Category: China and Japan

“There is no point in workstyle reforms if you don’t change everything at once” – Fujitsu’s President Tokita

President Tokita of Fujitsu was interviewed by Saeki Shinya of the Nikkei Business magazine in August 2020. The beginning of the interview focused on the impact of the pandemic and China on Fujitsu’s business but the bulk of the interview was regarding Fujitsu’s recent announcement of various workstyle reforms (the English translation of hatarakikata kaikaku, a government led initiative to change Japanese workplaces).

Tokita felt Japan was unlikely to recover economically from COVID-19 until the end of FY 2021. As for China, clearly this was a delicate subject and Nikkei Business had to issue a correction to how they described what Tokita said. He said the progression of nationalism should not be welcomed. It would be disrespectful to say it’s a great chance for Fujitsu if the USA or Europe move away from Huawei, however the need for a secure communication infrastructure is important, regardless, for a more resilient society, and this is helping Fujitsu employees to “reset their mindset”.

The Q&A regarding workstyle reforms I have translated as below:

Q: Why did Fujitsu announce work style reforms such as a 50 percent reduction in office space, the abolition of commuting passes, the introduction of telework allowances and job-type employment (to assign and evaluate human resources after clarifying duties such as roles and skills to be fulfilled) all at once?

Mr. Tokita: It just happened that way – actually I narrowed down the scope somewhat.

In the first place, we didn’t announce it in July just because of coronavirus. We have been introducing telework since 2017, and we had already introduced a job type system overseas – only Japan was different. Since I became president last year, I realised Fujitsu’s biggest value is that its 130,000 employees can move in the same vector. Therefore, I wanted to unify the way we work, and we thought that we should utilise good governance as a global company.

Q: You had experience of being assigned to Europe – you had doubts yourself about the difference in personnel systems in Japan and overseas?

Mr. Tokita: My desire for globalization was strong. In fact, I hated the phrase “one Fujitsu” when I first became president. It was used because we were not “1” but there was no point in using it like a slogan if behaviours don’t change.  I used it officially for the first time in June when we celebrated our 85th birthday, because our internal systems and communication have now improved, and we are convinced that it can happen.

Work style reforms have been carried out in many different ways. There are also criticisms that the results based system failed and there were people saying “how much longer are we going to use man-months as a basis for calculation?”  I understood all of this. That’s why this time it happened all at once.

So far, we have been reforming little by little. Because it is a large company, it is scary if the change is too big. However, the reason why it did not work was that the personnel system itself had not changed in nature. Changing if you only change the structure and operations superficially will not work. I decided to go with the idea to change everything at once.

Q: Isn’t there an overlap between the new “job type” system and the failed results based system [known as seikashugi in Japanese – introduced in many companies in the 1990s]?

Tokita: There are many viewpoints – some say the results based system failed, and I haven’t heard many stories of it succeeding.

However, a job type system will be different from company to company and for Fujitsu. Evaluations are no longer top down. We have no choice but try to make sure it will lead to Fujitsu’s growth and sustainable business. Of course there are some lessons to be learnt from what happened in the past but I try not to worry too much about that.

Q: What does Fujitsu want employees to do with the introduction of a job-type personnel system?

Mr. Tokita: It’s about each and every employee being autonomous. If the general employees, the managers, the executive, and I are all autonomous individuals,  the collective body becomes stronger. Ideally, a strong individual can both work collaboratively and create a healthy conflict. We stopped uniform education by hierarchy and year of entry to the company. Instead, we encourage people to advance their careers through free educational programs online.

Q: How do you get your employees to collaborate once they haves become autonomous?

Tokita: We are currently working with in-house culture change teams. In order to work collaboratively, physical contact is necessary, so it is important to create space in various offices where people can discuss each other’s opinions.

Q: It is said that young people are disadvantaged because they do not have enough experience of the job-type personnel system, what are your thoughts on this?

