The RFP landed on a Friday. A major customer wanted a proposal by the following Thursday. Six business days.
In Houston, the American team mobilized immediately. Monday morning: a kickoff call. Roles assigned. The sales lead drafted a preliminary pricing framework by noon. Engineering roughed out a technical approach by Tuesday evening. By Wednesday, a draft proposal was circulating for comment. Thursday morning, it shipped.
Was it perfect? No. The technical section was thinner than ideal. A few assumptions hadn’t been fully validated. But it was competitive. It was on time. And it put them in the conversation.
The team’s logic was clear: a good-enough proposal delivered on time beats a perfect proposal delivered late. You can refine in the next round. You can’t refine what the customer never received. Speed is a competitive weapon. Use it.
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In Stuttgart, the German team received the same RFP. Same customer. Same Thursday deadline.
Monday morning: the project lead convened a scoping discussion. What exactly was the customer asking for? What were the technical requirements? What assumptions needed to be validated before any numbers could be proposed? A preliminary analysis was commissioned from engineering.
By Wednesday, the analysis was back but raised new questions. The customer’s specifications contained ambiguities that could mean two very different technical approaches—with very different cost implications. Proposing without resolving these ambiguities meant risking a commitment the company might not be able to honor.
The project lead contacted the customer. “We need to clarify three points in your specifications before we can give you a responsible proposal. Can we have until the following Tuesday?”
The team’s logic was equally clear: a hasty proposal built on unvalidated assumptions is worse than no proposal at all. If the assumptions are wrong, the company is locked into commitments it shouldn’t have made. Getting it right matters more than getting it first. Quality protects the relationship with the customer over the long term.
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Both teams are right. That’s what makes this so difficult.
The American relationship with time in decision-making is offensive. Time is a resource to be exploited. The team that decides and acts first gains an advantage. In competitive markets, speed matters. Wrong decisions can be corrected. Missed opportunities cannot. A “decision-making process” is almost a contradiction in terms—people make decisions, not processes.
The German relationship with time in decision-making is disciplined. The time allotted to a decision should be determined by the nature of the decision itself—by the complexity of the issue, the quality of information available, and the consequences of getting it wrong. Rushing a decision to meet an external deadline is counterproductive if it produces a commitment the organization cannot fulfill. The quality of the decision, not the speed of the process, is the measure of success.
When these two logics meet inside the same company, friction is inevitable.
Americans see their German colleagues as overly conservative—affording themselves too much time, risking customer relationships and competitive position for the sake of a process that feels more important to them than the outcome it’s supposed to produce. Germans appear rigid. Slow. Unwilling to act.
Germans see their American colleagues as hasty—rushing to act before the analysis is complete, driven by what Germans might call Aktionismus: nervous movement without, or at the expense of, thought-through action. Americans appear impulsive. Sloppy. Willing to commit the organization on the basis of incomplete information.
Neither perception is accurate. The Americans in Houston weren’t sloppy—they were calibrating their effort to the competitive reality. The Germans in Stuttgart weren’t rigid—they were protecting the organization from a premature commitment.
The real question is: what does the situation actually require?
Sometimes speed wins. The customer who receives a responsive, good-enough proposal on Thursday may never see the perfect one that arrives on Tuesday. Sometimes thoroughness wins. The customer who receives a proposal built on unvalidated assumptions will remember it—especially when the assumptions prove wrong and the project goes sideways.
To Germans: your operating assumption should be that you have less time than your internal process naturally requires. Your thoroughness is a strength, but calibrate it to the external reality. And when Americans push for speed, ask them two things: why is speed necessary in this case, and how can a quick decision be corrected if it proves wrong? Their answers will tell you whether the urgency is real or reflexive.
To Americans: be guarded against the cliché that Germans are slow. Their decisions tend to be further-reaching, accounting for factors and consequences that a faster process might miss. When you perceive the need to decide quickly, explain why—and explain the safety net. Show that speed doesn’t mean recklessness. Your German colleagues will move faster when they understand that the risk is managed, not ignored.
Two clocks. Same company. Same customer. The teams that learn to synchronize them will outperform the ones that don’t.