The global configuration of business, the huge amount of US companies with an Israeli subsidiary (generally R&D), the growing number of Israeli owned company with a US office (generally marketing and a “shingle” for Wall  Street) ensure that Israelis and Americans are in frequent business interaction.

Some of the Americans are Jewish; some are not. This post related to observations accrued over time in working with the interfaces of Americans Jews/non Jews with Israelis.

It is important to state a priori that the most frequent error Americans and Israelis make when starting to work together is the assumption of “apparent similarity”, i.e., the attitude that the 2 cultures are pretty much culturally aligned. This is not the case; there are huge cultural gaps between the US and Israelis in communication style, decision making and basic assumptions about how organizations work. The pain caused by the differences is made all the more worse because of the initial assumption of similarity.

The pain causes some interesting things to happen.

1) At times, American non Jews will ask American Jews to try and explain the Israelis’ behaviour. The American Jew quickly learns “how very American he is” and he may find himself feeling somewhat alienated from his “co religionists”

2) An Israeli manager may assume that an American worker who is Jewish may give him better information about a certain situation. This never happens and the Israeli manager is stunned at “how American” the American Jew is behaving. When the Israeli is ultra- nationalist, he may see the American Jew as almost treacherous.

3) Israelis, known for their preference of the informal network as opposed to working the system, will often turn to a Jewish American. But the Jewish  American is American, and he will often not play the game. Thus, the informal networking that Israelis eventually work is the networking done with Indians and Chinese, more than with American Jews.

4) Americans often chose an American Jew to liaise with the Israelis, only to witness that while at times it may work well, this choice  often adds an unneeded hidden dynamic.

5) Many American Jews are very assimilated. Interacting with Israelis makes their ethnic background more salient, and they may feel more uncomfortable in dealing with the Israelis.

6) Americans often find great value in working with an Israel-based Israeli who is American born and bred. Israelis find huge value in working with a US based  American who is Israeli born and bred.

Fred and Graham are two senior analog engineering managers who just returned from a joint business trip to Thailand.

Fred (an analytical introvert) was born and brought up in Raleigh and he studied in North Carolina. This was his first trip abroad. Fred attested that “I know nothing about Asia” before he left. “This will all be new to me-all I can say is that I am open to learn and sound stupid’.

Graham (a more jovial and outgoing extrovert) was born in Boston and he has a Chinese-Thai grandmother, which you would never know by the looks of him. He speaks rudimentary Thai yet Graham understands about 80 percent of what is said. Graham visited Thailand as a child, and this was his first business trip. “Don’t worry, Freddy -boy……you may be a better engineer than me, but YOU chose the right guy with whom to go to Thailand. I’ll show you the ropes”.

Fred loved the trip;  he felt comfortable at all times and he was well liked. Fred was patient and “half the time I did not know what was going on”….but more of often than not, Fred managed to engage the people effectively. The clients simply loved him.

Graham was far less lucky. Graham found himself very impatient with the pace of things. Try as he did, the locals did not appreciate his language skills and they preferred answering Graham in English. Graham felt the locals almost resisted him and he felt out of place.

Most strange of all,the clients preferred Fred to Graham, because they felt Graham “speaks down” and felt ashamed of their poor English. The clients understood why Fred went “straight” to business without small talk, and pardoned him. When Graham went “straight to business”, they chided him as “are you sure you are part Thai”?

This story illustrates a complex dynamic between Fred and Graham’s Thai hosts, within Graham’s psyche as well as the upside of knowing that you know nothing.

For years, Dr. John Scherer prodded me to write a blog (and a book), and thus any request from my friend John comes to the top of the pack.

In my previous post, I pointed out some of the contextual features of the environment in which OD operates; John Scherer has asked me to elaborate.
I wrote “rapid change is just even  getting faster, making organizational change inhumane; this has grown the business of “change management” and shrunk available business for more classical OD types.”

Elaboration:

1) In medicine, some tumours are inoperable.
2) In law, while anyone can be defended, the legal profession  realizes that in some cases, defending someone is a mere formality.
3) Paramedics who arrive at a massive  terror attack (like Dolphinarium attack in Tel Aviv) first choose who needs to die, so that available paramedic resources are used to save lives.

Now, lets move from the metaphor to the case at hand.

1) OD needs to operate in a playing field where our profession (with its humanistic basis)  is relevant. Not all organizational changes meet this criteria.

2) Rapid change which dehumanizes organizations should not  be the domain OD; dehumanizing change is the domain of a defanged HR (which has lost its way) and  Change Management, which has a ready made productized template for everything under the sun. OD has no value for an organization which undergoes 3 mergers in a year. Similarly, when a Board tells a CEO to close a US based R&D center with 600 people in 2 quarters and open a new R&D center in Bangalore “whilst keeping customers and staff happy”, OD has nothing to offer. This type of brutal change is best handled by HR managers like  Gloria Ramsbottom.