Tokita: Is that so? I didn’t think it was an advantage or a disadvantage. I know OJT (on-the-job training) was inadequate. Rather, I hope that young people will be able to take on challenges without any restraints.

Q: Some say that the reforms, which will reduce office space by 50 percent, are just about cutting costs.

Mr. Tokita: It’s not just about cutting the office space in half. It will also cost money for renewal.

The aim is not to cut costs, but to increase the choice of employees. The main objective is to help employees to feel engaged in their work. Whether there is a coronavirus pandemic or not, there are many employees who have problems with commuting time, childcare, and nursing care, and we have been building telework and satellite offices to solve this. It is true that Coronavirus became a driver to push this. But I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Future behaviours and growth will show if this is correct or not

Q: Many people say that the corona shock will accelerate digital transformation (DX).  Isn’t this is an opportunity for Fujitsu, which advocates DX for companies?

Mr. Tokita: I’ve been working longer hours at home so I saw a daytime show which said that digital transformation of medical institutions, public health centers and education is very behind in Japan.

However, DX does not take root just by promoting systemization and IT.  The essence of DX is whether each and every one of us can be autonomous, acquire skills, collaborate, and create new value. This is also a challenge for Fujitsu. No matter how much IT as a tool is implemented, it will not be the whole solution.

Q: So DX hasn’t taken root in Fujitsu yet?

Mr. Tokita: I don’t think it has.

It doesn’t make sense for DX only to develop in certain industries. Fujitsu has been promoting IT by forming teams across industries. It will not function unless the whole aspect of an issue is grasped, rather than small points, and the issue is addressed as a society.

Coronavirus has increased the need to do this, but we need a system that allows us to collaborate properly. It’s easy to standardize in the IT industry, but without a deeper or higher level of common understanding of rules, no one will be able to make it work.

Q: Japan as a whole needs to deepen its understanding of DX. What should we do?

Mr. Tokita: It will be difficult to discuss on a national basis. We have no choice but to move forward with small communities and companies. In that sense, Fujitsu has a responsibility. We are a global large company and have a mission to solve Japan’s problems because we are based in Japan.

Inside the company, I often say, “Think about what it means to work for a large company.” Large companies have large company sized responsibilities. A large company can make big ripples in society – that’s a kind of responsibility.

Mr. Tokita: We will make use of our own knowledge and experience. This will make Fujitsu stronger. Companies that have accumulated their own experience and can turn it into a business are definitely stronger. If you don’t do it yourself, you’ll end up in running a race in borrowed shoes, and you can’t be a strong company.

If you want to hear more from Mr Tokita, he’s one of the keynote speakers at the Fujitsu ActivateNow digital event in October – more information here

If you want to understand further about the history and changes to Japanese corporate HR systems, I made a 5 minute video on this for my Japanese Business Mysteries Explained series – here.

For more content like this, subscribe to the free Rudlin Consulting Newsletter. 最新の在欧日系企業の状況については無料の月刊Rudlin Consulting ニューズレターにご登録ください。

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How Japanese risk aversion explains reactions to Brexit and whether UK should join the CPTPP

I was a panellist for the UK Trade Forum on 25th September 2018, on Japanese business and government viewpoints in response to the UK’s request to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP, TPP as was, often known in Japan as the TP11)

The Chatham House rule was invoked, but I believe that I am allowed to report what I said, so long as I don’t attribute any comments to the other speakers.

As I only had 10 minutes, I decided to focus on risk aversion to explain Japanese reactions to Brexit and the UK joining the CPTPP.  Even so, I had to drop the final part of my speech, so I will add this back in at the end:

“I have spent more than 45 years now living in or visiting Japan and working with or for more than 200 Japanese companies, and one generalisation I feel I can make, even though I am well aware of the dangers of stereotyping, is that Japan as a nation – as well as Japanese companies – are highly risk averse.

