak

If you add to this expediency the perceived willingness of North American managers to move on to promote their careers (and share this motive so freely), one can understand that the background for a lot of trust issues-which lead to feelings of uncertainty in remote sites, causing a lot of political maneuvering “to find someone in HQ who we can rely on”.

Very innovate Israel based companies deploy projects and products in a very aggressive time frame, often months before competing development centres manage to do so.

The speed of development and deployment  is enabled by “speed as strategy”,  a developed work ethic (there is no work life balance in Israel in the high tech sector),  flexibility, high tolerance for risk,  and less importance attached to the formalism of planning and documentation

Wouldn’t you know it, but often these newly released products and releases are often buggy and need to be cleansed and purified on the customer site once deployed.

So, while the customer gets the competitive value he asked for quickly, the customer is furious what is perceived as the “sloppiness” and “poor finish”, the very attributes which enabled the Israeli vendor to deploy so quickly.

With well known thick skin stemming from the entrepreneurial  spirit, augmented by Israeli chutzpah (gall/cheek), the Israeli developers can take the heat well and fix the bugs quickly. However, a problem can arise when the Israeli supplier is asked to apologize, especially in SEA and Japan.

There is an expectation in many parts of SEA and Japan that an apology will express humility and remorse. The client wants to see that the vendor is truly sorry and ashamed.

The Israel vendor will apologize in a matter of fact statement and then, the Israeli will get to the perceived important part: explain the root causes and what will be done. Example: “I am sorry about bug 240. However, it is not revenue impacting. The bug stems the difference between the R&D development environment and the environment in tyour  site, and engineer Itai (m) will do 9000 hours of testing and stay here for a month; it should be fine; don’t worry.”

This explanation is seen as remorse-free ; it often aggravates the client even more than the bug itself.

The Israeli wants to apologize for the deficiency  itself and explain the cause, and the client wants to see the pain of remorse and regret!

I have spent hundreds of hours explaining this to Israeli vendors. It is an uphill run, because the essence of the innovative personality is generally numb about such matters.

One client of mine was forced by his distributor to hire someone (me) to “improve apology skills”.

1 Goal of this post:

The goal of the case is to illustrate how people from different cultures approach the issue of dealing with making an aggressive commitment to demanding customers.

2 The customer:

The customer is a utility provider in Asia. The customer is requesting a feature which will allow households to monitor the air pollution in their home using a cell phone application, and send the data to a central data bank, enabling corrective action by the authorities.

The president of the utility has demanded that “go-live” day is in 6 months, to coincide with the Provincial Premier’s visit to the capital city of a certain province.

If everything goes well and deployment happens in 6 months, the  CEO of this utility will look very good, and more important, the Premier will  look even better.

3-The potential vendors:

Fred is the CEO of Freddy and Sons, a US based firm, which develops software for Green Environments.

Gal is the CEO of Gal and Sons, a Tel Aviv based firm, which develops software for Green Environments.

4-How does Fred handle the situation?

Fred has devoted over 400 hours analysing the contingencies.Fred has learned that even in the best case scenario, the software will be 3 months late.

Fred will now put together a very detailed plan, and then meet with the customer and try to change the timetable, or reduce the scope of what can be delivered, all this will be done in a spirit of transparency.

Fred does not want to surprise the customer and he certainly does not want an unhappy customer.

This utility is in a very large country, and the last thing Fred wants to do is tarnish his firms’ reputation.

4-How does Gal handle the situation?

Gal met with the customer and said: “we can do it”. “We can start tomorrow”, said Gal to the elated customer, who was waiting for a dithering Fred.

Gal’s “plan” is to push his people hard and see what can be done.

Gal believes the client knows he is “over-buying” (asking for something that cannot be done) and Gal believes that the client knows that Gal is “over selling”, ie, making impossible commitments.

Gal plans to build a very close relationship with the client, and if and when Gal cannot deliver what he promised, “something” will be improvised that will ensure everyone looks good. Gal has in mind three or four pyrotechnical displays which will titillate the Premier on his visit. Gal believes that the time to plan is when the crisis is upon him, NOT now as work gets underway.

5-What are Fred’s assumptions?

Customers need to be satisfied; plans enable control; transparency pays off; long term more important that short term.

6-What are Gal’s assumptions?

Customers need to be managed; plans may cripple survival, transparency can be counterproductive or idiotic; short term survival more important than the “long term”.

It ain’t easy managing creative people.There are hundreds if not thousands of US based managers who are managing Israelis, especially in R&D and Engineering.

The US based managers enjoy the hard working nature of the Israelis, the boundless  creativity and the pragmatic, no nonsense approach of “doing whatever it takes” to get the job done. On the other hand, the way that Israelis do business can be very annoying to US based managers.

I have a list of about 45 annoying things that Israelis do to American manager and how to deal with them. In this post I will deal with three of the more annoying behaviours.

1) Israelis argue all the time. Absolutely  everything (especially management direction) is up for debate. While this debate enables a lot of the creativity, it is often hard for a US based manager to manage the endless filibusters in order to “move on”.

