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About Pernille Rudlin

Pernille Rudlin was brought up partly in Japan and partly in the UK. She is fluent in spoken and written Japanese, and lived in Japan for 9 years.

She spent nearly a decade at Mitsubishi Corporation (the Fortune 100 $190bn Japanese investment and trading conglomerate) working in their London operations and Tokyo headquarters in sales and marketing and corporate planning and also including a stint in their International Human Resource Development Office.

More recently she had a global senior role as Director of External Relations, International Business, at Fujitsu, the leading Japanese information and communication technology company and the biggest Japanese employer in the UK, focusing on ensuring the company’s corporate messages in Japan reach the world outside.

Pernille Rudlin holds a B.A. with honours from Oxford University in Modern History and Economics and an M.B.A. from INSEAD and she is the author of several books and articles on cross cultural communications and business.

Since starting Japan Intercultural Consulting’s operations in Europe in 2004, Pernille has conducted seminars for Japanese and European companies in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, UAE, the UK and the USA, on Japanese cultural topics, post merger integration and on working with different European cultures

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Here are my most recent posts

Third Culture Kid

I don’t think my parents quite realised what an impact their decision to move to Japan when I was six years old would have on my life, even into adulthood. Now that I consult on cross cultural matters as a profession, I increasingly appreciate how influential such childhood experiences are. There is of course some disagreement amongst experts, but many psychologists and anthropologists would agree that the formative years are from around five or six years old through to eleven or twelve years old, when the personality and cultural values of the future adult are shaped.

It was precisely during those years that we lived first in Sendai (a city in the north of Japan) and then Kobe (a port in the south of Japan). The Sendai experience was particularly intense. There weren’t many foreigners in Sendai in the 1970s – just some missionaries and a few academic families like mine. As there was no international school, I ended up being the first foreign pupil at the local girls’ Catholic school – blonde haired, blue eyed but wearing the same traditional sailor top, skirt and hat as all the other Japanese schoolgirls.

For the first few weeks I was in tears most days, and pupils from throughout the school would come to stare at me in the break times, touch my hair and stare into my blue eyes. When my father or mother came to pick me up from school a riot would almost break out. But children at that age are amazingly adaptable and sponge like, and also bore easily. Within six months I was speaking reasonably fluent Japanese and had made friends who accepted me as basically the same as them, just a bit odd looking. I even got the top mark in Japanese composition once. I thought that was nothing special, and couldn’t understand why my parents made such a fuss about it.

Kobe was a lot easier – a cosmopolitan port city with several international schools. At the school I went to, there were many children like me, mongrels of various nationalities and cultures. I later realised that they, like me, are what are known as TCKs – Third Culture Kids. Third Culture Kids were brought up in a country different to their country of nationality and consequently do not feel totally at home either in their country of birth or their adopted country. They instead create a “third culture” where they attempt to mix the best of both countries, and hang out with other TCKs who understand their hybrid identity. They also tend to have “itchy feet” and want to move somewhere else every few years. When they do settle, it is usually in communities where there are many other TCKs, such as London, or Brussels or Switzerland.

Perhaps many of you reading this article are TCKs yourself. If you are the parent of a TCK you might worry from time to time that your life choices have had such an indelible impact on your children. But on balance I would like my son to be a TCK too. So far though, he’s very English.

Pernille Rudlin, European Representative of Japan Intercultural Consulting

This article originally appeared in Japanese in the August 6th 2009 edition of Eikoku News Digest.

 

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The freedom of a foreign life

In my previous article I described how I am, thanks to my upbringing in Japan, a Third Culture Kid – a child who was brought up in a different country to that of their birth. There are more and more of us in this increasingly globalising world, and I wonder if other TCKs, like me, find it hard to answer any questions about whether we love or hate the two countries we semi-belong to. For me, Japan and the UK are just a part of my life, like brushing my teeth. I tried to escape the influence of Japan on my career once or twice, but it didn’t work, both because it is the subject that I am most passionate about, and also because, frankly, it is this expertise that people are most willing to pay me for.

