Managing for Creativity in Japan Talking with Foreign Executives in Japan
Dynamism
On Being a Foreign Employer
“….First of all, it’s a risk to work for foreigners. Two, it’s not a safe, established Japanese company…”
Advantages to being Non-Japanese
“….There would be too many rules and obligations. Being a foreigner means that I can break those rules….”
Influence and Losing Your Edge
“…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…”
Kaisha vs. Company
“…Everybody has a vested interest in the stability of the system rather than, perhaps, genuine progress….”
On Building Trust and Relationships
“…here, it doesn’t matter if you can say that you are going to bring them the biggest idea they’ve ever had…”
Slow Moving (2)
“…Creativity doesn’t really work that way, it happens when it happens…”
Slow Moving
“Well I guess the biggest negative factor is that people don’t in general move as swiftly in the decision making process in Japan when compared to a lot of other places around the world. Even if you look at it from an historical/military perspective for example, in terms of military strategy or political decision making [...]
Focus Groups in Japan
“If you did a focus group in America you’d have 9 or 12 people in the room and some people would ‘love this’ and ‘hate that’ and there’d be big fights and arguments and maybe a couple of people would sit there numb or play with their blackberries or whatever and when it came to [...]
Process Focused Behaviour
“One thing I have noticed is that while people always talk about how polite the Japanese are I don’t really think that it is politeness. Actually I think that it is formality. It is a process driven way of doing things. There’s a way to drink tea, there’s a way to place your chopsticks on [...]
You always get what you always got
“The old adage “if you always do what you’ve always done then you always get what you always got” is very true in Japan. You get very consistent results, but where does that leave you on the creativity and innovation barometer?” **************************************************** This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign [...]
Aversion to Change
“People don’t want to take a risk, it’s mendokusai (bothersome) to change things. Another thing that is characteristic of Japan is that once a system is in place then it is very hard to change that system. Everything comes to support the existing system. On the other hand though, you look at a company like [...]
Long Tenure
“Many of the employees have worked together for a very long time, between 10 and 20 years and sometimes on the same team. This means that there are old, established interpersonal relationships on the teams, which is increasingly rare in a Western company. Very few westerners would be satisfied in that context. So there is [...]
Following the Person Before You
“Initially however, it was assumed that the way they were doing it was the only way to do it. We had to sit down and say “no, you are free to do what you want as long as you meet the needs of these internal customers”. To assume that the person before you must have [...]
Stuck in the Office
“When people are working in an office in this country they are probably about a third as productive as workers in a Western country, I think. That is a number I have run by a few people and there seems to be a consensus about this. People take three times as long to do things [...]
Stable Client Relationships
“You get stable client relationships over an extended period of time. This equates to stability of income for us. Of course you like growing but the one thing that businesses hate is uncertainty. You do not want to wake up one day and find that your key client services person has left to join the [...]
Communication is Key
“Creating an innovative environment of change in Japan is a tricky cross-cultural thing. You have a foreign manager driving change and potentially creating discord. If you do it well maybe you don’t have to be disliked though, as long as everyone understands what you are trying to do. That comes down to good communication.” **************************************************** [...]
Cutting Good Cookies
“Here they tend here to take the cookie cutter and cut the same cookie. It’s a good cookie, I mean once they get the design right its great and I think, as I said, that’s why their products are so great. Because once they design it, it’s designed with that reliability built in. They know [...]
Not Blue Sky
“I would never say that the Japanese are not creative or even less creative, but their orientation and their approach is not blue sky. They have a great deal of difficulty with blue-sky thinking.” “Look at Japan, it’s the home of more than 50 global headquarters. More than double that of either the U.S. or [...]
On Being Creative
“In terms of being creative it’s a bit of a paradox. You come here and it is definitely the most creative place in Asia but that doesn’t mean that it’s creative. People think that it’s creative and crazy but it’s not. It’s not creative. If it was a creative place then brainstorms would be a [...]
