Managing for Creativity in Japan » Being a Foreign Company

On Being a Foreign Employer

Chris Berthelsen — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 02:00:44 +0000

“First of all, it’s a risk to work for foreigners. Two, it’s not a safe, established Japanese company – there isn’t that cliché status of working for a well known Japanese company. Even if you are an established company like Unilever or something people still think ‘oooh no, a foreign company’ even though they are like the biggest manufacturer in the world.
Also, people like security and hierarchy and they like to know their position. They don’t like to know that they have to do a bit of everything whereas in a foreign start-up they do have to do a bit of everything. Our people who do research do have to do client presentations and this, that and the other and you know what? If there are bowls in the sink at the end of the night we don’t have an office manager who just sits there all day waiting for people to go home so he can wash the dishes we wash our own dishes. For some people that is shocking.
Also, younger companies, especially foreign start-ups, tend to be a lot less structured. We don’t say ‘this is what you need to do, this is the checklist’ we tend to be a bit more creative and say ‘this is your time, we need you to achieve this…and what else can you come up with’. People don’t know what to do with that. (CB: So how have you dealt with that in your company?) There has to be a lot of mentoring and that’s an area that we really need to improve on. You have to mentor people, hold their hands, give them the confidence to say ‘I know I’m doing this but there is a possibility that I could do this or this’. In contrast, I think that people in London and New York are very keen to prove themselves. They also know that it’s not a job for life and they want to get the most out of it that they can and then go on to the next bigger, better place. Here the attitude is that you join a company and might possibly stay there for a long time. So perhaps they have a view that longevity is better than immediate results.”

Ease

Chris Berthelsen — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:00:54 +0000

….there is not that sense of ease in a normal Japanese company. (C: And that’s something that you can offer them?) Yeah, but at the same time we do work really really hard. I’m not sure about whether they would work this hard in a Japanese company. They would probably work longer hours but not do so much. I am trying to reduce the hours, but long hours are inevitable in this business because we are dealing with multiple time zones and we can’t call people in the middle of the night – that’s one of the limitations with being located in Japan, I guess.

Japanese Employees

Chris Berthelsen — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:00:35 +0000

I just love working with Japanese people here because this is a really unique situation for them and there are able to find their voice here. They are never going to work in a company like this in Japan. They are able to express themselves and have fun. They can push themselves and challenge themselves in a way that they wouldn’t be able to in a normal situation. I hope that is the way that they view it. This is a very happy office and I hope that it is more than a job for them. I know that in the U.K. I am just not going to find that level of dedication. They are really, really, dedicated and passionate. They work hard. U.K. employees are not going to work this hard, and they’re not necessarily going to be passionate. Employees here are not just doing everything by the book, which is interesting for them and I think that they find that challenging.

Need a Japanese Face

Chris Berthelsen — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:00:41 +0000

It is important for me to have [Japanese staff in my company] because we need to have a strong Japanese face – I don’t want to be seen as just a gaijin company. I want to have a certain level of respect from Japanese people and because there are very specific Japanese ways of doing things here I need to have Japanese staff. I hope to start to implement more international ways of looking at things into the industry but this is still the beginning.

Not Motivated by Money

Chris Berthelsen — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:00:29 +0000

“When I was younger I thought that everybody was motivated by money. But now, I think that it depends on the person. People want to be proud to say that they work at the company they do. I think that employees want a lot more flexibility these days, especially women when they have children. They may look to a foreign company to give them that.

I think something that is important is feeling proud of the work they do and the organization that they belong to. I think that people’s expectations of what they can earn are under control……as far as I can tell people don’t earn any more than they did twenty years ago here. There’s been deflation and all the rest of it. Some people get paid really weird salaries. I look at them and can’t believe that they get paid so much and then I look at other people and can’t believe that they get paid so little. It can be a bit odd. But of course money is always ‘there’ – you have to get paid to live but I don’t think that it is a key driver, at least among the people that I have worked with. If it was, then in my early days there would have been less staff turnover because I was (financially) pretty generous.