The geopolitical angle

I was reminded of this when I attended a lecture by Koji Tsuruoka last week, the current Japanese Ambassador to the UK, who was also the chief negotiator for Japan for the TPP. He gave a very powerful, thought-provoking speech, tackling head-on controversial subjects like Japan’s behaviour in WWII, whaling, defending Big Pharma IP interests in trade negotiations and so on, in a way that didn’t seem strictly necessary given it was an audience of Japanophiles, but I think his message, on reflection, was very clear.  Japan feels very vulnerable, with neighbours such as China and North Korea and Russia, and supposed allies and defenders such as the USA now behaving unpredictably, and it needs a rules based international order because it is energy and resource poor and relies on other countries for imports of these things.  WIthout a rules based international order being adhered to, countries behave unpredictably, and this can lead to war.

So this is why Tsuruoka and other Japanese government representatives and ministers have been very positive and welcoming of the UK wanting to join the CPTPP or roll over the EU-Japan EPA, even if the practicalities of this are not clear. They worry that the UK leaving the EU means the UK is also leaving that rules based international order, so needs to be roped back in somehow.

Why are Japanese companies so risk averse?

So that’s the geopolitical side to this – for the rest of my ten minutes I want to look at the Japanese business side, and three sectors in particular, what kind of trends we are seeing and how they are reacting to Brexit and what TPP might contribute in terms of mitigation or otherwise.

So why are Japanese companies so risk averse?  I think it’s because they operate on a very different model to the Anglo Saxon, short term, shareholder value model. It could be called a stakeholder model, but primarily the motivation is not to make a quick profit, but long term survival. So they don’t want to do anything so risky as to jeopardise that, and they are very hot on ESG – Environmental, Social and Governance – issues.  It’s one of the really good things about Japanese companies, why I am still a fan.

So when the Japan bashing started happening in the 1980s, and many Japanese remember Americans taking hammers to Japanese cars, Japanese companies decided that foreign direct investment was the way forward, and started up factories in the USA and of course also in the UK, with Nissan, and then Honda and Toyota.

They chose the UK – and the UK is the recipient of 40% of Japan’s cumulative FDI into the EU, and has the largest Japanese population in the EU, including intra-company transferees – (but both those numbers are declining these past couple of years – I leave that to you to conclude why, but a hostile environment certainly isn’t helping) – because the UK was seen as a stable, rules based system, low risk place to invest, and of course because we were then members of the EU and a gateway into the EU.

So what is happening now with Brexit in terms of Japanese risk aversion, is that it is tipping them into making decisions and directions they were going in anyway.  Looking at the three main sectors of Japanese investment in the UK – automotive and supply chains, IT and electronics and “pure” services – these sectors make up the bulk of the around 1000 Japanese companies in the UK, employing around 140,000 people.  Actually many of the 1000 don’t really count because they are paper companies, brass plates, or several versions of the same company, but there are 30 or so really big employers who make up more than half of those 140,000 employees.

Automotive supply chains – a pivot to a new chain of right hand driving nations?

So for Japanese companies, trade negotiations aren’t really about trade in products so much any more, more about protecting their foreign investments.  Even then, to be realistic, the EU only makes up around 10% of Japanese companies’ turnover.  Asia is still the really big market outside of Japan, and within that, China, and then secondly the US.  And the UK is probably only around 10% of the EU total.  But the UK is also host to a lot of regional HQs and of course the three car plants.

The main trends you see in the automotive supply chains is that they are shifting eastwards in Europe, to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Japanese car manufacturers also have factories in Russia and Turkey, and the suppliers – of wire harnesses for example – have factories in Africa.  So Brexit is accelerating that shift.

Can the CPTPP help with this?  Well I suppose there are a large number of CPTPP members who are right hand driving like the UK, but when you look at what sells in Australasia for Toyota, it’s pick up trucks like the Hilux, whereas Toyota in the UK is manufacturing the Auris/Corolla.  I suppose that shift could happen – at least then there is access to a market of over 100 million, which is supposed to be the minimum to sustain an automotive supply chain.  Honda is already trying to sell half of its Civic production from Swindon to the US, so it could happen, despite the distance.

