wine nations vs beer nations: management issues
I have had the chance to witness a number of companies from Western Europe in different industries trying to build management teams in various countries within the CEE region.
The most typical scenario is that a local GM runs the country reporting to HQ in Western Europe. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t; obviously.
It becomes interesting when it doesn’t work for one company, but it works fine for competitors.
It is even more interesting when a company has absolutely no problem managing one country, while it’s having tons of problems managing another one right next to it.
This is a complex problem, here I just turn attention to one factor: cultural fit; itself a complex issue. To simplify it, let’s categorize European cultures based on national drinks.
Wine nations: France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, etc.
Beer nations: UK, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, etc.
Vodka/hard liquor nations: Scandinavian countries, Russia, Poland, etc.
There are lots of nuances, like some beer and wine nations also have a significant hard liquor component, or that some beer nations also have good white wine, but it’s not that important to elaborate on these here.
There is an obvious fit between nations under the same category: there are German companies (beer) for example with Czech and Hungarian operations having much less problems with the Czechs (beer) and much more with the Hungarians (wine).
Sometimes things look good, but unless the integration is managed right, there is a time bomb clicking under the surface. Many top managers from UK or German companies managing Spanish, French or Italian units (or people) could testify to this.
I noticed the following pattern of behavior of companies that managed to build successful management teams:
The wine guys learned to appreciate beer, the beer guys learned to appreciate wine (to keep it simple I leave the spirit nations out of this for now).
More specifically:
- they exhibited a strong drive to understand differences: what are the managers like in the target geographies, how and why are they different (wine vs. beer), how is business done here (what’s the wine / beer culture like), what are the success factors there, how can we go wrong, etc.
- they exhibited a strong appreciation for differences and adjusted their behavior when necessary
- as follows from the previous points: they communicated obsessively.
Pattern of behavior of companies that were unsuccessful building successful management teams:
They expected the wine guys to become beer guys or vice versa.
This fundamental mistake results in passivity and inertia as main style elements:
- crucial tasks are delegated to administrators
- there is no attempt to try to understand the target culture. A good example is a German manager who “interviewed” a Hungarian manager from Transylvania (those guys are so different that they are subjects of many jokes even among Hungarians) and practically walked out of the interview after 10 mins. This mistake is no different from going to China to hire a manager and refusing somebody after 10 mins based on obvious differences. What actually happened is that the German guy realized in the first 5 minutes: “Mein Gott, this is not beer!!!”
- they disregarded market intelligence and didn’t adjust expectations and behaviors.
The short takeaway:
- don’t go shopping for beer in the wine store or for wine in the beers store
- don’t try to turn wine into beer or vice versa: you will inevitably fail.
- you can mix wine with beer, but it doesn’t taste like a drink and you can’t shove it down the throat of people for too long.
Style
Style is a critical element of identity, be it organizational or personal: the purpose manifests itself through style.
Since there is no perfect harmony between purpose and style, organizations are always in a state of identity crisis, to some degree.
Organizations without a clear purpose that goes beyond functions (like making profit) obviously act completely undifferentiated. But organizations with a very clear purpose may also be completely oblivious to how misaligned their style is (be it marketing, communications, branding, leadership etc.), failing to connect with the right minds in the first place and creating an absolutely wrong positioning in the minds of people in general.
A good example of such misalignment is the fund raising style of some non-profits who send people to the streets to talk to/harass everybody walking by. Begging as an analogy comes to mind immediately: does pitiful and calculated sentimentalism do justice to cancer patients?
The other side of the coin is too easy: style discloses a great deal about the purpose of the organization, or the lack thereof:
the process of calling the customer service of a telco for example almost always wastes time, communicates indifference (automation or the monotone voice of the reps who sound like machines), is set up to conceal information, etc. They create the impression that they are purposefully ill willed. The style speaks volumes about the purpose: we are here to rip you off. If no empirical evidence contradicts this, we are forced to think that this actually IS the purpose of the organization.
Only exceptional organizations are able to align themselves to the purpose and these are organized completely differently from the average ones. Examples: they define cost centres differently (call centres may belong to branding), their roles have different scopes of responsibilities (like chief operating and customer officer, chief strategy and people officer, chief hr and marketing officer, product and customer service manager, CEO and chief recruiting officer, etc., depending on the industry) and of course since more people are positioned where they should be and doing what they are born to do, these organizations are filled with creative tension that results in a high intensity energy that is palpable to everybody who interacts with them.
In short: differentiated organizations have a differentiated style.
Take a number!
By the time we need to get a number we are in line already. There is still a chance of turning back but the CONDITIONS are such, that most of us tend to just take a number; the events leading us to this point are results of us already being a number: taking one is a symbological act: acceptance and, in the best scenario, resolve to make the best of it within GIVEN CONDITIONS.
