A Very Efficient Myth

Whenever the German national football team plays, I try to watch it with English language commentary, even if it’s easier to find in German. Partially it’s innate laziness, a preference for not taxing my brain while I slowly slip into a sports coma, but mostly it’s for the German stereotypes. I’m sure it’s the same around the rest of the world, but football commentators love cliches, none more so than the English speaking commentator. Naturally, there are plenty of German stereotypes to go around, the most common being German efficiency. No matter what game, or how well the Germans are doing, the word efficiency will crop up at least once, usually between the fifth and tenth minute. Most of the time it has very little to do with what’s happening on the pitch, it’ll just slip out, like a reflex. Everyone knows the Germans are efficient; therefore, it must follow that anything they do is also incredibly efficient. String three accurate passes together and an English-speaking commentator will suddenly begin to monologue on the ever-efficient Germans. Even when the German team makes an error, there is still a chance to roll out the efficiency bandwagon, “A poor pass from the normally efficient Germans” or something to that effect. Efficiency is a stick for measuring and beating the Germans in equal measure.

The funny thing about stereotypes is that no matter how much evidence we have for or against their actual existence, they still seem to persevere, impervious to reality. Sometimes people will get visibly angry when someone attempts to contradict what is seemingly common knowledge. I remember fondly the time I was shouted at after telling someone that afternoon tea wasn’t really a thing in Britain. My attempt to explain was an attack on this person’s very understanding of the universe, as if I tried to deny gravity rather than neatly stacked cucumber sandwiches and a pot of Early Grey at 3.30pm. We seek patterns to understand the world, and stereotypes certainly help explain so much of what we don’t really understand. If I expect the Germans to be efficient, and they perform as expected, then all is right with the world. Of course, the trouble starts when what we think we know, and the reality, comes into conflict.

I’ve heard the phrase “the myth of German efficiency” more and more over the years, especially over the last twelve months. The debacle of the vaccine rollout in 2021 seems to have become the ultimate proof of the “myth”, but there are plenty of others from massive building projects to the myriad failures of tech infrastructure. However, the debunking of German efficiency is also a simplification of sorts, although perhaps not yet at the level of the German efficiency stereotype. If anything, the truth lies somewhere in between.

For example, over a decade I spent more than my fair share of time in German factories. Walking a fully operational German production line is something to behold, it’s not on the list of popular tourist destinations, but perhaps it should be. What makes German factories I’ve visited so interesting in this context is that they frequently adhere to the efficiency stereotype. Clean crisp lines printed on the floor direct visitors in an ordered fashion through a facility, with well-maintained bays of parts and materials clearly marked. The rhythmic movement of different machines and the whirring conveyor belts can be hypnotic, so much so that the German phrase ‘Ordnung muss sein’ (‘There must be order’) seems less an expression and more a lived experience. Any visitor to these locations would feel that German efficiency is neither stereotype nor myth but living breathing reality. It would be very hard to convince any such visitor that German efficiency is in decline (if it ever existed at all) by telling them about Brandenburg Airport or that lack of a decent WIFI signal.

Most factories I visit, in fact most German factories, follow similar organization methods, namely LEAN manufacturing. The thing about LEAN is that it’s not actually German, it’s Japanese. The question therefore is whether Germany is German efficient or Japanese efficient. Although I’d love to tell you the answer, the fact is LEAN has been in operation for so long and evolved over so much time, that it would be hard to tell you which is which. What I would say is that Japanese visitors would likely criticise LEAN processes in German factories, but that would be a question of optimisation rather than application.

What I do know is that German companies love an organisational process, whether LEAN, SCRUM, Agile software development or Hoshin Kanri. If it has a complex matrix or a diagram with lots of arrows, it’ll more than likely be adopted by one or other German company down the line. Does this mean that German efficiency is alive and kicking? Well, yes, no, maybe. It depends very much on who is doing it, how they apply it and whether employees are willing to buy into it. Yet, any visitor to an office in Germany, seeing crowds of developers standing around a Kanban board or drawing complex diagrams on a whiteboard would leave fully sold on the idea of German efficiency. This goes double for visitors from countries, such as the UK, that have had frequent issues with national productivity. Germany is regularly included in vast lists of the most productive nations, Germans are productive at least statistically, which is more than enough reinforcement of the efficiency stereotype. If stereotypes about Germany are made by shallow observations, I imagine the stereotype of German efficiency will persevere through the failures of the Covid vaccine rollout.

Do the Germans consider themselves to be efficient? Again, the question has no easy answer. Germans I speak to regularly complain that they need to improve efficiency, they are seemingly never happy with the output of their own workplaces, which shouldn’t come as a surprise as the Germans, like the British, have turned complaining into a national pastime. Ask the Germans to compare their working methods with another country and they will often answer that they certainly are far more efficient, well, unless that country is Switzerland, the Swiss being considered the exemplar of the optimised and efficient German mindset.

However, ask Germans to compare national projects, such as airports or vaccine rollouts, and few say they’re ahead of any other country, instead they mostly become gloomy and quiet. Years and years of infrastructure debacles have eroded belief in German efficiency, some will point to China as the best example of how to get things done, with the caveat that China has certain political advantages that make such projects possible. Yet whenever the opportunity for change occurs in Germany, the chance to move in a progressive direction, few seem willing to take it up.

German efficiency is rather like Schrodinger’s Cat, it’s both dead and alive, as long as you don’t dig too deeply. Perhaps that is the true issue at hand, no one really wants to check and get decomposed feline on their nice shoes, better to just keep doing what has always been done and hope for some minor improvements and a little optimisation here and there. This can be a sensible strategy for a factory, but it is becoming increasingly clear it’s not a workable option for national governance. Germany needs direction, dare I say it, a vision for the future, one that relies less on what people think Germany is and rather more on what Germany needs to be in the 21st century.

Photo Credit
Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

Photo by carlos aranda on Unsplash

Photo by Nathan Rogers on Unsplash

Photo by Cesar Carlevarino Aragon on Unsplash