A more interesting question is what leads people who are not TCKs to choose to settle in another country. My parents and I stayed in Japan for five years initially. Then, when I was eighteen, they decided to move back to Japan again, to Hiroshima and then Tokyo, staying for a total of twenty years. If you were to ask my mother what caused them to leave the UK again, she would probably half jokingly say “British Rail”. At that time the trains were even more unreliable than they are now and my mother was commuting every day to London to quite a high powered job, chairing various meetings, so if she was late, the meetings did not happen. She became ill, and the stress of the daily commute was making it worse.

Japan is, of course, a country where things work – trains run on time and people are punctual, reliable and polite. This is a big attraction for many of the foreigners who choose to live there permanently and they get a terrible shock when they return to their home country where things don’t work, people are rude and the streets are littered. After a long time away you feel like a foreigner in your home country. My parents actually look like foreigners in the UK now – they are too well dressed!

I know Japanese people who have lived abroad for a long time no longer feel like they belong in Japan. But I do find it puzzling that they chose to live in the UK, with its terrible customer service, bad weather and unreliable transport system. Some Japanese acquaintances have said that they like the freedom and tolerance they find in the UK. I would argue that this is not unique to the UK – anyone living in a foreign country can feel liberated by being out of the reach of the expectations and judgements of their society of birth. Believe it or not, foreigners living in Japan feel that way too.

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The san-thing

Almost without fail someone will ask me during my training seminars “are we going to deal with the –san thing?” When I get to the point where I deal with Japanese business etiquette in the session, I try to emphasise that it is really not that complicated. Surname plus san will almost always work.

Except that it is of course much more complicated than that. It’s true that most Japanese men feel uncomfortable being called by their first name, and often their first name is rather long and difficult to pronounce for Westerners. But Japanese women, whose names are usually shorter and easier to pronounce, are happier about being on first name terms.

When “surname-san” is not necessary

I also talk about how some Japanese men, particularly those that have lived in the US, might have adopted a nickname, either a shortened version of their own name, such as Masa, or Tets, or they may have taken a Western name that starts with the same letter as their own name, which (causing added hilarity for the Brits), may well be a very American name, such as Hank, or Duke, or Tex.

In this case, it is not necessary to put “–san” on the end. In fact one of our Japanese client contacts specifically asked me to let his European colleagues know that “Keith” rather than “Keith-san” was his preference. If I reverse the situation, I can see how he feels. Some Japanese colleagues did try to call me “Miss Pernille” when I worked in Japan, and I found it irritating. It overemphasised the cultural difference, and the added politeness put too much distance between us. I was trying to blend in with the Japanese corporate environment, and being addressed by rather quaint forms like “Miss Pernille” just made me stick out more.

What’s with “-chan” and “-kun”?

Sometimes Japanese bosses called me “Pernille-chan”, (“chan” being a dimunitive, usually used for little girls), which was just about acceptable when I was in my twenties but I presume that as I have reached “obasan” (auntie) status in terms of years, most Japanese people would not dream of calling me that now. In fact, one Japanese female participant in one of my seminars, expatriated to Belgium from the Japan headquarters of a major Japanese electronics company, told me that “-chan” and “-kun” (dimunitive for boys) have been banned from the Japanese offices, as they are deemed to be “power harassment”.

In contradiction to that, some very senior European executives at a financial institution recently acquired by a Japanese company told me that their Japanese counterparts had advised them to call their Japanese male subordinates “surname-kun”. I felt I couldn’t overrule such advice, but warned them that this would constitute a very strong power statement.

Maybe just ask, or tell

Ultimately it might help if we either ask the other person how they like to be addressed, or volunteer that information about ourselves, right at the beginning of the relationship, or later on when we feel more comfortable with each other. Or if we’re not so comfortable with over-familiarity, as one of my American friends used to say “That’s Mr. Mr. Fleming to you”!