Changing the conditions seems like a crazy idea: impossible or at the very least too late. Why fight it? By getting in line we will win. Some of us more some of us less, but inevitably, we will win. In fact it seems that the only way to lose is by being out of line. All words of wisdom from within the “line” follow the same patterns:
- get in line
- views, rules and behaviors in the line
- don’t quit (the line).
Views, rules and behaviors condition us. We adjust. If we rebel, we rebel according to them. If we challenge we do it within the boundaries; but we hardly ever challenge the boundaries. If we quit, we don’t quit the line; we just quit trying to win more.
What if we are in the wrong line? If it’s an issue for us to “take a number”, chances are we are. To be certain we must step out.
At the very minimum:
- we must quit the line
- stop acting like insignificant numbers and
- follow our own direction.
Autonomy: own views; own rules; acts of freedom.
Buy the ticket
When I clearly state what I want in the right context it’s straight forward communication.
When I don’t say what I want and I am just selling myself AND I am out of context it’s projecting.
This happens often when people are looking for a job or when they are in a sales position.
Projecting is bad for you! It leaves a very limited impression. When you make statements about your value system, your top 3 strengths, etc. in a simple networking conversation, without being asked, it is limiting; what you are saying is that you’re good. Like everybody else.
If you bring a topic to unexpected heights you show that you’re good. If you do this neutrally, meaning that your ego is not involved, it shows that you’re great; this is your ticket for setting the context for other topics that maybe of personal interest to you.
Do not interview!
Interviews are not fair. No matter what the context, be it job interviews, management audits, corporate restructuring, pitching for a project, analysis as part of a management consulting initiative, vendor selection, whatever; they are not fair.
Right off the bat interviews create an inquisitive situation, which is absolutely not warranted. Even the most capable managers, specialists sometimes even leaders become less effective in an interview setting; perhaps because everybody knows, even if only intuitively, that they are in an incorrect, unjust situation. Once you are in the situation where you shouldn’t be, you already lost. Even if the outcome will be perceived as “positive” (like you get the job, you don’t get fired, you contribute to the uncovering of the root cause of a problem, etc. etc.), the experience leaves a bitter aftertaste in the mouth of those, who are not built to give up, to accept injustice, to rationalize by adjusting to the majority, to comply by all means, etc.
Interviews polarize between good interviewers and poor interviewers, not between good contributors and poor contributors. Very often a good interviewer is a poor contributor and vice versa.
Have conversations! Even if you find yourself sitting across from a bureaucrat who just wants to get through a checklist as fast as possible, still make an effort to have a conversation. If you are more experienced, guide the conversation towards the ideal outcome for everybody.
- Prepare: know what you want out of the conversation. What do you want to find out, points you want to make, etc. Hopefully “to impress” will not be on your list.
- Set the stage: it’s possible that your conversation partners just arrived from a series of meetings, grabbed a coffee 5 minutes before your meeting, had no time even to discuss what they want out of this conversation. If they don’t do it, set the stage yourself.
- Keep an open mind: the conversation may not go the way you planned, some of the points you planned to make may not make sense anymore, etc. Be open and adjust.
- Make it a pleasant experience. Have fun with it! Relax (remember, it’s a conversation, not an interview): smile, think, take your time, make observations, comment, etc.
- Do NOT give standard answers! Why bother? If you interview for a job for example handle the typical what-are-your-strengths-and-weaknesses type of non-sense with humor and lots of examples.
- If they want to put you in a situation that is not worthy of you, (“group interviews” come to mind as an example), politely refuse and share your reasons with them.
On the other side of the fence, when you’re t the one leading the interview, always think about this: what kind of experience do I create with this conversation? Is it going to inspire, is it going to unleash creative energies, is it going to create an atmosphere of trust, is it going to make the other person want to help me, to open up to me, to share his thoughts with me? Is she going to leave after the conversation with full of energy, is she going to think back to this experience with positive thoughts, is he going to rave about this conversation to his friends? Is she going to leave with a new perspective, with exciting thoughts and ideas?
I think I made the point.
Loyalty
I am always entertained by how egos get bruised when (expected) loyalty gets compromised.
The guy in a management role acts hurt when one of “his” top players acts against his interests, or is just not grateful for the chance of being on the team. The vendor just can’t get it when the client moves on; after all he did for her! Etc.
Individuals have absolutely no ground to expect loyalty from each other. The foundation of true loyalty is always supra-individual: principles or values; from another aspect: superiority, since the foundation of vertical differentiation may only be supra individual faculties.
