2.09.2003

As some of you may be aware I'm attending California State University Hayward's Executive MBA program, called TEMBA. This year-long program is held once a month, Thursday through Sunday, at a remote campus location. This program is obviously quite intensive and will take time away from family and social activities. It will obviously also limit time to play in the garage with the Alfa. During the weekends that I'm away I will obviously not be able to complete any work at all on the car.

I've decided to try to keep the Alfa restoration journal alive on these weekends through some humorous comparisons between either Alfa (or other Italian car manufacturers) and the content of the curriculum at hand. To repeat, this is done almost completely tongue-in-cheek. So, on these weekends I'll announce the course and some of the lessons learned and then try to make an analogy to the ownership or business reality of Alfas here in the United States.

This weekend's courses were focused on cross cultural management styles, executive leadership and effective negotiating skills. There was a lot of discussion regarding differences in negotiating among cultures as well as culturally specific attributes.

Culture is defined as that which "is transmitted through generations", "shapes behavior and world view", and "collective mental programming".

All cultures have their strengths and weaknesses.

We assume culture to permeate the many different aspects of a country, from its foods, to its traditions to its religious ceremonies and even to its automobiles. If we put these definitions to work for us in analyzing Alfa Romeos based on what we know about the Italians, we might have some good-natured fun in better understanding our beloved cars.

Italians are known for their emotional nature, their love of beauty, and their fashion industry. If you've been to Italy you know about their love of food and the ceremony that is dinner. If you've driven there you know that each and every vehicle owning citizen believe they're a racer. If they're on two wheels they fancy themselves Valentino Rossi, and if they're in a car they're Giancarlo Fisichella, or perhaps the modern day incarnation of Alberto Ascari. A green light is really the green flag, and stop signs are more akin to white flags (to use a racing analogy). One would expect their cars then, to be full of passion and beauty. One would expect them to be Corsa Rosso (racing red), that they'd be lightweight and nimble, and that to extract maximum performance they need to be driven near redline.

Continuing to examine the unique nature of Italian culture and their obsession with performance I imagine the following must have taken place at one point or another during the development of the GTV. In negotiation, there is the concept of distributive vs integrative approaches to resolving conflict. Without getting in to detail the integrative approach aims to reduce differences, find common ground, and take other philosophical viewpoints in an attempt to reach a negotiated outcome. Join me now in a conversation I think may have taken place in the Alfa factory between an Italian engineer and his American counterpart in the Finance group.

Arnold the Accountant encounters Luigi the ex-racer engineer at lunch in the cafeteria.

Arnold the Accountant-"Luigi I've been going over the COGS (cost of goods sold) on the new GTV and I noticed we could improve our profit margin by .039 percent if we reduced the diameter of the front sway bar from 1 inch to 3/4 of an inch"

Luigi the engineer-puts down his glass of chianti and stares at Arnold without speaking.

Arnold-"we've already conceded on this 4-wheel disc brake thing, which quite frankly I don't understand, my Dodge Coronet has drum brakes front and rear and it stops just fine, but I don't understand why we need to put such a huge sway bar on such a small, lightweight car. Heck, I was talking to to Herr Mueller over at BMW and they only put 7/8 inch sway bars on their Coupes and those things weigh over 3000 pounds!"

Luigi-staring at his plate of pasta, perhaps re-living an old race memory, perhaps dreaming of his date with Annabella this weekend, says nothing.

Arnold-"Luigi? Can you hear me? The parts are too expensive Luigi. We never do things like this in America. We must maximize profit margins, we must reduce the COGS by 20% or..........."

Luigi-springs from his seat, pulls out his corkscrew and thrusts it menacingly at the portly American beancounter. "listena to me youa silly leettle mana........ifa you wanna changa thee swaya bar, you canna do theez thing, butta first you musta kill me".

Arnold-remembering Luigi is from Sicily bolts for the door, promptly turns in his letter of resignation. Later, he is hired by AMC to oversee the development of a new, revolutionary car. It will be called the Pacer.

We hope you've enjoyed this cross cultural lesson in negotiation. Hopefully it has helped you to see that there is no use in ever trying to get an Italian engineer to reduce the diameter of a sway bar for cost purposes, especially if that engineer happens to be Sicilian.

Ciao!