Whinging pomms the Australians call us, the Americans say we have turned grumbling into an Olympic sport and the Germans think the British love nothing better than a good old moan. These comments have been prompted by what other countries perceive as our lack of enthusiasm for the London Olympics.As far as national stereotypes go this is probably no more accurate than saying the Germans lack a sense of humour , Americans don’t understand irony and Austrians men are sexist.Having said stereotypes are rubbish as a senior manager I have a lot of experience of staff groups focusing on what has gone wrong in the past, what is going wrong now, what is likely to go wrong in the future. One of my colleagues in another department said we wouldn’t hold open meetings with staff anymore because they just turned into big moaning sessions. It didn’t seem to matter whether I was addressing the senior management team or a large group of staff the initial response to any new initiative was always to think of reasons why it wouldn’t work. I get the impression that this doesn’t happen in the USA, Germany or Japan. I read in the leadership and management text books that Americans have a can do philosophy, the German worker appreciates improves to increase efficiency and the Japanese worker probably came up with the idea in the first place. These differences are what I think of when people talk about cultural differences in international business. Does this mean it is harder to be a manager here than in these other countries? Well it certainly can be hard to “inspire” staff as the leadership courses say we should if by that we mean whip up enthusiasm. However initial scepticism is just the default position of the British and does not mean we will not get behind something and make it work. Few would argue against anything that can be shown to be better for the service user/customer but we tend to skip straight to the practical problems with a series of questions which are all around”have you thought what would happen in this situation?” Which of course you haven’t because you’re responsible for the big picture not the detail. The discussion is then about how we will involve the managers and staff in refining the proposal to ensure it will work. I understand the Japanese do this the other way round and start with workers and managers ideas that they workup and then take to senior management to get adopted and funded. On one occasion I addressed a large group of managers representing a wide range of services, the topic was improving quality and the intension was to inspire them into going for Investors In People status for the whole organisation. A number of smaller services had already achieved this and it was a logical next step to build on the existing initiatives around staff development, annual appraisal and improved communication. I gave it my best saying that what we wanted to do was make best practise standard practice, that we wanted to get better at listening and that we wanted all staff to feel supported. I knew that many managers were already doing these things and that this would be an opportunity for them to get the recognition they disserved. I asked if a manager from the audience who had already archived IIP status would like to tell the others about it. I expected that the successful manger proud of the achievement of their teams recent success and the recognition this had brought them would speak with great enthusiasm and encourage the rest to follow suit. I was wrong. The manager stood up and basically said that he wasn’t sure it was worth the effort, the form filling, the briefing sessions, the extra work, the stress of an inspection, just to get a placque for what they were already doing. There was little I could do to rescue the meeting. I was left feeling deflated and defeated. But 18 months later we achieved IIP for the whole organisation. It turned out that mangers weren’t against the idea, they just didn’t want the pace forced in view of the work involved so we agree a two speed approach. So what if we do whinge, grumble and moan we just like to get it off our chest before we get on and with it. Blair McPherson author of Equipping managers for an uncertain future and People management in a harsh financial climate both published by www.russellhouse.co.uk
