Managing for Creativity in Japan

“Here they tend to take the cookie cutter and cut the same cookie…and it’s a good cookie. Once they get the design right it’s great, and it’s designed with reliability built in. Compare this with Spain where somebody would be cutting corners to try to do things faster – resulting in variability and difficulties or bad quality”.(i)

Fear, need for structure, and intense client relationships result in risk averseness which equates to consistent results which in turn form the stable base for conscientious, continual, incremental innovation (kaizen).


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This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign executives in Japan, focusing on creativity. Excerpts have been edited for confidentiality.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in relation to this topic. Please feel free to comment directly on this site or get in touch at chris@a-small-lab.com (Chris Berthelsen)
All content on this IDEAS and DISCUSSION blog is provided by a-small-lab under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License: You can SHARE this content as long as you CITE this work, and TELL US about your work (and send us a copy or link!). See Creative Commons for more detail

Being in charge of relatively small country offices in Japan can be a liberating role – the lower formal gateposts risk to the parent company makes for quicker discussion and execution of ideas – “…we’ve got the whole train set to play with on a smaller scale, and the financial risk to the company if we make a mistake is smaller. We can move more quickly with less bureaucracy is we have a creative idea here.”(i)


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This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign executives in Japan, focusing on creativity. Excerpts have been edited for confidentiality.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in relation to this topic. Please feel free to comment directly on this site or get in touch at chris@a-small-lab.com (Chris Berthelsen)
All content on this IDEAS and DISCUSSION blog is provided by a-small-lab under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License: You can SHARE this content as long as you CITE this work, and TELL US about your work (and send us a copy or link!). See Creative Commons for more detail

Non-Japanese employees are (on the whole) seen as more suitable for change management roles – not necessarily better, but more willing (i). This is not due to any across-the-board skill/ability set differences but rather the result of (1) different preferences (with respect to learning new skills) and (2) employment/career-path structure (relative rarity/novelty of mid-career hires in Japan, and job-change frequency).


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This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign executives in Japan, focusing on creativity. Excerpts have been edited for confidentiality.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in relation to this topic. Please feel free to comment directly on this site or get in touch at chris@a-small-lab.com (Chris Berthelsen)
All content on this IDEAS and DISCUSSION blog is provided by a-small-lab under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License: You can SHARE this content as long as you CITE this work, and TELL US about your work (and send us a copy or link!). See Creative Commons for more detail

“…..over the years here I’ve become much more collaborative in the way I make decisions. I used to dictate but now I hardly ever dictate, I suggest. It’s better that way, it works better.”(i)

While the ‘need for discussion’ that derives from intense client relationships and individual fear may adversely affect the risk dimension in (especially) the short term, the need for increased discussion inherent in this type of client relationship can have a positive effect on collaboration skills. In the longer run, the increased trust and openness that can come with authentic collaboration can make up for risk adversity (and possibly begin to reverse it).


****************************************************
This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign executives in Japan, focusing on creativity. Excerpts have been edited for confidentiality.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in relation to this topic. Please feel free to comment directly on this site or get in touch at chris@a-small-lab.com (Chris Berthelsen)
All content on this IDEAS and DISCUSSION blog is provided by a-small-lab under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License: You can SHARE this content as long as you CITE this work, and TELL US about your work (and send us a copy or link!). See Creative Commons for more detail

“If you as a manager provide a template or formula and say ‘go for it’, they’ll do a beautiful job. But id you just say ‘here’s the problem, find a solution’, they’re lost”.(i)

Take advantage of the need for structure and develop templates which show and facilitate pathways for creative thought and action. Templates need to be carefully thought out, because “once a system is in place then it is very hard to change that system”. Part of the reason for this is the (still) relatively long tenure in Japan, entailing “a little bit of complacency and contentment”.


****************************************************
This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign executives in Japan, focusing on creativity. Excerpts have been edited for confidentiality.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in relation to this topic. Please feel free to comment directly on this site or get in touch at chris@a-small-lab.com (Chris Berthelsen)
All content on this IDEAS and DISCUSSION blog is provided by a-small-lab under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License: You can SHARE this content as long as you CITE this work, and TELL US about your work (and send us a copy or link!). See Creative Commons for more detail

“Even if you are an established company like Unilever people still think ‘oooh no, a foreign company….even though they are one of the biggest manufacturers in the world”.(i)

Working for a non-Japanese company is risky. There is not the same cliché status and supposed safety that is associated with Japanese companies, and there is a relative lack of structure and hierarchy – “we don’t say ‘this is what you need to do, this is the checklist’….we tend to say ‘this is you time, we need you to achieve this….and what else can you come up with?” (ii) – Mentoring may need to be a bigger part of a manager’s focus in order to mitigate these perceived risks.

While this may make hiring ‘normal’ employees difficult, the positive flip side is that those that do join may be (relatively) more positively disposed towards risk (but then again, they may just be anti-social misfits).


****************************************************
This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign executives in Japan, focusing on creativity. Excerpts have been edited for confidentiality.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in relation to this topic. Please feel free to comment directly on this site or get in touch at chris@a-small-lab.com (Chris Berthelsen)
All content on this IDEAS and DISCUSSION blog is provided by a-small-lab under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License: You can SHARE this content as long as you CITE this work, and TELL US about your work (and send us a copy or link!). See Creative Commons for more detail

Japanese employees (unless specifically hired for their flexible thinking skills) are seen as having an innate difficulty with ‘managing something that they don’t have a formula or template for’.

‘Need for structure’ is perceived to be rooted in (1) the education system and (2) the rule-based nature of art/culture of Japan – “If you study Japanese art like sumi-e or ikebana you will notice that everything is run by rules”(i).

This necessitates the provision of security and structure around a creative idea or process. This need could be higher in foreign companies due to the risk inherent in working for them.


****************************************************
This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign executives in Japan, focusing on creativity. Excerpts have been edited for confidentiality.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in relation to this topic. Please feel free to comment directly on this site or get in touch at chris@a-small-lab.com (Chris Berthelsen)
All content on this IDEAS and DISCUSSION blog is provided by a-small-lab under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License: You can SHARE this content as long as you CITE this work, and TELL US about your work (and send us a copy or link!). See Creative Commons for more detail

Fear of shame, failure, standing out, being shown up, showing someone up, or making a mistake is considered a factor in high risk aversion. Fear of making clients ‘look bad by knowing more than them’ increases the intensity of the client relationship noted above (and the intensity of the client relationship reinforces the fear). To deal with this fear, change is avoided, and consensus through discussion is sought.


****************************************************
This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign executives in Japan, focusing on creativity. Excerpts have been edited for confidentiality.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in relation to this topic. Please feel free to comment directly on this site or get in touch at chris@a-small-lab.com (Chris Berthelsen)
All content on this IDEAS and DISCUSSION blog is provided by a-small-lab under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License: You can SHARE this content as long as you CITE this work, and TELL US about your work (and send us a copy or link!). See Creative Commons for more detail