For more on Japanese etiquette, subscribe to the Japan Intercultural Consulting monthly newsletter giving you access to further Japan Intercultural Consulting online resources on Japanese etiquette and other aspects of Japanese business here.

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Autumn/Winter seminar schedule

Japan Intercultural Consulting Europe is delighted to announce our schedule of seminars in Europe for the second half of 2009, as below.

We can of course offer a customised version of any of our seminars (for example with a Dutch, French or German focus), to be held at your own offices, if you prefer. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like further details of this.

Working Effectively with Japanese Colleagues and Partners

Tuesday 13th October, London
Facilitator:Pernille Rudlin, European Representative

Wednesday 18th November, Paris
Facilitator:Cécile Buckenmeyer, Senior Consultant

Thursday 3rd December, London
Facilitator:Pernille Rudlin, European Representative

Topics

Why Japanese tend to be vague and indirect – and how to interpret what they mean
Why Japanese don’t give a lot of feedback
Overcoming the language barrier
How to confirm whether you’ve been understood correctly
How decisions are made in Japanese organizations
Why Japanese avoid risk
How to get your ideas accepted by a Japanese organization
How to make meetings with Japanese more effective
How to build strong working relationships with Japanese
How to behave appropriately at meals and other social situations
What to keep in mind if you travel to Japan for business
What most bothers Japanese about the Europeans they work with

Please click on the links above for a brochure and further details on fees and methods of payment.

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Cool Biz

I am not in the slightest bit surprised by this research showing that Japan’s Cool Biz policy – a government “recommendation” since 2005 that companies don’t switch on the air conditioning until temperatures reach 28 degrees centigrade, in order to reduce carbon emissions – reduces productivity. I still remember with a shudder one all day conference I sweated through in Tokyo a couple of summers ago (and I’m sure my colleagues Rochelle and Misako remember it as well!), although fortunately many companies at least air condition their guest meeting rooms.

There seems to be a mindset across many cultures that unless it hurts, it’s not doing any good, when actually the net effect of the suffering is minor compared to the gains that could be made from more fundamental changes.

We had a heat wave (really!) in the UK in June of this year, and I quickly discovered how inadequate traditional British houses are for coping with the heat. I longed for Japanese sudare (bamboo blinds) for my office window, which would allow precious breezes through but block out the hot sunlight. Solid blinds, curtains and double glazing, carpets, brick walls and cavity wall insulation are great for the cold, damp British winters, but simply retain the heat in a hot summer. Then when I was on holiday in France this month, I reacquainted myself with Mediterranean logic of staying cool – wooden shutters across the windows during the day, tiled or stone floors and thick cool stone walls.

Whereas older Japanese residential houses are built for the summer, with wooden sliding doors and walls so you can adjust the gaps to allow “kaze toushi” (breezes to pass through), modern Japanese office buildings are designed to be air conditioned sealed units. Turning the air conditioning or heat off, when the fundamental design of the building remains unchanged is just counterproductive. If global warming is really going to affect the UK and Japan significantly then we have to rethink our office building design rather than mess about with thermostats.

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The complex art of Japanese gift giving

I asked the chief executive of a British firm that had recently been acquired by a Japanese company how the relationship was developing between her and the senior management at the Japanese headquarters. It was great to hear that she felt trust had been established and that she had reached the point where she felt she could say no, and as long as she gave good reasons, her view would be accepted. The real clincher for me was when she mentioned that one of the Japanese directors had brought a present for her when he visited the U.K.

Gift giving is one of the trickiest parts of Japanese business

Or maybe I’m reading too much into this. I find gift giving one of the trickiest parts of Japanese business life. It is an integral part of Japanese non-verbal communication, so the meaning is often not at all clear to non-Japanese. Sometimes, there is not much meaning at all – it’s just an automatic gesture. Yet anyone who does business in Japan knows gift giving is part of the giri obligation/debt reciprocation culture.

