A discovery from my 1980s consulting and training work in Japan, was that Westerners in business meetings with Japanese were generally more ill at ease, uncomfortable and awkward than were the Japanese. This went so much against the stereotypes that both Westerners and Japanese businesspeople shared. The Japanese were seen as shy violets, Westerners as sociable and extrovert. My research about business people however, was confirmed again and again. The Japanese may have been shyer, but they were also more composed. The contrary was that Westerners (both Australians and Americans) were both less shy and less composed.
Participants in appreciated discovering this about themselves or about the other people. It gave Westerners in particular, an important task to work at - namely, being composed when communicating with poker faced, unsmiling, seemingly humourless, Japanese.
In response to my clients requests, I developed a "Communication and Consulting Skills Inventory" (CASI), incorporating these questions, to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of Japanese and Westerners, who were Account Managers in Japan. In Japan, an Account Manager is usually someone responsible for handling all aspects of the business relationship with a customer. It involves the development and management of joint projects, fielding of difficult questions, handling complaints, and ensuring that work in progress is processed to plan.
The Japanese - Western client negotiation requirements have led to the development of further features to the Casi's diagnostic - including the "Composure Scale". For instance, at Pepsi co Japan, in the 1980s, using a bilingual version of the CC SI, seminars were run to address some serious problems between the expectorate and Japanese managers. Switching between English and Japanese, I was able to get the participants to be very frank about their CC SI score profiles. The findings were eye-openers to the delegates. This method of first hand self discovery is far more imperatively and lasting in the behavioural changes that it leads to, as compared with mere insightful words from a trainer.
Whilst a diagnostic tool is useful at pinpointing areas of business opportunity, the reader may be wondering what can be done from there to improve bottom line negotiation results. Briefly, in the Pepsi co training, Account Managers were divided into small groups, to work on developing counter strategies for each professional account managements strengths and weaknesses. Both Japanese staff and expert managers (including the English President, whose participation was much welcomed by the Japanese) left the seminar with clear-cut plans for long-term personal development. The Western experts focused on developing composure for their negotiation dealings with Japanese.
Professor Bob March is one of Australia's leading specialists on Japanese business and culture. He is the author of six books on Japan, including: "The Japanese Negotiator" (Katusha International 1989, available in paperback.) He has been a consultant on Japanese negotiation and business relationships for the past 20 years.
. by Dr. Bob March
negotiations.com
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ReplyDeleteI find this story as complete Hogwash. I worked for Toshiba Corp in the US for nearly 6 years, with frequent business meeting trips to Headquarters in Tokyo. This was from 1988 through 1994 and we were based in California. Later I worked with Korean companies as a distributor, importing their lower cost manufactured products, but seeing that they also "think" the same way.
ReplyDeleteIn meetings here in the US and in Japan, I never saw the Japanese management as assertive, nor our "Western" American management team as "shy" or awkward with the Japanese. My position was as a consulting manager on North American marketing strategies in Medical and Consumer products.
What I did see, was that our team was professional and aggressive in trying to lead the Japanese Hdqtrs management in sound and proven product and marketing approaches for the North American market. Unfortunately, what we “got” from Japanese management was the same for most of the 6 years I was there. At meetings the Japanese management would always bob their heads in the affirmative during our presentations, plans, discussions, giving advice and suggestions and then ignore nearly everything we offered, as it turned out later. We soon learned that the truth was, the Japanese custom with Westerner's was that the bobbing head of agreement actually meant - yes we hear you, but we intend to ignore your ideas - literally!
You see, the Japanese in management, and in some degree in private life, have an amazing degree of arrogance in believing that "Westerners" (and other Asian ethnic groups as well) can't possibly know as much, or be as wise as they are, even about markets and consumers in area’s they are completely unfamiliar with. Unless the idea is theirs first, you can forget about having it accepted.
But, like children, we learned that there is a way to trick them. Yes, use reverse psychology and the power of indirect suggestion, which is why many good American Universities teach it in Business Degree programs. I found that if we planted the idea in the Japanese management minds that what we wanted was their idea or plan, they would propose the whole thought and quickly accepted it.
Being that traditional "Westerners" (American's) placed a higher value on making more money based on a success in the long run, rather than the ego trip on just coming up with the idea that lead to making that money, we were all quite satisfied. We felt quite "inscrutable" about this as well, to borrow a Japanese/Asian ethic. We were happy with the money and bonuses and the Japanese management was "proud" that they thought they came up with the ideas and plans that lead to the success. We all won and no one needed to know how it was accomplished … except us from the “West”.
Through those years past I met many other “Western” management people, who became friends and idea trading partners for dealing with Japanese management. Without much of any exception, we all seemed to have similar circumstances in working with our Japanese management counterparts. It appeared to be universal.
It does seem that recent generations of American management don't seem to understand approaches like this, placing huge ego's well before successes; and the Japanese have become more realistic that others just might have better ideas.
I tend to agree with K. Benicek on this one from many painful experiences. There's only one way to execute a good idea in a Japanese company and that is to smuggle the idea into the mind of one of its Japanese MD's and let him "come up with it".
ReplyDeleteThe rest of it, all of the bows, nodds and admiring ooooh's and aaaah's actually only mean "blabla, you could have been talking about pigs in space for all we care..."
This is a great post. I really liked it.
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