Managing for Creativity in Japan » Openness and Trust

Openness and Trust

Obstacles Involved with being Non-Japanese

“…you have to speak the language……If you can’t speak Japanese you better be really good at what you do….”

Advice for New Managers

“You have to be enormously thick skinned….”

Hard to Pinpoint

“….everyone was fascinated with me but not fascinated enough to employ me….”

Bringing Value, Building Trust

“…but here there is a really big difference between being Japanese and non-Japanese…..”

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…”

In-Betweens add the Polish

“….It takes a long time to build trust and relationships. You can’t just walk in and do it overnight….”

Being a Change Agent

“…it would be very difficult for a Japanese manager to reverse his whole set of behavioural characteristics and suddenly become a change agent…..”

Characteristics of a Successful Manager

“….there is probably a heavier emphasis on the ability to trust and rely on others, and to listen intuitively…..”

Risk, Trust, Experience in the West

“….Whatever you have, whatever experience you have in the West doesn’t really matter, it doesn’t translate….”

It’s a Respect (not talent or experience) Thing

“….it’s a respect thing and you have to show that you are in for the long haul…..”

Be Respectful or Be Shut Out

“….you really have to play the game right otherwise you won’t be able to do business, people will shut you out….”

Be Wary

“…but here there is only a certain amount of jobs going for gaijin and people really want to hold onto what they have got and they get really nasty….”

Becoming More Collaborative

“…and you also don’t want to make your clients look bad by knowing more than them…… That’s fatal to creativity….”

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…”

A Green Plant in the Desert

“…If you are a green plant in the middle of the desert you are going to die…”

“In Japan, the most successful managers are people that care about people. I think that you can make a lot of mistakes (and get away with it) if people think that you are doing it for the right reasons. You can create a lot of change and discomfort if people understand that your motivations are [...]

Building Trust

“It is a real challenge for a foreign manager to build that kind of trust. If you enter any organization where the employees have a 20 year working relationship you are not only the newcomer but you are a foreigner. You don’t socialize in the same ways and you have a different need for relationships [...]

Relationships

“One of the benefits would be that our Japanese staff has the ability to make relationships like no foreigner could, even with all the entertaining and the best Japanese language skills. It’s very difficult for a foreigner to get under the skin of a Japanese person. I would expect (and I think we have achieved) [...]

Advice to Newcomers

“Take it easy. Take a good look around before you change anything. Don’t come in like a tornado – unless of course there is some kind of crisis and you have to do something in an emergency fashion. Go through the process. Make sure that the staff sees that you are trying to learn, you [...]

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.” **************************************************** [...]

The Passive-Aggressive

“If you look at change models, you know on average, about 2% of the population enjoys change, but another 16% will go along with it because they can see that it’s required. Another 30% will go along with it if the key opinion leaders do, because they are just kind of followers and another 30% [...]

Development of a Manager

“Look at the development of a Japanese manager. You’re growing up as a colleague. Promotion is based on age and stage seniority. It’s still not (although they do have some merit-based systems now) driven by performance bonuses. Your actual performance is not the real indicator for your promotion; the real indicator is just being there [...]

Stable Relationships

“We are very reliant on a couple of key clients, so the relationship with those clients is very critical to our business. That’s one of the funny things about doing business in Japan. The relationships are hard to establish but once they are established they tend to be quite enduring. On the surface there can [...]

Personal Relationships

“First of all you don’t have those personal relationships so you need get out socialising. You need to do the Japanese thing. You need to go out in the evening and you need to drink. You need to drink and you need to go to karaoke. You need to do whatever it takes to get [...]

The Purpose of Meetings

“The purpose of meetings is intrinsically different in Japan. Westerners go to meetings to brainstorm, discuss, and hammer things out and decide things. Japanese go to meetings to confirm what has already been agreed, and I think a lot of foreigners never figure that out. So as a manager it’s absolutely critical that you get [...]

Managing for Creativity in Japan Talking with Foreign Executives in Japan