Corporate culture

Japanese management by telepathy and Ninja skills does not work for overseas M&A

The precis below is from an article written by Chieko Matsuda (Executive Director of Booz Allen Hamilton in Japan) for Nikkei Business Online’s “Corporate Governance for Everyone” series, in Japanese, but I felt as I translated it, that it was my own words, so completely do I agree with what she is saying:

Japanese companies often have an “overseas business development unit” to carry out their global M&A. However the mission of this organisation should change depending on the stage reached in expanding overseas. Even if it starts as “business development”, it often turns out that it has to manage the subsidiaries as well. So at the same time as stepping on the accelerator to grow the business, it is supposed to press on the brake, as a shareholder and auditor. When it comes up with solutions to this dilemma, nobody will help the unit out, claiming that “overseas business is your specialist area”, and “nobody speaks English in our unit”

The audit function needs to be strengthened – Japanese companies are far too weak when it comes to risk management with regard to their overseas operations. It is necessary, if expanding overseas, to “control through structure” and review rules, processes and formats. Japanese style management through telepathy will not work for overseas M&A.

In order to design the structure in detail, it is necessary to decide on the direction. What the company should not do, and what it should preserve. If this is left vague, then it will lead to a sense that “we have no idea what the parent company is thinking”.

The top priority therefore is to set the corporate mission and values. What are we trying to do, how will we do it, which way are we facing – it is control through corporate culture as well as through structure.

The corporate vision needs to be concrete, and something that can be translated in an understandable way into many languages. It should be a base for making decisions – to go left or right – not just pretty words.

If the corporate vision and culture is not secure, then it is difficult for diversity to take root. WIthout diversity, the company will not be competitive. A homogenous workforce was efficient for labour intensive production, but we are now in an era of competition of ideas and innovation. New ideas and innovation require a diverse workforce, and what will unite a diverse workforce is common corporate culture and vision.

It is of course partly up to the top management to communicate this corporate culture and vision, but middle management must also be able to use it within their teams. It can’t just be about “reading the air” in the traditional Japanese Ninja way. What do you do if there is a claim from a customer? It cannot be resolved through kiai (“fighting spirit”) and konjou (“guts”). Wouldn’t it be convenient if you had a touchstone, for when there was a problem to be solved?

If you are being acquired by a Japanese company, you may be interested in Japan Intercultural Consulting’s (represented by Rudlin Consulting in EMEA) post merger integration services.

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Mitsubishi Heavy Industries – feminise and foreign-ise to stop being fossilised

The cover story for the Nikkei Business magazine (JPNS) for October 20th 2014 is somewhat doom and gloom,claiming that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ reforms were too slow, and it’s now in the last chance saloon. The four part special includes an interview with the president, Shunichi Miyanaga, who has been leading the reforms and also a handy checklist so you can make sure your Japanese company hasn’t also become fossilised like MHI. One of the items on the list is whether “You have lots of Japanese expatriate staff, and the local hires view them as the secret police”

The online counterpart to Nikkei Business also has an interview with Christina Ahmadjian, an American who has lived in Japan for 17 years and is now a professor at Hitotsubashi University, who was appointed as an external, or “outside” as they say in Japan,director of MHI in 2012. She’s also on the board of Eisai, the Japanese pharmaceuticals company. Needless to say, she speaks fluent Japanese – and was also an “accidental Office Lady” in her past, at Mitsubishi Electric.

She termed MHI “super-Japanese” for its slow decision making and initially did not want to take up the role. Her friends cautioned her, saying there are plenty of other Japanese companies who are more advanced in their reforms that she should consider. However the then President and chairman took her presentation to the board very seriously, which led her to decide to “try it for a year, and quit if it didn’t work out”.

She continues this un-Japanese attitude by regularly asking in board meetings “who is accountable” and asks for specific commitments from anyone who uses the typical Japanese vague term “kento shimasu” (we will study this further). She also insists that strategic rather than technology related subjects are discussed in the board meetings.

President Miyanaga has also changed the board meetings, through reorganising the company into four domains, and decreasing the representatives accordingly to the board, which has allowed for smoother discussions. Ahmadjian says she is surprised by the speed at which Miyanaga has moved, and also how careful he is to share all information with her, including on any M&A activities. Previously, Japanese companies had been reluctant to involve external directors as they were concerned that confidential matters would be leaked.