When a senior Japanese executive of a company to which I act as a consultant gave me a beautiful scarf last month, I wasn’t sure what to make of it, as we had never met before. Neither of the other two (male) consultants from other companies was given a gift. So maybe it was just gallantry. Or it could mean he was hoping for my best efforts and advice to his company over the long term. One of his colleagues told me “he just wanted to show off the products of our company.”

Once a gift is given to you, you have to reciprocate

Once a gift is given to you, you do of course have to reciprocate. I dithered for a while about the scarf, and in the end I decided to be British and write a nice thank you card.

Gift giving is more straightforward between employees of the same Japanese company. Whenever I visited my Japanese headquarters from the London office, I would line the bottom of my suitcase with boxes of tea from Fortnum & Mason. “Divisible, edible, local” was my mantra, with a gift for each team I was to meet and some to spare, just in case. My London colleagues were not as big fans as I was of the adzuki bean paste cakes we would get from HQ visitors in return. But as I said to the European staff in a company recently acquired under rather tense circumstances by a Japanese firm: “Once the shortbread and rice crackers start flowing back and forth across the oceans, you know relations have improved.”

The personal touch

Even so, it is difficult to know how to deal with big personal debts inside Japanese companies when the routine box of cookies just won’t cut it. To say thank you for a recommendation he wrote for me, l once gave a couple of bottles of vintage champagne to one of my most important mentors in my Japanese company. But this turned out
to hit entirely the wrong note, not least because he didn’t really like champagne. My (much cheaper) present the next year of a paperback book on a topic I knew he was interested in was far more warmly received.

This article by Pernille Rudlin originally appeared in the Nikkei Weekly.  This and other articles are available as an e-book “Omoiyari: 6 Steps to Getting it Right with Japanese Customers”.  For more on Japanese etiquette, subscribe to the Japan Intercultural Consulting monthly newsletter giving you access to further Japan Intercultural Consulting online resources on Japanese etiquette and other aspects of Japanese business here.

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In defence of Monozukuri – letter in the Financial Times

Letter from Pernille Rudlin published in the Financial Times, May 28th.

Sir, Contrary to your leader writer (“Factory Flaw”, May 26) I believe Japan would be well advised to stick to monozukuri (“making things”). A healthy society needs a variety of jobs for its population to achieve self-fulfilment in work. We cannot all live by knowledge work alone.

It does seem that there is something rather unsatisfying to the human soul about living off the profits made from trading in complex financial instruments or house prices. Witness all those articles in the Financial Times over the past few months describing how now redundant City workers are flocking to cookery courses, sailing, starting their own vineyards and so on.

The leader writer’s view that manufacturing jobs only require “obedient high-school graduates” and that these jobs are not “professional, varied and lucrative” is not supported by the fact that so many manufacturers at the moment, Japanese and otherwise, are trying to negotiate wage cuts or reduce work time, rather than lay off their core staff.

It costs a lot of money to train key factory workers, as they are (thanks to Japanese management influence) required to be multi-skilled, computer literate, excellent problem solvers and understand complex logistical requirements. Manufacturers do not want to have to go through the expense of finding and training a fresh batch of people once the economy picks up.

It is true that these jobs are not as lucrative as those “triple the national average” salaries that politicians, journalists and bankers seem to feel they are entitled to. But given what is happening to the media, banking and politics at the moment, at least people in industry can feel glad that they have a job, and it is a job that society values.

Pernille Rudlin,
European Representative,
Japan Intercultural Consulting,
Surrey, UK

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When telepathy is not enough

It seems that the only opportunity for new business at the moment, for those of us who supply services to Japanese companies, is the continuing wave of Japanese acquisitions. Faced with a saturated, aging market at home and good companies going cheaply overseas, it’s no wonder Japanese companies see acquisitions abroad as a way to revitalize and grow.

