“Another thing particular to Japan is that a lot of foreigners come here, particularly in our industry, to ‘teach people how to do things right’ - an attitude of ‘we’ll teach these guys consulting’ ‘we’ll teach these guys research’ and so on and so on. In my 10-12 years of being here I have seen so many people like that. We try not to be that way as a company and as individuals because unless you are talking about mathematics there is never only one way to do something. Also, the society and culture here is so advanced that it would not be relevant to act that way. Really, if Japan had enough natural resources they wouldn’t need anybody here at all. They’d just be exporting stuff.
In my career here when I have come across negative things I have had to be very sensitive to the fact that I am not here to teach. In a lot of developing markets (of which Japan is not one, of course) people are open and looking for new ideas – “show me how to open a factory” “show me how to run a store”, that kind of thing. I went to Vietnam a little while ago and was so impressed with how open-minded everybody is. They want to learn. In Japan however, there has always been this bubble of “well in Japan we do things this way”. I understand it as a kind of attitude of “we know how to do things, so contribute to it or add to it but don’t tell us how to do it like you think we don’t know how to do it”. I have always tried to be sensitive in that area.”
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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
“Well, things to embrace. I’ve talked a lot about the challenges, but the people are pretty reliable so rates of sickness are just not an issue here, where as some of my counterparts in other countries might have to monitor that. I have an extremely trustworthy team so you don’t have to worry too much about someone fiddling their expenses or things like that. We have a pretty efficient team who work hard and don’t take enough holidays – all that is a joy. It goes back to the long service, but I think that most of them know their job pretty well. Well, they know the way that they’ve always done their job so you don’t have to worry too much about quality control, but the corollary is that if you want to change the way that things are done it’s difficult. That goes back to the change management.”
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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
“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 Toyota who has become famous for their worker driven productivity improvement. That’s a part of their culture. So it is hard to say whether it is really a cultural thing or if it is something else. But definitely there is an aversion to change in this country. Of course this is true of all countries but it seems to manifest itself particularly strongly here.”
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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 find it hard to get people excited about this, which is surprising. I am fascinated by how low the level of ITC and technology is in market research in Japan. It’s way behind America. (C: For example?) Say you have a central location test, an ad test. You may have a hall in Shibuya or Jiyugaoka or wherever. In the States that’s all computerized. I understand that there are issues with people not being able to type in Japan but that is not the real reason (that they are not computerized here). The technology is available to provide the data at the time the fieldwork ends, not a week later. There is a lack of (in my mind) openness to technology, which is weird because Japanese companies produce so much technological innovation.
I do think that technology can be a creative response to a problem – looking at a process and thinking about how that process could be made more efficient. There was one piece of software, for example, which (while I wouldn’t say I had to force people to use it) I couldn’t get my people to buy into until it became extremely necessary for them to use it. And now that they use it things have improved out of sight.”
****************************************************
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