3) OD cannot be effective in all change situations. OD needs to be able to say “not in our domain”-and this will make OD far more effective and far more respected. When we peddle our wares in very rapid and inhuman change situations, we make  mockery of who we are.

4) OD is applicable to changes where OD can be loyal to its humanistic roots; not all clients suit that bill. Furthermore, change which is too fast and too brutal is  out of the ballpark or playing field on which we play.

Best wishes for the new year.
Allon
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אלון

In a previous post, I stated that OD did not have the appropriate skill set to drive the strategic process single handed.

In the same breath, I stated that business developers and Heads of Strategy are equally unequipped to drive strategic processes single handed.

So what is the value added of OD to the strategic process? Here are the top 3 things I believe OD brings to the table in strategic planning.

1) Strategic planning focuses on technology, markets and beating competition; at best there may be some time devoted to “do we have the organization to support the strategy”. The truth is that any business strategy not linked to an organizational strategy is useless. And the organizational strategy does not support the business strategy, it is a sine qua non of any coherent strategy. OD forces this issue at all times, in order to prevent a business strategy being developed which is divorced from delivery capabilities.

2) Strategic planning has an intense political undertone since players try to maintain their own personal power base in any new strategic direction.  OD plays a major role in building a process which circumvents this enormous obstacle.

3) Organizations have “mega bugs” which  impact the operations of the firm: e.g., wrong assumptions, too little room for dissent, too much infighting, R&D too weak; Sales over empowered to make promises which cannot be fulfilled…..whatever. The list is long.

Very often, these very mega bugs contaminate the strategic process, and the strategic process replicates the mega bugs instead of removing them. (Armies strategize about  “more fire power”; peaceniks strategize by hallucinating about non existing boundary conditions, religious folks always conclude we need to pray more.)

The most important role OD has in strategy is to work to ensure that the existing bugs in the organizations’ basic assumptions are laid bare and discussed so they have less contaminating impact on strategic planning.

Opening comments:

Before reading this post I suggest you read the short post called The Dumbing of OD which outlines the slow descent of OD in the last decade. And, to get the most out the following post, you can acquaint yourself with Gloria Ramsbottom, the HR manager we all love to work with.

Main points:

1. The dumbing of OD may either be cyclical or a terminal illness brought on by the economic model and context which treats the human resource as spare parts.
2. To deal with the effectively, it is important to set one’s expectations properly-what can, and cannot, be achieved in the present economic paradigm. Many OD folks go berserk and have plans to “change the world”. I suggest minimalistic and achievable goals, “the size of a lizard’s tail”, a term used by the Israeli poet “Rachel”.
3. No models-only projects. No fads-only solutions.
4. Whoring gives a bad reputation; avoid doing activities which brand you as such, even if financially pressed. Positioning yourself has a price.
5. When dealing with procurement, ensure your direct client is with you and that he/she represents you. Do not speak to procurement alone.
6. Price yourself high. I know this sounds theoretical but it is not; when you charge a lot you have the time and bandwidth to deliver real value. When you lower your prices, you are too busy and all we end up doing is dishing out pre packaged crap.
7. Be firm up front; you and the client define together what the problem is-no “order taking” from Gloria.
8. Find people you respect on line or off line to talk about these issues. We all share the same reality.

“As the results for Q3 pour in and looking in Q4’s revenue projection, it is clear that a reduction is force is immanent. Please prepare a list of the bottom quartile”, wrote  EVP HR Gloria Lemieux to all senior managers-by text message!

Mike Shapiro, Head of Deployment for Europe and Asia Pac, called all his area presidents and conveyed the grisly message. Deming Li (Head of China, Taiwan and Korea) sent Mike an email, cc’ing all his direct reports, that corporate HR should take care of employees and not lend a hand to cutting jobs from overworked engineers which will result in less people doing more work.

Mike was livid when he read De-Ming’s email; two weeks later in a meeting in Singapore, Mike asked Deming for the list of names, and De-Ming stormed out of the meeting and flew back to Shanghai.

However, in parallel, Deming’s HR clerk, Sally Ngai-Lam Xu, was providing Gloria with all the data and names that were needed.

Mike wanted to remove  De-Ming for “immaturity” and a consultant was brought into the picture. Deming explained to Allon that the Reduction of Force is completely justified but De-Ming needed to show his people that he was “protecting them”.

Allon sat with Mike and explained the role of the leader in different cultures.

Mike (from Billings, Oregon) told Allon: “Listen, this is not an issue of anthropology; it is a question of managerial maturity.”