Western companies are in the mood to accept new Asian owners, too. Weary of the destruction brought about by Anglo-Saxon capitalism, there is plenty of debate going on in Western business circles as to whether it might not be time for a more long-term, stakeholder-oriented – rather than short-term, shareholder-oriented – way of running companies.

We have been here before with Japan

We have, of course, been here before. Japan’s economic success in the 1980s was attributed to Japanese values – lifetime employment, group orientation, taking the long-term view, striving for growth rather than profit and so on. But then in the 1990s those same values were blamed for Japan’s economic failure. The debate as to whether an alternative to the current form of capitalism is truly needed – and whether Confucian capitalism is the best alternative – will no doubt continue.

While the discussion rumbles on, Japanese companies that have acquired overseas companies face the question of how or how not to adapt their distinctive corporate values and cultures.

The missing vital tool of internal communications

Regardless of what path is chosen, many Japanese companies have failed to use a vital tool – internal communications. Case in point: A participant at a seminar I gave at a British company that had been acquired two months earlier by a Japanese company carne up to me afterwards, on the verge of tears, to say thank you.

Apparently I was the first person to talk to her team since the acquisition who was able to explain at a deeper level what was going on. The team members felt they had been left in the dark.

Another participant at a different company mentioned to me that the local operation had only found out a vital piece of news about their company through a U.K. trade magazine.

I have lost count of the number of times Europeans working for Japanese companies have complained to me about information being withheld. When I ask them if they had asked Japanese colleagues for this information, it often transpires that they had not, that they expected to be told.

Many Japanese companies do not have internal communications departments. One director of corporate affairs told me that he could find no counterpart at the new owner’s Japan headquarters.

Japan’s deliberately vague corporate cultures

There is an assumption that Japanese employees will pick up corporate strategy and culture through time-honored methods such as ishin denshin, or telepathy. While this assumption cannot, of course, be made for employees who do not work in Japan or who do not speak Japanese, there nevertheless seems to be a fear that translating even innocuous internal documents into English will cause vital secrets to be leaked.

Deliberately leaving it up to employees to work out values and strategies for themselves is itself a corporate value. Once I got used to this, I rather liked it, as it means employees are treated as mature adults. Paradoxically, however, if Japanese companies want to preserve this value as they globalize, it has to be explicitly communicated.

This article by Pernille Rudlin originally appeared in the Nikkei Weekly and appears in Pernille Rudlin’s latest book “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe” available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon.

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Three tips to get Japanese people to read and respond to your emails

A British participant in one of my recent training sessions asked me why her Japanese colleagues so often start their e-mails with “Hoping this finds you well”. She found it quaintly polite. I explained that in the days before e-mail, when business correspondence was more formal, it was standard practice to begin letters in Japanese with comments regarding the seasons, gratitude for the continued custom, and solicitous remarks regarding the recipient’s health and fortune. Perhaps, therefore, her colleagues were trying to carry on that tradition.

A Japanese acquaintance has added a second explanation. I mentioned to him that one of the major frustrations for Europeans working in or with Japanese companies is the lack of response to e-mails sent to Japanese counterparts in the company headquarters. He said that often if the e-mail is very short, with no opening remarks, his colleagues assume it is not an urgent request and just an informal comment. Also, if the e-mail does not have “Dear X-san” at the start, they think they are just being copied on a message, and therefore no reaction is required.

Although I do often recommend a “personal touch” to start an e-mail to Japanese people, it does seem to contradict my other recommendation, which is to keep e-mails as short as possible. I know I have an allergic reaction to long e-mails in Japanese, resisting reading them until I’ve had at least one cup of coffee, and you can be sure that many Japanese have an equally allergic reaction to densely written English.

If the e-mail is too long, particularly with big chunky paragraphs of English, and the action point is buried near the bottom, the recipient may not read it all, and therefore miss what response was required. Chopping long paragraphs up into numbered bullet points is one tactic that many Japanese have told me they appreciate. The action point or conclusion should be brought up to the top of the e-mail, or if the logical flow does not allow for this, highlighting it in bold, and in a different color, will help the English-phobic spot what is required of them.

