Managing for Creativity in Japan

Patterns Tagged ‘trust’

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….”

Risk, Trust, Experience in the West

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

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….”

“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 […]

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 […]

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