Managing for Creativity in Japan » motivation

A Hands-On Management Environment

Chris Berthelsen — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 07:00:34 +0000

“I think that there is a greater need for face-to-face interaction – it’s a very hands-on management environment. The staff takes a lot of a manager’s time. The amount of time spent face-to-face in Japan is probably double or triple what a Westerner would expect from their manager. There is an expectation that you will provide that and you’ll get negative feedback if you don’t. On the other hand I think that Western employees like to have a bit of distance from their manager. In Japan it’s an almost paternalistic situation. When you grow up in the organization your main role is to keep harmony and make sure everybody is happy. So the whole conversation around development planning and setting goals and personal targets is a little bit different to that in the West. It’s hard to get an individual employee thinking in terms of any real change in their working career and they don’t seek that as actively as the foreign employees that I have supervised.”

What’s the Reward for Being Creative?

Chris Berthelsen — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:00:21 +0000

“What’s the reward for taking a risk here? As I said earlier, creativity and risk taking are one in the same and if you are going to take a risk you want the prospect of a reward. What’s the reward for taking a risk in Japan? I don’t know. Are you going to get paid more? Probably not, and as I mentioned earlier that’s not a big motivator anyway. If you take a risk and it goes wrong then you are singled out as the person that stuffed up. So, why be creative? There is no incentive….”

Not Motivated by Money

Chris Berthelsen — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:00:29 +0000

“When I was younger I thought that everybody was motivated by money. But now, I think that it depends on the person. People want to be proud to say that they work at the company they do. I think that employees want a lot more flexibility these days, especially women when they have children. They may look to a foreign company to give them that.

I think something that is important is feeling proud of the work they do and the organization that they belong to. I think that people’s expectations of what they can earn are under control……as far as I can tell people don’t earn any more than they did twenty years ago here. There’s been deflation and all the rest of it. Some people get paid really weird salaries. I look at them and can’t believe that they get paid so much and then I look at other people and can’t believe that they get paid so little. It can be a bit odd. But of course money is always ‘there’ – you have to get paid to live but I don’t think that it is a key driver, at least among the people that I have worked with. If it was, then in my early days there would have been less staff turnover because I was (financially) pretty generous.

And of course, this is not to say that everyone in our own culture is driven by money. However, I think that there can be a little bit more moral judgment of people who make their work decisions based on money. For example, if you are working for a domestic company and you leave to work in a foreign company for more money – I don’t think that you would be particularly well respected by the colleagues that you left behind. I had one guy leave last year and probably it was because they were offering him more money. I remember that I was a little bit shocked because I was assuming that the norms of loyalty held, but the response to him among his colleagues was not very positive especially in light of the fact that money may have been the reason. Back home though, we would completely understand and accept it. So yes, it’s more complicated here. The commitments are more profound in this country.”

Recognition for a Job Well Done

Chris Berthelsen — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:00:42 +0000

“Although it is a performance based system people are driven by different motivators. People don’t perform well in order to get a move or a promotion; they do it to get recognition for a job well done. This is why we don’t give tips in Japan – you take pride in your work. Those kinds of things are intrinsically different.”

****************************************************
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