Power Less, with or without?
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The document discusses how entrepreneurs and innovative initiatives often embrace uncertainties rather than seeking perfect, pre-planned solutions, highlighting the need for adaptability in a fast-changing environment. It contrasts different cultural approaches to leadership and power dynamics, illustrating how varying power distances influence management styles and employee expectations. The text suggests that established companies could benefit from adopting more collaborative and community-involved methods, as seen in successful examples like Fiat's crowdsourcing for the design of the Fiat 500.
Power Less, with or without?
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- 2. LuPe 19 Liebich & Partner LuPe 19 Liebich & Partner One person or a group of people come up with an idea. Seems like a good idea at first. Then you just can’t get it out of your head. And eventually the crucial question comes up: »And how is that going to work?« What impresses about some start-ups or, for example, the Urban Garden- ing Movement where city dwellers fill up public space with vegetation, is that the people involved are not put off by this killer phrase. Their answer: »No idea, we’ll have to try it.« Are they declaring their imprudence, their naivety, or perhaps their natural feeling for reality? The fact is that we are used to scrutinizing our ideas from back to front, and to planning their implementation whilst taking into account all the possible ifs and buts. We want to avoid uncertainties and achieve the perfect solution. This doesn’t work very often. Especially in innovative or larger projects, it’s working less and less often. And it’s not usual- ly due to lack of competence but to increasingly complex, fast-changing circumstances. So can we learn something from start-ups and social initi- atives? Maybe that it is not a mistake to admit you don’t always know the perfect solution or the perfect way to reach it. And that this is absolutely no reason to discard a good idea. If they do not see the big picture, to- day’s entrepreneurs simply let loose in small steps. They gather expertise, look at what works and what doesn’t, step by step, and this way they can keep their options open to turn back any time. This doesn’t promise stag- gering success in one swoop, but it does help to prevent severe failure. And it also meets the demands of a changing environment. What’s right today may be wrong even next week. It’s better to assess what Do it We all need to learn how to deal with uncer- tainties. According to Tomas Schiffbauer having confidence helps, even if there is only a rough plan, using your own skills and those of your employees to reach your goal. liebich-partner.de/tomas-schiffbauer The word power has rather negative connotations in our culture, yet in others it sounds positive. This is one of the challenges for managers in globally active corporations. With or without ? » The British and the Germans can manage without a boss.« The stages of intercultural competence: I don’t know that I don’t know anything. I know that I don’t know anything. I know that I conscious- ly act differently. I unconsciously act differently. According to Andreas Kambach the last stage is virtually unreachable. You will never really be- long to of a different culture. liebich-partner.de/andreas-kambach Asking someone in India for directions to some- where is meaningless, says Felix Pliester. Even if an Indian person doesn’t know the way, it would be a bad deed if he didn’t help. Thus, the in- quirer is sent in the same direction he is going anyway, or one that looks nicer. liebich-partner.de/felix-pliester »And how is that going to work?« »You’ll land the perfect solution along the way.« A classic corporate conflict: Sales needs a small batch of a special product for a key customer. Production blackballs the request; the set-up costs are too high. There is no solution. Who’s to blame? The French would say: The boss should have listened to both sides and made a decision. The British would say: The heads of sales and produc- tion ought to train their negotiat- ing skills in a workshop. The Ger- mans would say: Something’s wrong, we need to examine our processes. This came out of a case study led by Owen James Stevens at the INSEAD Business School in France. And what we notice is, the British and the Germans can manage without a boss, the French expect the boss to provide the solution. For social psychologist Professor Geert Hofstede the responses relate partly to the different Power Distances of the cultures. Power Distance indicates the extent to which societies accept or expect inequalities and hierarchies − in the German language there are 2 ways ( formal levels ) to address some- one (»du« and »Sie«), in Malaysia there are 33 different levels. The cul- tural Power Distance is particularly rel- evant to leadership. It influences the leadership style that managers prefer, the leadership style employees accept, and how they behave if they disagree with their boss. In England, Germany or the US, the Power Distance is low. In these coun- tries things are discussed openly and a manager relies on the expertise of the employees. In many Latin Amer- ican, Asian or Arab countries this is quite different: These are cultures with a high Power Distance and here the staff just nod and keep quiet. The boss must know what he wants and must tell them, or he is seen as weak and disoriented. He needs to have op- erational knowledge and the ability to acquire detailed knowledge of numer- ous topics. Managers and HR decision-makers need to be aware of the culturally quite diverging notions of leadership and power: If you are managing a multicultural team, it is pointless to keep switching between more and less power-oriented leadership styles. Your best chance is to draw on your own extensive international experience and allocate tasks within the team on a culturally based system. Should you need creative exploration, employees from low Power Distance cultures will be the right choice. When it comes to checking feasibilities by applying predetermined rules, people from cul- tures with high Power Distance will demonstrate the right skills. Ideally, the team members then perceive the leadership style within the sense of their own cultural identity. When a German manager heads a team from another country, the depth of his/her intercultural experience is more important than the breadth. Be- the next step should be out of the current situation. You’ll land the perfect solution along the way. Moreover, and ahead of time, entrepreneurs are using communities to debate whether and in what way their ideas may be useful. Based on the belief that the perfect solution will not be found in the specifications of the com- pany, but only in cooperation with the users. The motto being: democratization of product development. This can be complicated and irritating. But it’s better if users express their criticism in advance than as an afterthought when, at the expense of market success, nothing can be changed anymore. Can we transfer these new thought and action patterns to established companies? How is that going to work? You’d have to try it on a small scale, for example, in the context of innovative or creative projects. The Fiat Group proved it could work in 2006 when they used crowd- sourcing on the design and features of their new Fiat 500. A plan , a good plan … cause the manager usually has to be more that just a leader. In Russia and Spain, for example, the manager has got to be a »friend«, in Asia the »head of the family«. If a manager does not play these roles properly, there may be the risk of inner rejection, especially in some countries with high Power Distance. Fatal for the manager, who realises this way too late. The power of cultures