“I think it is important to observe and to listen. Not just listen. I think that’s relevant everywhere but people aren’t very vocal here – 60% of communication is unsaid. So 60% of everything the Japanese people do is non-verbal. It’s the itch of the nose or the crook of the head – that’s what you’re looking for. You wouldn’t pick up on that if (a) you didn’t understand Japanese culture and (b) you were listening on a tape-recorder. For example, if you ask a consumer what they think about something they might say “it’s OK” but they will have done something else which will tell you that it’s not OK. So you definitely you need their opinions because that’s how you innovate (by understanding insights) but they are never going to tell you what you want so you need understand what their problems are. We go into a lot of consumer homes, go in and see their problems….”
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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
“I am quite willing to send people on training courses. If I had a boss who had that attitude I would go out and find the training courses and do it. I’ve asked people to find the courses that they want to do and while I’m not going to give up on it I haven’t had much luck. I’m not so sure that formal training is a big thing in Japan. People tend to learn on the job so doing outside training may be a bit too different from the norm.
I think that the reason for this is simply that people in Japan learn on the job. It really is the way that it is done – in larger companies they move people around in different roles so you could be the sales manager in Fukuoka one year and then you’ll be doing operations management in Hokkaido the next.”
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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
“If you’ve just finished a project what you could have done better is fresh in your mind, and the hanseikai is a good way to capture and document that, before you forget it. So, when you come to do it again, you pull out a bit of paper and improve. It’s a way of capturing organisational learning. The other good thing about it is that if you have changes in staff, and you’ve just got it in your memory what went wrong you can’t pass it on – it’s a good way of capturing that organisational learning and making sure it’s available for future people.”
****************************************************
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
“There is a lot of non-verbal communication in Japan and you can’t expect a new foreigner to come in at senior manager or CEO level and understand all of that. They can, however, understand having a cultural interpreter is essential and very often a foreigner who has been in Japan for a long time is a better cultural interpreter than a Japanese advisor. Somebody who has really lived and worked with Japanese is very often able to explain some of those confusing behaviours and I guess that in a sense that’s the kind of role I have had”
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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
