Oddbean new post about login | logout @43d7c4ea It’s one of the things that I learned from working for a German-owned company: British management culture and practices are 40 years out of date, and I believe the main cause of underperformance.
@210de87f Completely agree - here's a piece I wrote for @264363cd that I think you might find reflects your view(s) quite strongly
@43d7c4ea @264363cd I think you missed off the link there Chris!
@210de87f @264363cd ooops, sorry - now added to the original reply, but here as well: https://northwestbylines.co.uk/business/whos-responsible-for-reduced-productivity/
@210de87f @43d7c4ea Could you say a bit more about the characteristics of the out-of-date UK management style compared to the up-to-date German counterpart? What are the key features and distinctions?
@a83672b0 @43d7c4ea Gosh, where to start. One aspect was a completely different approach to learning and development: the expectation was that even senior leadership would continue doing formal and informal L&D, and time was built in to allow it (if you were doing a course, you were expected and supported to devote 20% of your time to doing it). But there was a lot more – for example, in change management there were formal methodologies used which I’d never seen before.
@210de87f @a83672b0 To which I would add the very big difference between horizon-planning in UK finance-focussed business (which looks to quarter by quarter performance) and many family-fcoussed Mittlestand firms in Germany that have a much longer time frame for strategic thinking
@210de87f The L&D is a *real* problem where I work. The MD will only consider offering training where it's pertinent to the immediate profitability of the company or legally required. As a result, anyone here who's doing any training is doing it self-funded, and will leave as soon as they're able to. @a83672b0 @43d7c4ea
@210de87f @43d7c4ea what? But German companies are already 20 years behind.
@595771c6 @43d7c4ea Oh they have their issues. They tend to be quite hierarchical and see the solution to change to be structural changes, for example. But honestly – light years ahead of UK, where the “solution” is always simply to reduce headcount.
@210de87f @43d7c4ea okay and what does the U.K. management do to improve the productivity to get the work done with the reduced workforce?
@595771c6 @43d7c4ea You’re assuming they improve productivity :)
@210de87f @43d7c4ea if they are not how are they not going bankrupt or end up with terrible profit rates. You can only lower wages so far to compete. At some point you need to be more productive or create something special. Ask the Germans, they made that mistake and now nothing works.
@595771c6 @43d7c4ea You would be surprised how far you can screw workers. Wages in real terms are declining. And as someone else pointed out, UK businesses are *really* poor at horizon planning – it’s quarter by quarter stuff and sod what happens next year, let alone in five years time. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/17/real-terms-uk-pay-fell-fastest-20-years
@210de87f @43d7c4ea I’ve found myself in a situation recently where I was working for the very small Austrian subsidiary of a major US based tech company and ran into some major mental health issues, a combo of a pre-existing condition and management doing stuff that pushed it into a full scale crisis. A lot of the problem was caused by people in the US simply not being able to grasp the concept of, e.g., an employer’s statutory duty of care for its employees’ mental health under Austrian employment law. The idea that you’re not actually allowed to give your employees nervous breakdowns just hadn’t crossed their mind. It’s such a fundamental cultural gap between the anglophone world and how things work here that they are literally unable to grok it.