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.8 Even the 13-member board was assigned 8 to 5 in favor of Daimler.9The potential for cultural conflict was evident even during thenegotiation and due-diligence stages.Chrysler employees, who werehigher paid but came from a regular-guy company, were required to flycoach to their meetings in Germany, whereas their German counter-parts traveled in the premium classes, reflective of the company’sprestige brand.10The two companies didn’t just make different cars.They did every-thing differently—from the way they dressed, to the way they madedecisions, to the way they worked together, to office manners.The Daimler and Chrysler organizations were dramatically different(see Figure 2-1).Whereas Daimler was hierarchical with many layersof approval and steps up the ladder for decision making, Chrysler wasa relatively flat organization.In Stuttgart, everyone wore suits and ties;in Auburn Hills, employees dressed casually.In spite of all those signs, there were no apparent efforts to developa cultural integration plan.In light of the German penchant forexhaustive planning and attention to detail, this is particularly surpris-ing.It’s not as though no thought was given to cultural integration.The company had programs to teach Germans about Americanaffirmative action, discrimination policies, and sexual harassment;there also was training to teach Americans about German diningetiquette.11 However, in 1997, just after the merger was announced, American human resources managers at Chrysler recognized theneed to address intercultural differences and proposed culturalawareness training.Those programs were rejected.1230S O L O M O N - S C H E L LIt Only Got WorseCulture is pervasive; it is palpable.All the people in the organizationfeel it even though they may not be able to describe it.Like mannersand etiquette, some beliefs are visible, but other deeply held beliefs areinvisible.Often we don’t even know they exist.One of the reasonscultural attitudes are so powerful is that the distinguishing characteristicsof deeply held beliefs are often invisible.Fons Trompenaars refersto these hidden layers of culture as being as natural as walking orbreathing.13 No one thinks about them; people just do things that way.The impact of the invisible characteristics of the Daimler cultureeventually became paralyzing to the Chrysler organization.At theoutset, Shrempp, the chairman of the new entity, realized the value ofnot imposing Daimler’s management on its counterpart and attemptedin some ways to leave Chrysler alone.Nevertheless, after one year,a third of the senior managers at Chrysler had left the organization.14The vibrant, innovative executives who had elevated the car companyto its heights in the mid-1990s began to feel somewhat unempowered,and defections to other companies began.Even though their jobs,reporting lines, and span of control hadn’t changed, Chrysler managerssensed something about the dominant Daimler culture and felt it wastime to leave.Even the dynamic, passionate CEO of Chrysler, BobEaton, found himself significantly less effective in the new environmentand announced his intention to retire in three years.15Chrysler’s success had been based on a cowboy culture thatallowed employees to accomplish things quickly in a freewheelingmanner.Managers had to be empowered to make decisions, had to becomfortable with risk, and had to be able to operate in a relatively flatenvironment.Clearly, in the Daimler environment, precision was thevalue shared throughout the organization, and those two values werein direct conflict.How could one act with speed when speed might putprecision at risk?M A N A G I N G A C R O S S C U L T U R E S31This became apparent in one incident after another.Soon after the merger, Ray Wilhelm, a midlevel human resourcesmanager from the previous Chrysler organization, was meeting with agroup of American and German colleagues in Auburn Hills, Michigan,where Chrysler had been headquartered.They’d had a full day of meet-ings, had gone to dinner, and had planned to have a brainstorming ses-sion on expatriate medical benefits policies during the evening.Energized to launch into the creative process with their Germancounterparts, the Americans were stopped in their tracks when they real-ized that their German counterparts had been preparing for the meetingsince the night before.Rather than a blank slate (or blank whiteboard),the Daimler team had prepared a 50-slide PowerPoint presentation withdetailed plans about how solutions could be implemented.Perhaps what was most surprising was the sense of disapprovalRay and his team felt coming from their colleagues, who thought theAmericans were unprepared.That rendered the U.S.team speechless andstymied the creative meeting.16 Again, if anyone had been aware of the cultural differences between the two groups, this could have beenpredicted.The brainstorming session represented the different wayspeople become invested in a process.For the Germans, this kind of ses-sion is part of the decision-making process, part of a consensus-buildingexperience.The incident brings into dramatic relief the different waysGermans and Americans make decisions.Germans make them as agroup, trying to get as much buy-in as possible, and see that experience asa part of the chain of decision making, whereas Americans are comfort-able without gaining consensus for a decision and believe that decisionscan be changed easily
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