When loyalty is geared towards individual or sub-individual faculties the style elements are always inferior: impulsive, uncontrolled, dishonest, opportunistic, manipulative, suspicious, fearful, etc.
Past examples of true loyalty include that towards the principles of royalty (intellectual and spiritual dominance, control over power, etc.), the principle of virility (independence, detachment, sense of purpose), the principle of wisdom (differentiation).
Current examples of false loyalty include that towards various forms of money, profit oriented institutions and positions/titles therein, character traits (be it positive or negative), or behavior that is driven by a sense of sin, self deprecation or sentimentalism.
An impractical perspective on the wine business
As we go from south to north we come across with wine nations, beer nations and of course spirit nations. Wine consumption however is growing globally, including in beer and spirit nations and as a result of this the wine selection is getting wider in all major super and hypermarkets.
People buy cheap wine, expensive wine and wine in between. Wine lovers are well educated: they pronounce merlot, savignon, pinot appropriately, they are aware what are the native grapes in particular regions; some of them are even aware of what years were the best in which regions; so wine buyers are clear on the price value of a particular bottle of wine.
They perceive wine on sale to be just as irresistible as Nike shoes, LV bags or other products on sale. More or less this is the case when people are browsing at the wine section of Tesco, Lidle, Loblaws or other denominations.
Wine has become a product, like sneakers, shaving blades, hilti rock-drill and other practical products. The fields of applications are also well defined:
- I am going somewhere, gotta bring something
- Someone’s coming, gotta have something
- for movies
- for dinner
- everybody’s favourite: intimate times
- for conversations
- for forgetting, for celebrating
- for parties
- for closing business deals
- etc. etc. etc.
By “gaining” function, wine has degraded to the level of consumer’s goods. Since the mass views decline as progress, I should probably say: wine has advanced to the consumers’ goods category.
This has not always been like this. Like everything that has anything to do with luxury, wine is not “goods” or product. The “luxury goods” category from this point of view is an oxymoron.
According to the definition I propose: luxury is a field that has no practical considerations; to put it differently: it’s not bound by (practical, inferior) conditions; we could also say: it’s independent, which is in analogy with superiority.
When looked at from below, the superior is always luxurious. It’s likely that the expression “luxus” originates from “below”, since luxus, as a “surplus” may only be perceived as such from an inferior position; from a superior position this “extra” is integral, natural.
One who surrounds himself with luxury goods while he builds a career, “serves” clients, etc. and perhaps makes such statements like he likes luxury or that he leads a luxurious lifestyle, is in a grave contradiction. This is true also when one backs up such a statement with something like:
I only buy Mercedes because I can relate to the philosophy of striving for perfection. Coming up with ideas for this may occasionally birth very funny statements, which however are meant dead seriously at the time:
- I am a princess so I deserve royal treatment: the only brand that is appropriate for this is prada, gucci, etc.
- “a BMW is like a predator in a suit (someone with more imagination may go as far as specifying: like a cheetah, a panther or a lion), EXACTLY LIKE ME!”
It’s typical of the sometime downright stupid “business thinking” that they seriously ask questions like if you were a car, what brand would you be; or which brand expresses your working/leadership/personality type the most.
To summarize before we move on: the luxury industry is the mass’ perception about the style elements of superiority.
Back to wine.
Wine is not a product. It’s also obvious that it didn’t become from “below” so to speak. It was not an highly observant ape man who accidentally started to grow grape, and then accidentally left it to ferment, etc. I don’t want to continue because it wouldn’t be worthy of applying inferior speculations (how it was discovered, “invented”, etc.) to things like wine.
Wine was not invented, it is a natural phenomena. Conceptually, in relations to certain principles, wine had always existed even before its manifestation. If certain conditions are present on the manifest plane, wine will also appear.
The creation of conditions for its manifestation was a ritual, whereby one “plays” with time from a “position” (of creation) “above” or “before” time, just like in metallurgy, where man eliminates time as it relates to the ore in earth thereby accelerating the manifestation of the potentially existing metal (see Eliade: Forgerons at alchimistes)
To elaborate on the ritual of bringing the wine from potentialities to actuality is not relevant here. Much more interesting is the ritual of knowing the wine through tasting it (by no means CONSUMING it).
The birthplace wine is obviously very important; grapes native to a particular region are prerequisites for (near) perfect wine, since it is not by blind chance that it is precisely this type of grape that is native to a particular region. Shiraz from Australia maybe without doubt tasty, but by no means may it become perfect.
Today of course this kind of “mixing” is pervasive and it is driven mostly by marketing. “Shiraz has been incredibly hot this year”. “Last year the Australians made a killing in the “shiraz-merlot” segment, etc. …and the marketing guys are thinking (or not): why is cabernet-shiraz more popular than shiraz merlot?