And of course, this is not to say that everyone in our own culture is driven by money. However, I think that there can be a little bit more moral judgment of people who make their work decisions based on money. For example, if you are working for a domestic company and you leave to work in a foreign company for more money – I don’t think that you would be particularly well respected by the colleagues that you left behind. I had one guy leave last year and probably it was because they were offering him more money. I remember that I was a little bit shocked because I was assuming that the norms of loyalty held, but the response to him among his colleagues was not very positive especially in light of the fact that money may have been the reason. Back home though, we would completely understand and accept it. So yes, it’s more complicated here. The commitments are more profound in this country.”

Foreign Style Work Environment

Chris Berthelsen — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:00:48 +0000

“C: From your personal experience, even in terms of dealing with your staff can you see any concrete advantages to being a foreigner?

Well, you can promise people a different environment. You can set up a merit-based environment if you are hiring people, for example. In an international company there may be opportunities to travel. But, are people genuinely prepared to accept what a merit-based system actually means? This is something that I would really, really, question because you wonder if people coming to you because they can’t fit in their own culture or if are they coming to you because they’re high achievers and they’re frustrated. Or maybe they think they are high achievers and the people that they work for don’t agree and the people that they work for are right – in some sense it’s not a cultural issue but the fact that you have an incorrect evaluation of yourself (and of course we all believe that we are better than we are….) I do believe in picking talent and that has upset people in the past. Don’t come to me and think that your degree from Keio University is going to make it easier for you to progress in this company if your work is crap. Maybe as an outsider you can say that it’s not going to be like what it is in the normal stifling domestic office – if your work is good you will succeed. Then again, if you work in a merit-based culture then you are going to have to perform, and people are not used to the concept that they really are accountable for their personal performance. (C: So, you have the opportunity for setting up this framework for working and it is up to the employees to work within that…) Yes, but I’m not sure that I have a successful formula for that yet though. I tend to think that going too far towards the merit-based system may not be that successful and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a Japanese employee motivated or having their motivation significantly increased by money. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t give it them, but it’s not the reason that they come to work. In fact you can cause offense if you make that assumption.”

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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.
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The Whole Train Set

Chris Berthelsen — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:00:55 +0000

“When you are a country manager overseas, you can short-cut a lot of that. If you want to do something that isn’t directly touching the customer, that doesn’t need head office funds, then you don’t really have to have the same degrees of people involved in the decision or have the same formal gateposts. Something like the office move is similar to the client facility in scale so there are processes for that, but more locally. If we wanted to run a campaign or something we don’t have the administration to go through and we don’t have to seek approval of directors x, y and z. I suppose it’s because we’ve got the whole train set to play with on a smaller scale, and the risk to the company if we make a bad decision is not as financially damaging as spending a whole lot of money on a company wide scale. We can move more quickly with less bureaucracy if we have a creative idea here.”

Recruitment

Chris Berthelsen — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:00:48 +0000

“It is also more difficult to attract a Japanese person to a non-Japanese company. I think that the reason for that is that they probably think it’s just a one-way ticket meaning that they think they won’t get back into a Japanese company afterwards, although that perception might be changing. (C: why would that be the case?) I think that it’s because they might get some different ideas about HR policy and they might contaminate the other workers in the company who have been there from the start.”

On Being Successful

Chris Berthelsen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:00:27 +0000

“I think you need to break away from the group. Respect it but try to break away from it. Pick staff who have good experience but who are slightly renegade. I’m talking about local staff here. If you are going to come in and set up a company you need local staff. But, when you start hiring, hardly anyone is going to want to work for a foreign start-up. So in some ways you will need to pick people who are a little bit different out of necessity. Then you have to foster that. Don’t think that it is a bad thing, make it an encouraging, positive thing. Then, you need to draw from what is happening around you. In terms of product quality, Japanese products are 100%. They are beautiful. That is where Western companies can learn from Japan. They can take the quality standards, apply them to their own products, and innovate better.