Information technology and electronics – integrated disintegration

You’re also seeing a shift in the power balance in those supply chains, towards the components suppliers, and IT, because of Big Data, the Internet of Things and so on.  Which brings me to the second major sector – information & communication technology, electronics etc.  Here you’re seeing what I call an integrated disintegration. Japanese companies are becoming more B2B, solutions based, and trying to integrate back office functions, but also customer support, technical support into low cost locations with multilingual educated workforces – so in Europe this would be Portugal, or Poland.

But at the same time, the regional management and sales are becoming more dispersed.  Anyone who has worked in a multinational as I did working at Fujitsu will know what this means – endless fights about who gets what in terms of money or actually doing the work, and whereas the UK often won those fights, I am beginning to see signs that Japanese companies are reverting back to the country model, are finding the matrix system just too tough.  If you’ve ever run a global or regional virtual team, as I did, you can understand why.  So there is a drift away from the UK and to Germany or the Netherlands, as we’ve seen with Panasonic, and it would seem also Sony now, accelerated by Brexit. And that’s bad news for UK suppliers of services to those Japanese companies.

Pure services also need a rule based international order

But Panasonic did not just cite Brexit as a reason for moving its headquarters to the Netherlands. It was also to do with the tightening of Japan’s tax haven rules from April of this year. Dividends and other “passive income” in Japan’s overseas subsidiaries will be the subject of attention of Japanese tax authorities, regardless of how much real business activity they are undertaking, if the corporate tax rate is below 20%.  And of course the UK’s is 19% and due to decrease further – reiterated by the Chancellor after the referendum to show that the UK is still open for business.

But actually this is not appealing to Japanese companies.  Nor is the “chlorinated chicken” approach about deregulating or having looser environmental or other regulations of much interest to Japanese companies. They want to maintain high standards, and like robust, thorough rules – again, because of the risk aversion.

But there are cultural issues beyond the need for a rules based international order

Although Japanese companies really like being in the UK and I think a lot of the commercial and financial sector companies, like Japanese banks, or trading companies like Mitsubishi Corporation that I used to work for, have no intention of entirely shifting their regional headquarters out of the the UK despite Brexit, if they can help it, one thing that keeps me in business is the cultural gap between Japan’s very process and rule oriented way of managing and the more principles based, some might say “winging it” approach of British management.

I believe Japan is still very reluctant to open up its public procurement and professional services sector, even to the UK, and I can see why. There is not really a developed set of professional specialists the way we have in the UK.  Most Japanese employees follow a generalist track.  So in trade negotiations, such as the CPTTP or the EPA, it must be very difficult to find common terminology in order to agree any rules for recognition of qualifications, or mutual understanding of governance principles for services, much more difficult than defining standards for products.  “Risk” in Japanese is the same word that is used for “crisis”. So it has a very negative meaning, and the neutral concept of risk management is not translatable into Japanese as a result.

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Chinese students in West, Japan, don’t want to return to China

“Don’t bother telling a Chinese person to stick to a schedule” said Ke Long (of the Fujitsu Research Institute) in his opening remarks to a Japanese business lunch I regularly attend – confirming Prof Erin Meyer’s conclusions covered in our previous post on Chinese and Japanese attitudes to time keeping.

He was only 5 minutes late in finishing, but I don’t think anyone minded as his talk was thoroughly entertaining in fluent and only lightly accented Japanese – funny and revealing. Although he warned us he would not stick to the slides in the handout, he did in fact manage to cover all the key points, interlaced with many amusing stories.

