“The concept of a company in Japan is I think different. The term ‘kaisha’ (Japanese for company) is in my mind a group. The word itself has more of a nuance of a group of people doing something together than does the term ‘limited liability company’ (which is a non-person). The Western idea of a company is that of a non-person – a non-human legal entity with no objective other than to make a profit. Of course they have to exist in society and have good human relations (which are good for business) though.
You may have seen the movie ‘The Company’ which likens a company to a psychopath – obsessed with its own survival, lacking empathy and whatever….That’s not really how it is in Japan. Everybody has a vested interest in the stability of the system rather than, perhaps, genuine progress. It’s not that genuine progress doesn’t occur but it occurs within that controlled and less chaotic environment. People will experiment with concepts and products but they won’t touch the core of the organization so readily.”
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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 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 processes things have always moved very slowly. There is that classical consensus building kind of thing. Compare this to the environment where I grew up, where you kinda just go for it and if you make a mistake you apologize for it afterwards or clean it up along the way. Here, everybody tends to want to make everything perfect first and then move forward together.
That’s a great thing from a manufacturing point of view, especially if you are spending millions of dollars tuning up a factory line or something but in a creative environment where so much depends on experimenting with ideas then you have to be able to move forward quickly.”
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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
“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 that you don’t go to meetings to decide or discuss – you’ve got to do that outside. Anybody who misses that is not going to get the most out of their team. You have to provide a safe environment where people can experiment where people won’t be embarrassed. Then you can start getting the idea flow.”
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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