The third recommendation for getting a quicker response does not have so much to do with the format as with the personal relationship. The plain fact is that e-mails written in English are going to get a lower priority than e-mails written in Japanese because most Japanese companies still prioritize domestic sales and domestic customers over foreign ones. If the e-mail is in English, the chances are it is about a foreign customer. In fact I have found in the past that some Japanese companies’ spam filters throw almost everything in English into the junk-mail folder.

The only way to overcome the mental spam filter is to have met your counterparts and established a good relationship with them. Then, when they see your English e-mail in a sea of other Japanese e-mails, instead of putting it off to another day, they will spot your name and take a quick look to see what you are asking because they feel personally obligated to you. A gentle reminder of the personal relationship in your opening remarks will reinforce this – another explanation as to why Japanese sometimes put “hoping this finds you well” in their e-mails.

This article by Pernille Rudlin, European Representative of Japan Intercultural Consulting, originally appeared in the 23rd February 2009 edition of the Nikkei Weekly

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Sumo or Judo: how Japanese firms embrace or exclude diverse staff

I miss not being able to see the hatsu basho (January sumo tournament) that is now under way in Tokyo, as they don’t show sumo on the television here in the U.K. anymore. It would be great if Harumafuji, the new Mongolian second ranked ozeki, does well*, but it seems this year will be another challenging one for sumo’s credibility, particularly in the way it deals with the foreign rikishi wrestler.

When I was still working at my Japanese company in Japan, trying to develop and implement policies to improve the career opportunities for our “foreign rikishi,” in other words our non-Japanese employees, we had many discussions about what we nicknamed “sumo vs. judo” problem.

The sumo vs judo problem

In a “sumo” company such as ours, the traditional view was that in order to become a senior manager, you needed to join the company (the “sumo stable” or beya) at an early age and spend several years doing menial jobs, pouring the beer for everyone and living in a company dorm.

The sumo equivalent would be cleaning out the sumo beya stable, making chanko nabe stew and undergoing grueling training. So if any foreigner wanted to become a manager, that was fine, but they had to have undergone the same process as other Japanese employees.

Learning the “kata” – knowing the form

As for training, this was mostly on the job, learning from your seniors, as indeed in sumo, where the kata, or form of sumo, is learned by observing others rather than through any formal guidance or manuals. In fact, there weren’t many manuals or formal appraisal processes at all in our company. People just “knew” how to behave and what was expected of them.

For many Japanese companies, this changed in the 1990s. This was partly due to the restructuring needed to deal with the slowing down of Japanese economic growth, but also a recognition that the Japanese company had to become more diverse, not only in terms of nationalities, but in the gender and career background of its staff. It was not only the foreigners that objected to being treated like sumo, but other Japanese people, particularly in the younger generations. Also, the vagueness and lack of transparency often led to cover-ups, verging on what could be deemed corrupt practices.

No point in forcing conformity to the Japanese way on diversity

If you force diverse groups of people to conform to one mysterious way that can only be learned through many years’ apprenticeship, a way most easily learned by a group who share one particular cultural background, then those who deviate from this norm will find that, despite their best efforts, they are only a pale imitation of the mainstream group.

In other words, if you want all employees to behave like traditional Japanese salarymen, then hiring people from nontraditional groups is pointless, because they end up being unhappy, fake Japanese salarymen, or, more likely, quit.

My colleagues and I contrasted sumo with judo, which is also a Japanese origin sport, and has much of the same Japanese ethos regarding the importance of kata and diligence through practice, but is much more transparent in its rules and its teaching methods, a prerequisite, I assume, for it becoming an official Olympic sport for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. I have to say though: I find sumo more charming and fascinating than judo.

* Unfortunately he didn’t. He made a majority of wins 8 to7, and did better in the March tournament that has just ended – 10 wins to 5 losses.

This article by Pernille Rudlin originally appeared in the Nikkei Weekly. 

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