The best way to deal with this is to let the arguing go on until “enough is enough” and then end it very forcefully by standing up, raising your voice, and tell them to stop arguing. You can do so in English, and if necessary in Hebrew. If there are two Hebrew words a US manager should learn, they are “tafsiku lhitvakech”-stop arguing. (תפסיקו להתווכח)

2) Israelis challenge authority all the time. If a US manager believes that once he has given direction “my word be done”, he will be in for a rude awakening. Israelis (like Aussies) are very suspect of authority and never acquiesce without a good fight. The upside is that you won’t encounter passive resistance, but you sure will encounter active resistance.

The best way to deal with the challenge to authority  is to absorb some punishment, fight back, and when enough is enough simple say….”the discussion is over-do what you are told”. The Israelis will respect this far more than a weak and politically correct hint, such as “get over it, guys”.

3) After a decision has been made, Israelis often return to the decision and try to re open it with new facts and opinions. More than anything else, this drives US managers crazy. The upside of this behaviour is that last minute changes often enable a more flexible response; the downside is that this flexibility is not scalable.

The best way to deal with this is to allow re opening of decisions in engineering and technical matters, and not allow this reopening of decisions in other less critical areas. When you do not allow an Israeli to revisit a decision, you may lose his trust, but take the risk, because otherwise you can spin wheels in endless debates.

Managers (especially those educated in the West) often feel the need to provide vision, hope and clarity of direction even in the most turbulent and uncertain waters. The managerial assumption is that people need hope and something to cling to. This managerial assumption has a cultural bias.One part of the cultural bias is that ambiguity needs to be mitigated because it is intolerable. Another part of the cultural bias is that stories should have happy ends, sort of “ all is well that ends well“ as a desired state.

Not all cultures have a need for management to provide this perceived sense of phony hope, especially if the provision of this hope compromises credibility of their manager. For many cultures, it is “ok` to promise blood, sweat, tears, criticism, temporary floundering and worse, as long as the boss is seen as credible,  technically competent, street smart and on top of things. The cultural bias herein is the overriding need for credibility, the willingness to let go of the perceived myth that we control our destiny and the tolerance for ambiguity in a hostile environment.

And thanks to GC for making me think.

Many Western managers are truly shocked when Asian and Mid Eastern  folks feign understanding. “Now what’s the big  deal to say “I don’t understand”. Why do I have to figure out that I am being misunderstood?”, asks many a Western-educated boss.

There are many reasons why it is not universally accepted practice to admit lack of understanding. Here are the top 6.

1) Showing lack of understanding needs a context of trust. If I do not feel safe, I need to keep my guard up.

2) Showing lack of understanding shows weakness, and in the business world world, weak people get screwed.

3) It is not my role to say I do not understand. It is my boss’ role to ensure that I understand, and he needs to do so with compassion.

4) My peers may make fun of me if I ask a question of understanding, because they think I am showing off.

5) My accent makes me shy.

6) I feel deep embarrassment admitting limitations of any time publically due to face saving needs.

This post will document how cultural differences can create a huge gap around the issue of what is the appropriate way to fulfill one’s role.

I have chosen one case study, one Israeli, one German and one American.

Case:

An Israeli project manager overseeing the deployment of an infrastructure project in the field of telecommunications now realises that part number 43 has not been ordered; the part will cause a huge delay in “go-live” and negatively impact total project revenue by 5% due to penalties.

All procurement goes through a very well regulated purchasing process, totally controlled by IT technology. “Procurement by the book” of part 43 will take 6 months. Part 43 is needed in two months.

Shai, the Israeli project manager will order  part 43 “outside” of the procurement process (from the same vendor always used)  and issue an email ok’ing to the supplier that the supplier will be paid in full. The Israeli project manager must avoid having a “rosh katan” (small head); avoiding rosh katan means “it is not only important to do YOUR OWN piece, you need to see that the entire job gets done. Obeying orders and following process is a poor excuse”

Johanna from Dusseldorf is Compliance Officer on site. Her role is to ensure process compliance and contract fulfillment. Johanna sees a conflict between process compliance and contract fulfillment, so she has emailed her American boss, asking for his guidance. Johanna has provided a very detailed description of the problem, along with a recommendation of sticking to process at all costs  and having those who erred “face the consequences”. Johanna firmly believes that process compliance is more important than any specific project. Johanna believes that she must only do HER job.

Kevin is the American who managers Mr Cowboy Shai and Ms Rigid Johanna. Kevin believes in process, tainted with pragmatism. He certainly does not like the way that Shai operates, but Shai always delivers. He is glad he has a watchdog like Johanna, and he does not want to demoralise her. Kevin will ensure Johanna that he fully supports her, and “at the same time” ask her to sign off ex post fact, promising this will be the last time. Shai will be publically castigated and yet, he will get a bonus for delivering. Kevin believes in pragmatism.Doing one’s role means being mature, pragmatic and expedient. He does wish Johanna and Shai would have talked between them, but he has given up on this long ago. He does wish all parties would adopt his pragmatic view of doing the job and moving on.