Innovation Angst: A tale about Alman Memes, Sauna & Organizational Culture
If you happen to spend your time with group dynamics and coaching, going to the sauna can be quite a challenge. I love going to the sauna — totally out of question. But especially in our Franconian hometown Bamberg you can sometimes feel weird vibes. There’s probably one first question, persons in a sauna ask themselves: “How can I compensate being completely naked between strangers?” — Put into corporate context it would be something like: “How can I make sure, nobody gets that I’m totally unprepared for this meeting?” Sadly, for both questions there is one answer which — experience has shown — comes up just too often: “I just try to be so f***ing loud that no one else has a chance to say something!”
The situation yesterday was similar. The sauna was packed. For the last 15 minutes people were waiting for the infusion to start. Sunday night. The last minute before the ritual was about to take off, another person — let’s call him Herb— wanted to join. His open question filled the room: “Is there some space for one more?” In the second, his lungs were finished exhaling, — let’s call him — Achim, who probably had met Herb during the last infusion, started his compensation ritual by (funnily) shouting: “Yeah, for anyone but you!” Half of the sauna began laughing while the other half secretly knew: “Crap. He broke his personal ice and now he has the loudest voice.” And they were right.
After Herb had taken the spot close to his new friend Achim, their arms touched a litte. While Herb — who got his voice heard by his first question — quickly mentioned, that they are sweat buddies now, Achim continued his compensation presentation: “Did you guys know that we’re all sweat buddies, since the wet air carries all our sweat?” Thanks bro. I took a deep breath and alike all others who didn’t raise their voices hoped for the situation to be over. We hoped to get back to the point of our meeting: relaxation. But it wasn’t over yet. While the infusionist was trying to introduce herself and calm down the giggling people and Achim’s thoughts, the guy continued. “Did you know, that sweat and pee were actually just water with added minerals?” Thanks bro. Now even the gigglers got quiet and just hoped for him to stop.
How did the infusion continue? Well, nobody had fun because the situation was pretty awkward. A huge elephant was present, preventing people to relax. We got to witness a weird phenomena in group dynamics: the loudest voice. Nobody wanted to waste their time in being the brave one who held Achim accountable. Everybody just hoped for the time passing by without any further phrases. Me, too.
Today, with a clearer mind, the situation reminded me of a training some of my team members and me could attend the week before. It was planned to take three days. We cancelled after day two, due to a lack of problems our team is facing. In hindsight, though, it’s not the lack of problems (trust me, we’d find enough on searching a little deeper) that cancelled the training. It was, again, the loudest voice nobody wanted to object. And even if you asked the participants each by themselves and they had told you the training was good, the dynamics of the group had overpowered these separate voices.
There is a combination of ingredients that don’t go well with one another. A cultural occurrence uncovering the foundation of the problem are the Alman memes. They hold up the mirror to a society that’s seemingly grumpy and afraid. They uncover these little spikes along our German culture that are funny on the one hand but pretty sad on the other. They have us face that people rather live in their own micro cosmos than broadening their minds. All-inclusive vacation with a pool and some Schnitzel at the mediterranean buffet are enough. No need to get to know foreign cultures. Going through comments on LinkedIn, this foundation gets even more present. I was reading an article by German investor Frank Thelen lately. He’s a shareholder of Tesla and wrote about how the company overtook all German car manufacturers in valuation. The comments actually reflected the arguments Frank had against Germany corporations.
It’s mostly about Germany’s missing courage to take on risks for innovation’s sake. Couple of comments brought to light how innovation culture in German corporations is held on a short leash. “Well but Tesla follows ideals instead of shareholder interests!” Thanks bro. It shows that the toolsets of purpose and vision have not yet reached German corporations. And it still seems like it is far from reaching mainstream. Maybe the well-known German Angst has a new manifestation: German Innovation Angst. It’s a piece of our culture. It’s a piece of corporate cultures all across the country. It’s known as the “we’ve always done it this way” or the “that’s never going to work!” In terms of understanding the connection to agile, it’s what’s reflected in “we do kind of Scrum but a little different and we call parts of it other names.” It’s what happens when the Agile Industrial Complex forces people with a mindset coined by years of Angst into roles such as innovation agents or agile coaches.
It’s not plain wrong. But it feels hypocritical. It feels dishonest. It goes against the drive to strive for and achieve something greater. It won’t help us in not getting obsolete and outdated. It won’t help us in getting agile enough. We need to take everything a little more (quoting Al Gore) cereal.
