"Die Welt ist eine Brezel" is now available on Amazon
German companies regularly need to implement processes in China which have been well established in Germany and the rest of the world. Often there are time pressures: The presentation slides get translated to English, someone from Germany flies over and presents them. And then nothing changes.
Frustrations on both sides can be avoided by breaking free a bit from the pressures of logic and rigor. Instead, better results can be achieved by embracing surprise.
Brigitte Neumann has worked for five years as a manager in China. For preparation, she has read interesting books about intercultural communication between the Germans and Chinese. She found the content was overlapping a lot and covered topics like "losing face“ and "how to effectively give gifts in China“. In reality these guidebooks were not sufficient.
The booklet "Die Welt ist eine Brezel“ (in German language only) shows in a colorful way how workshops can be designed in China in order to achieve robust results. It is no coincidence that methods from Design Thinking are applied. For many centuries, China has been practicing a holistic and pragmatic way of thinking. Workshop elements which currently spill from the Silicon Valley to the rest of the world, work perfectly in China.