Nonetheless, MHI is still slow compared to the foreign competition, she says. MHI is beginning to appoint non-Japanese to senior positions overseas but there is a lack of candidates internally. It’s not always the case that it is easier to get rid of people in foreign companies, she argues – in Europe the unions can be very strong and she suggests that some Japanese companies are using legal barriers as an excuse not to restructure, and are in fact “zombie” companies.

“I am a watch dog, making sure MHI do not slack off on their reforms” she concludes.

The 4 types of Japanese expat manager

Susumu Okamura, a veteran of Daiichi Life, DIAM in the US, UBS Global Asset Management and a Columbia MBA alumnus, believes experience of secondment to another company is a must for survival in the global economy. Thanks, however, to ‘Naoki Hanzawa’ (a TV series in Japan about a heroic salaryman banker), being seconded to another company has a thoroughly bad image in Japan. However in global companies, where spin off companies are multiplying, being seconded has become part of management development.

Foreign business people are particularly enthusiastic about being sent to manage acquisitions or struggling subsidiaries. They see it as a valuable chance to put their ideas into action and do things their own way, says Okamura.

Okamura views joining your first company as a second birth, with being seconded to another company as a third rebirth, but unfortunately many Japanese managers do not see it that way. Okamura sees four types of secondees:

The depressive – who has dropped off the elite track of the headquarters, so becomes disillusioned and loses his spark. However they are often given an important role in the subsidiary company, so they are the worst kind of boss for the employees of the subsidiary.
The look backer – who wants to make headquarters regret pushing him out by producing great financial results. Tries harder than the depressive, but his aggressive, inflexible management style can warp the subsidiary
The phlegmatist – has the same laid back style wherever he goes. Works steadily, doesn’t try to change anything.
Mindset changer – is thrilled at the chance to start a new chapter in a new organisation, pursuing new dreams

As Okamura says, in traditional Japanese companies, secondment damages your chances of becoming a top executive in the headquarters. “But I want to ask instead, is it really fun to stay in the headquarters? What are you learning which is of value in the marketplace? Do you think that value will still hold in 10 years’ time?”

“We are in the middle of a diversity boom. However, unfortunately in many cases, the foreigners, women, mid-career hires and the disabled that are hired all end up being ‘dyed the same colour’. It’s not obvious why diversity was such a reason for hiring people. But being seconded is different – there is an unshakeable diversity to having to become part of a different corporate culture.”

Japanese firms might gain from looking to outsiders for insights

At the beginning of our training sessions with Japanese expatriate managers, I describe to them the positives and challenges Europeans say they face when working in Japanese companies. If I have already done similar sessions with Europeans in that company, then I also highlight those aspects which are specific to the company or were give a particular emphasis.

You can probably guess what the common positives and challenges are. The European employees usually say they find their Japanese colleagues are polite/friendly/calm, take a long-term view and have a high degree of commitment to their jobs and the company. The challenges that they find are communication problems centering on indirect/direct communication styles and attitudes to conflict, and also the long-winded, nontransparent decision making processes.

It is often said that Japanese people are more than usually curious about how they are perceived by other cultures. Certainly my list of common positives and negatives arouses great interest among Japanese participants. However, when I try to turn it into a debate about the company’s culture – asking questions like, “Do you think your company is more or less nemawashi (consensus based decision making) oriented than other Japanese companies in your industry?” – there is hesitation, a few tentative comments, and then thoughtful silence. It is almost as if such questions had never been considered before.

As lifetime employment has been so prevalent in these large companies, and still is for the majority of employees, the opportunity to compare the company you chose to join at the age of 22 with another company only arises once – during the graduate recruitment process. Because this a career-long commitment, both the graduates and the companies put a great deal of effort into the process of finding out whether there is a good fit between the candidate and the company culture.

But the actual nuts and bolts of working in a company – how decisions are made, attitudes to process, risk, hierarchy and so on – are not made so explicit, because the candidates have never worked in a company before and have no way of identifying these characteristics. If you are going to stay at the company for the rest of your career, then you just accept that “this is the way things are done around here.”

Now that more Japanese people are changing employers, and mergers between companies are increasing, it is surely time to be more aware of these differences, so that adjustments can be made by employees and companies.

Some insights will of course come from the job hoppers themselves, but it might also be time for Japanese companies to lose their allergy to using outside consultants. As a consultant myself, I would say this, but consultants who have worked with a range of companies probably have the best overall view of how Japanese companies differ from each other.

