Even in the US, when government really wants it, things happen super fast. Most of the time, the bureaucracy exists for the sake of bureaucracy. Things like sending documents by postal mail, reviewing for 2 months in a black hole, non-digital operations - all of these are absurd delays for no gain. They just exist with no desire from anyone to improve it.
There's no incentive to improve it and lots of disincentive to change at all. In software projects I was often brought in by clients when the CEO realized they had fallen way behind competitors. What you would find was layers of process built over years as an immune response to any mistake ever made. No VP was willing to put their name on removing any part of that process because the upside was "things are 5% more efficient" and the downside was "Sheila removed the process and it broke, so she should be fired".
The Germans, once they get going, have maintained the protestant work ethic that much of the UK workforce lost in the 1970's.
They're not perfect and still mess up things like the Berlin Airport when corruption kicks in but the average Mittelstand worker gets the job done at a top-tier level and as quick as possible, especially when something is important.
I'm fully convinced you'll find teams with that work ethic in the UK as well, and it's not common in Germany, otherwise projects here would be done in a tenth of the time all the time, but they're not.
It's much like when a building collapses and you believe people to be under the rubble, you're working at a different pace than if you're knocking down some old factory and then look to clean up the bricks.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 23.1 ms ] threadBut when push comes to shove, real speed is achievable, even with the culture of bureaucratic process.
It gives me some real optimism about where I work!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/entries/648b5763-1d44-35b6-a0...
The Germans, once they get going, have maintained the protestant work ethic that much of the UK workforce lost in the 1970's.
They're not perfect and still mess up things like the Berlin Airport when corruption kicks in but the average Mittelstand worker gets the job done at a top-tier level and as quick as possible, especially when something is important.
It's much like when a building collapses and you believe people to be under the rubble, you're working at a different pace than if you're knocking down some old factory and then look to clean up the bricks.