He was born and brought up in Nanjing, which as he pointed out, did not have a happy history with Japan.  So in 1983 when he was graduating from high school, he had no interest in Japan and had in fact applied to study English literature at the local university.  He thought there had been a mistake when he received a letter saying he had been awarded a place to read Japanese.  It turned out that the Chinese government, in an effort to prepare enough interpreters for a major Japanese government mission in three years, had cut all English, French and German courses and replaced them with Japanese courses.

He then wanted to study at Nagoya University in Japan, but struggled to get a passport.  He was called in time and time again by officials who asked him why he wanted to go to Japan and what he was intending to do after his studies there.  “You must not give the real answer, of course.  So I said I wanted to study for the sake of my mother country and that I would return immediately. Neither were true.”

He was told to apply for a private university first before trying for more prestigious state universities like Nagoya.  So he ended up at Aichi university, thinking that as it was named after the prefecture, which was bigger than Nagoya city, it should be correspondingly better, not knowing a well known dictum in Japan that the larger sounding the name, the worse the university.

To his amazement, he discovered that the entire Economics faculty were Marxists.  “This is what I have escaped from!” he protested.

His insights on China, the US, Japan and the UK in his talk were:

  • He highlighted greater inequality in the US compared to Japan and how it has increased rapidly. The top 1% wealthiest in the USA had 280 times more wealth in 2010 than the median, compared to the previous peak of 190x in 2004.  He said on his regular trips to the US he is invited to houses of wealthy Americans, where 30 servants are not uncommon.  Whereas the President of Fujitsu lives an ordinary life in a standard Japanese family house.
  • Chinese people are so suspicious of the quality of goods they can buy in China that they prefer to import the exact same product, made in China, from Japan.
  • China had a population bonus which explained its phenomenal growth, but this is ending. The male/female imbalance – particularly the fact that there are 30 million more males under the age of 20, is storing up trouble, socially and economically.  The population is declining and ageing.
  • China has to increase its Total Factor Productivity as a result, which means more innovation, but China is not there yet (despite spanking both Japan and US in supercomputing recently).
  • His view on why American share prices are booming is that it is not Trump’s policies or that American companies are so wonderful, rather that Chinese money is pouring into American equities. It’s not going to Europe or offshore.  Chinese diaspora funds are channelling the money from Chinese banks, even though China is trying impose tight controls on outward flows of money – since December 2016 investment in overseas properties and financial products has been banned.  Presumably this will hit the UK property market too. Hundreds of regional bank officials have been arrested recently as the central government tries to crack down.
  • Although relations between China and Japan have their tense moments, it was not likely that China would ever attack Japan as its sea and air forces are not sufficient. Its army is huge but largely manned by young only children, whose commitment to fighting Ke doubts.  Furthermore army leaders are highly corrupt and wealthy.
  • He thinks China would like to continue with friendly relations with the UK, as a counterbalance to the US. There is unlikely to be a trade war, but what should worry China and Japan is what to do about North Korea.  It’s about time Japanese politicians stopped worrying about rightist kindergartens “amusing though it is” and came up with a strategic foreign policy.
  • He does not fear a China economic collapse, but points to the slow pace of reform, particularly in the over investment in capital by state companies and the continuing stumble of the zombie companies. The fear in China is that reforming these companies will lead to unemployment, and China is not like Japan in terms of how it reacts to this.  There are riots, with local government officials’ cars set on fire, he says.
  • As for the wave since 2010 of Chinese students studying abroad in the UK and elsewhere, he says this is quite different to previous waves. The UK government will be dismayed to learn that there is no intention on the part of the Chinese students to return to China.  This is education with the intent of immigration.  Their parents also no longer want their children to come back to China and become civil servants as in the past, given the crack down on corruption going on. Many came to the West as children, studying at private schools, and have developed a taste for the Western life.

For more content like this, subscribe to the free Rudlin Consulting Newsletter. 最新の在欧日系企業の状況については無料の月刊Rudlin Consulting ニューズレターにご登録ください。

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