France: French and American Management Cultures - Part 2

From ExecutivePlanet.com

As described by management consultant John Gaynard

Accor Raises the Roof

When Accor realised what was happening, Georges Le Mener was the person they chose to turn the situation around. He had come to them after leaving school with a flimsy hotel management certificate, but they had put him through the Accor training system and he paid back handsomely on the confidence Accor senior management vested in him. He is probably the reason Accor just made another purchase: Red Roof Inns, which has more than 10% of the budget hotel market in the U.S. As Franck says, Le Mener arrived at Motel 6 knowing that he had confidence in himself, but precious little else. He knew a little about the U.S. but he knew nothing of the American budget hotel market and he had no company knowledge to fall back on.

However, Accor brings its managers up through a tough school in which the client is King. The company bootstraps outside the traditional French management old boy networks, of which Pechiney [who bought American Can in a famously corrupt deal] was a perfect example.

Le Mener, who bears more of a resemblance to the typical American manager than to any French manager mentioned in the book, repaid in full the confidence Accor had invested in him. Many other French managers, however, had to be repatriated, in a number of instances because their perceived arrogance meant that American staff just couldn't work with them. Most of these people, suggests Franck, were clones typical of an elitist French school system which has more in common with the ancient Chinese mandarin way of preparing people for responsibility than it has to market-based management methods.

Many French managers and American managers also did not see eye-to-eye over meetings. French managers use meetings to try to make sense of what is going on in the environment and American managers see this lengthy sense-making process as just a lot of endless talk. American managers see meetings as occasions for action plans and French managers perceived this as a desire to go off half-cocked before the problem situation was adequately understood.

<google>WIKI</google>

What's Equitable?

Another success is that of AXA's take-over of Equitable Life. This is a success that also delivered its fair share of anecdotes. Claude Bébéar, AXA's president, was very quickly adopted by his American senior executives. They welcomed him not only as a White Knight but also as a person who demonstrated hands-on organizational skills.

Bébéar wanted to bring his U.S. managers into the fold by using the methods that worked in France, an invitation every year to a bonding session without spouses in an exotic part of the world: sometimes the Ténéré desert, at other times the West Indies or China. The American managers felt guilty about the prospect of traipsing around the world and having fun at a time when Equitable had its back to the wall. A few of them turned down an invitation to the Gobi desert, but they were persuaded to accept a trip to the Great Wall of China. Instead of the bonding sessions, however, they began to undertake a study of the Chinese Insurance market. They set up meetings with Chinese leaders of their own accord and talked risk and return instead of schmoozing. The American managers of Equitable Life, it seems, make very strong distinctions between work and play. If wives had been involved [nearly all of the managers were male] there would have been no difficulty in understanding this as a social event. But if wives had not been included, this must mean something else, i.e. work. If AXA had not made provision for work it must just be an oversight on poor Claude's part, but never mind, the Americans would provide the work themselves.

Submit a Comment on this Article