Managing for Creativity in Japan » Creativity Skills

Approach to Brainstorming

Chris Berthelsen — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 07:00:42 +0000

“The Western approach to brainstorming is to get as many ideas out there as possible and look good and show off and be the person that came up with the best idea in the room. It’s almost competition based whereas the Japanese approach to brainstorming is to sit there, possibly in silence, until they think of things. That’s not a brainstorm in the classic sense. You’re not supposed to be thinking of the ideas in your head….you need to say it, and then we can start to build on it.”

Smoking Husks

Chris Berthelsen — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 02:00:05 +0000

“The education system is based on rote learning and not asking questions. By the time people pop out of the education system (where the goal is to get the highest marks possible so you can get into one of the good universities) they are intellectually burnt out. They are smoking husks. The exam system just burns everyone out. They become good at acquiring information but creativity is more than that, it is making new connections between different concepts and ideas and things.”

Advantages to being Non-Japanese

Chris Berthelsen — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 07:00:02 +0000

“There are advantages to not being Japanese though. You can start jumping up and down and yelling ‘come on!’ but you could not do that if you were a Japanese person. There would be too many rules and obligations. Being a foreigner means that I can break those rules. I’ve been in brainstorming sessions with Japanese people sitting there silently and me thinking that the whole thing is rubbish. In order to liven things up a bit I have been able to say ‘come on, we can do this’ and start getting excited and acting like a cheerleader. And you know what? You start to get results. Maybe they feel that they can talk because it’s not a formal Japanese room.
We’ve done workshops in Japanese with foreigners in the room who spoke fluent Japanese and it’s learning the devices that people need to use – the icebreakers etcetera to get things moving. It’s having that cultural knowledge that the ‘brainstorm’ in the classic sense of the word does not work in Japan. You need to understand what works and what doesn’t work, and how you get the same results but in a different format. I don’t think that a Japanese person would put themselves in the same positions that I do. Sometimes I have seen moderators here, when we have used them to facilitate conversations and I have wanted to go over and shake them and tell them that we’re not getting what we need…that’s a bit frustrating….”

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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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Be the Template Bringer

Chris Berthelsen — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 07:00:35 +0000

“Japanese employees in my experience place a very high value on pleasing a manager. A lot of that is appearance, being there, face-to-face, and being on time. How you do things really matters. But they put less emphasis on pushing the envelope, on challenging, on doing anything they haven’t done before. There is an innate difficulty with managing something they haven’t got a formula for, that they haven’t got a template for. If you as a manager provide a template or formula and say ‘go for it’, they’ll do a beautiful job. But if you just say ‘here’s the problem, find a solution’, they’re lost.”

Influence and Losing Your Edge

Chris Berthelsen — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 02:00:21 +0000

“You have to be able to influence the Japanese. Unfortunately it’s also a culture where most foreigners come in and out, and your average Japanese staff who still is life-time employment oriented will just survive the current foreigner. Working as a long-term employee side-by-side then, you are forced in a sense to reign back your ‘blue-sky tendencies” and so in a way I think it does put a damper on your creativity and people that are here a long time who aren’t the ‘template bringers’ can really lose their edge.”

In-Betweens add the Polish

Chris Berthelsen — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 02:00:16 +0000

“It takes a long time to build trust and relationships. You can’t just walk in and do it overnight. You can’t just overlay everything from the top down. The most successful programmes that I have run have been working through other functional heads and line managers where you actually have to use ‘in betweens’ – where you can bring the ideas and they push and pull and shape it till it makes sense to them. Then they can do really great things, they can add the polish and the detail and that’s where they really excel. It’s hard to find Japanese managers that will stand up in a meeting and present a new idea that might not be immediately accepted.”

Mid-Level Creativity Killers

Chris Berthelsen — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 07:00:47 +0000

“There can be tension with the foreign management of the client company. The management may have a certain set of goals which may require creativity but the executional team may not be so creative. Japanese people do not tend to be and are not educated in such a way as to be creative and to take risks in their approaches to things. So, you can have conflict. The management would come to me and we’d have a discussion and say ‘let’s try this, that sounds good’ and then through the process of working with the local team the idea would get crunched into something that is extremely mediocre. This would then result in feedback and evaluation that the process was mediocre. Well of course the process was mediocre – nobody took any risks and the process was kind of hijacked.

I’m not saying this with any bitterness, it’s just part of the way things work but if you want to offer something which is a bit creative and involves some level of risk then you might find that very frustrating.”

Working with Established Models

Chris Berthelsen — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:00:46 +0000

“Because they are risk averse they want to work with proven approaches and methods. If we are able to develop something completely new it is a bit of a victory. This is a pity because if the clients were more creative in their approaches then suppliers would meet that challenge and they would employ more creative people. But the research industry in Japan? I wouldn’t describe it as being creative at all. Not that it is completely nowhere in terms of the actual skill level, abilities and so forth, but it is a fact that it is not particularly cutting edge.”

Broad Minded Employees

Chris Berthelsen — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:00:45 +0000

My staff are foreign educated. One went to the London School of Economics, has lived in Paris, speaks three languages and really loves our industry. Another was educated in America. So, we are dealing with people who are a little bit different, who have a different way of looking at things and have seen other systems in other parts of the world. They are young, and not necessarily steeped in the old ways. They haven’t worked underneath other Japanese companies in our industry so they don’t have this kind of robotic (or moronic) way of working instilled in them. They have a Western outlook towards work, but they are still respectful Japanese individuals…the Japanese companies we deal with on the other hand are just ridiculous.

On Choosing your Successor

Chris Berthelsen — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 23:00:19 +0000

“I would be looking for somebody who can embrace change. Embrace change not only for the changes they are going to have in their life but also to be able to cope as this society continues to roll forward. Too often people like to keep the status quo or fight hard to keep things the same. That’s one thing.
The other is to have a lot of self-confidence. That doesn’t mean to assume that you are always right because actually in Japan you are going to be wrong a lot of the time. But it does mean that you need to have the confidence to just keep going – to learn from your mistakes and just not give up. Tenacity is important. That is a very general statement but it is particularly important in Japan because the society and business environment is so well developed that it takes extra tenacity to have an impact, contribute, make a difference, or change things. I get beat up everyday but I’ve got to be able to come back the next day that much better because of it.

Further, when you are missing all the social cues that you are used to even the normal things like saying hello or greeting people is difficult. I remember when I first came here I practiced for a long time how to do that so that I could do it easily. It was hard to think about it and actually do it, you know, hold my business card right……I could feel the sweat start to break out on my forehead. You need to do it until, I guess, that cultural aspect becomes imprinted on you. Then it becomes natural.”