When it comes to the masses there’s nothing to think about: the stronger the taste the more popular the wine. The more unsophisticated the (person’s) taste, the stronger the taste (of wine) must be.
This is probably the foundation of the popularity of Chinese fast food as well.
To keep it short, just the bottom line:
The basic rules of tasting wine:
- get to know the wine where it appears: go there
- before getting to know the wine more intimately, explore the area, talk to the locals, taste their food with their own regional spices, try their water, notice the smell of air, etc.
- it is incredibly important that you get introduced to the wine by the grower personally, in the cellar, preferably straight from the barrel. The grower will tell you about the history of the cellar and the family, about the wine you’re tasting, about the harvest conditions that year, about everything.
All these are part of the conditions facilitating manifestation so they are incredibly important from the point of view of getting to know the wine appropriately.
It is easy to see that the grower is not introducing a product.
It’s about a principle thing so about something that transcends both the grower, the guest and the wine; it integrates the grower, the wine (together with the area, the people there, local food, drinks, history, etc.) and the guest (pilgrim) into an indivisible unity the centre of which is perfection that in this particular moment manifests itself as wine.
An uplifting experience.
Of course after such an introduction you bring home a couple of bottles. It’s important to note that the price given by the grower is symbolical and not subject to negotiation. The indicated price maybe influenced by to what degree the feeling of indivisible unity has been actualized during the introduction. Sympathy may play a role, but not necessarily. The price must be accepted.
When one opens the wine at home he gets only a pale reflection of the original experience; in a way he just relives the memory; but this pale, reflective memory is still incomparably better than picking up a bottle at tesco (loblaws, whatever); the only thing we can learn from such a wine is aromas, smell, %’s, a year that is nothing more than a number, etc. This means that we actually don’t know the wine we’re drinking and our relationship with it is purely physical.
Instead of shopping in supermarkets we must go and get to know wines personally, the right way.
Since the nature of wine is contrary to that of business, the wine business corrupts wine. The only way of preventing the inevitable decline, is that we at the very least maintain personal contact with select growers and since trade is impossible to eliminate, we conduct wine trade in a fashion that corresponds with the nature of wine.
Do you negotiate up or down?
This is supposed to be a thought provoker so I’ve done my best to make it strong.
Slaves negotiate down. Their concern is to please the master.
The masters negotiate up: if you’re bringing in guys like you it’s a logical impossibility to negotiate down; it would mean compromising yourself. Bring in the best, surprise the hell out of them by money, show appreciation, commitment and class, and expect them surprise the hell out of you!
Basics.
Good
Attention, consideration, win-win scenarios:
there is intent behind these; intent that births imagination, timing and energy…
…and behind this intent there’s intelligence.
Intelligence always looks good and this look is uniform no matter what area it manifests itself in: business, community or perhaps family. Intelligence unifies, it is simple, it is healthy (normal), it feels good.
The opposite of intelligence is a void that manifests itself as inertia. It may seem like there is an intent there, but it is just a will focused on something quantitative. This will is not owned, it owns! Lack of intelligence and the resulting ignorance also has universal style elements: it’s repulsive. Ignorance divides, it’s always complicated and smells like manipulation, it’s not good for you, and it feels sick.
The game is incredibly easy: focus on good. No matter what business you are in or what function you represent: give attention, be considerate and create win-win scenarios.
How to buy innovation
Quantity (how many times, for how many years) matters in mechanical activities, where routine is not so dangerous.
In areas that are fundamentally qualitative, including strategy and leadership, routine is dangerous and the significance of quantity is minimal.
It’s non-sense to assume that leadership qualities, synthetic (strategic) thinking, creativity emerge from years of practice.
These qualities bestow very particular style elements on the person and yes, these maybe somewhat refined with years of practice in some cases.
In the perception of the person who performs true qualitative activities each every occasion is completely unique and each and every approach is experienced as if it was done for the first time, in a high intensity creative tension.
This is where creativity and leadership come from and this is what ensures integration throughout the organization…
… and this is what gets killed when quality gets subordinated to quantity and the context for action becomes mechanical planning, talent management, resource management, marketing, branding and communications best practices, etc.
In such mechanical context all efforts geared towards creativity (e.g. off site strategy planning exercises, hiring guys who sell creativity, team building exercises, etc.) fail – either completely or partially.
Creativity, innovation and other qualitative factors must come from inside the organization; they can’t be enforced on it; it can’t be bought!
To put it differently: creativity and innovation is an organizational question and it by no means belongs to HR…or marketing or branding!!!
And now the tricky question:
Who handles innovation in your organization?