We recently got a little black book with "Our Vaules" and a T-Shirt to wear that highlighted these company values. Kinda reminded me about the little red books I've heard about in China.
I was a big fan of 'demotivational posters' -the parody of motivational posters seen commonly in NA workplaces. Haven't seen them here at all-although I've only worked in manual labor and academia-but those who I've shown the parody to-don't seem to understand the original concept
Many years ago I walked into my electronic department in Salt Lake City at 8am on a Monday morning, and the conversation went, "Hey guys, did you see, the Church has opened a new temple in East Berlin?" Answer: "Ra Ra Ra!"
I think most European employees would be discussing football, not the Mormon church on a Monday morning. I am still to this day amazed and a little bit frightened of this attitude. It reminds me of the dictatorial leadership styles during the past century. Even Mrs Thatcher used the leadership style "Either you agree, or you are my enemy"
Because it's not the same. DACH is often used as a business or marketing region by international companies.
DACH is not identical to German speaking as not all of CH speaks German, and there are also (smallish) German speaking areas in Belgium, Italy and France among others so it's not the same thing.
When discussing some issues or problem projects which happened before I arrived, the senior Swiss people always say "I don't want to point fingers..." or "I don't want to blame anyone...".
Definitely a different attitude to what I am used to.
In the first company I worked we had a CEO who likd to say things like "quality is our religion" and "first work smarter, then work harder" and he also wrote a little book filled with that type of dumbed-down nonsense statements. Some of the most nonsensical ones we printed out and stuck on the office walls and he thought we were agreeing with him while really we were mocking him. I actually also have Mao's little red book which I bought in a jumble sale and it had some statements which were very similar. We also researched some others that came from Goebbels that were in a similar vein. So we made a sport of inventing our own motivational statements in his style and we had many a hilarious lunchbreak doing impressions of him (he had a special type of voice that was easy to mock). I think he must at some point have caught wind of that and toned it down somewhat.
I know what you mean. If European company culture is comparable to a candle, then US culture is more of a sparkler- faster, brighter, better light, but much shorter in terms of time. The US culture is one where the job is a means of achieving personal and financial objectives, where as the European one is where one seeks self- fulfillment and growth in maturity of doing business.
I'll agree. One of my favorite things to ask new people I meet is, "What are your plans for vacation?" With Europeans I get a warm response with something along the lines of Italy, or some other destination. With Americans I get a dumb look as if I asked them what they are planning to have for breakfast tomorrow.
I wholeheartedly agree with your 8-5 assessment, including a dire inability to make any decision on their own. Which leaves the project manager - who still can't be late.
I'm sorry. I have to call bullshit on that. Feel free to make a follow up qualification. Next thing you'll be saying is they don't envy your generous number of vacation days (which you likely wouldn't get if it weren't mandated by the gov't)