As the British writer Rudyard Kipling famously put it, regarding English insularity, “And what should they know of England, who only England know?”

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

Oxford Boat Club vs Japan’s “Black” companies

Maiko Tajima, formerly of KPMG, now working for the World Food Programme, explains in Diamond Online why the rest of the world does not understand Japan’s so-called “black” companies. As she points out, if a native English speaker heard “black company” they would probably think “black enterprise” was meant, ie a company run by someone of what in the UK would now be called “black or minority ethnic” origin. Apparently there’s also a series of novels written by an American author called The Black Company.

Anyway, the closest translation would probably be “sweatshop” but most in the West would think of this as referring to factories, or workshops, in the US or Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more recently in developing countries, and find it hard to believe Tajima when she explains that such conditions are occurring in a developed country such as Japan, in the 21st century. A recent survey of its employees by Sukiya, a late night restaurant labelled a “Black Company” revealed comment such as “regardless of night or day, put all your life into your work, and if you survive, then you get to give the orders next time” and “work until your nose bleeds and you faint. Then you won’t be able to say anything is impossible any more”.

She explains how this occurs by contrasting her experiences as a member of the boat club in Oxford and also of a fencing club in a Japanese university. In the Japanese university club, the concept of “sempai” (seniors) was strongly adhered to – she calls it a “caste system”. You could not eat before your coach and your seniors started eating. Practice was to see how much you could endure. If they felt you lacked “konjo” (guts, willpower), it was the collective responsibility of the rest of the club too, so you all had to sprint around the sports hall. Tajima did get results in her matches, but she is not sure to this day if the “guts” she had at that time has really helped her in her life since.

As a member of an Oxford University Boat Club, there were of course the early morning, 5:30am starts on the river, that had to be endured over several months, but the reason behind this was “doing what we had to, to win” – starting with the desired outcome and working backwards.

The team was multicultural – American, British, Indian, Chinese and Taijma herself, and teamwork was heavily emphasised, but only in terms of getting the team to be a winner – there were no bonds outside the boat club. You were also allowed to make suggestions as to what should be done. “It was not what you could or could not endure, just what was the most rational course of action in order to win.”

As she points out, in European countries such as the Netherlands, there is the right to leave work 2 hours early, if the previous day you worked two hours overtime, and plenty of maternity and paternity leave. The focus is on trying to have a “good life” both in work and home life, as part of government policy.

She thinks that the roots of the 21st century Japanese “black companies” lie in the kinds of behaviours described by Ikujiro Nonaka in his book “The Essence of Failure” – an organisational study of the Japanese armed forces in the Second World War – emphasising human relationships over rationality, and to strive for spiritual virtue, no matter what had to be endured.

Japan’s soft power

In a week’s time, Rudlin Consulting will move to Norwich, UK. One of the reasons behind this choice of location is to be near the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Culture. I am keen to explore further how corporate cultures can be expressed “non-verbally”, through Japanese arts and culture, and also hope there is scope to collaborate with the Institute.

So of course I went to the lecture that Mami Mizutori, formerly of the Japanese Embassy in the UK, and now director of the Institute, gave to the Jiji Top Seminar (a monthly lunch for Japanese business people in the UK) last week. The title was “Do you invest in the power of culture?” She focused on the importance of soft power to Japan. Whether or not you believed that only Japanese can really speak Japanese and therefore only Japanese can really understand Japanese culture, (and I am guessing she does not subscribe to this point of view) she pointed out how a non-Japanese perspective on Japanese culture can help Japanese themselves to appreciate Japan’s culture.

Would an exhibition of Shunga (erotic art) ever have been put on in Japan, she wondered, the way the British Museum did last year? Probably the Japanese establishment would have deemed it to be pornography, not art, and therefore too controversial to touch. She also told the story of Joe Price, who started collecting Ito Jakuchu, a late Edo period (18thc) artist who had been neglected, but then became popular, culminating in a blockbuster exhibition in 2006 in Tokyo, the backbone of which was Price’s collection.

As this article described, Price was then able to use his collection to help cultural institutions in the 2011 earthquake region.

Mami also lamented that there is (no longer) a tradition of individuals sponsoring the arts the way there is in the US, and to a certain extent, the UK.

She wondered whether this was because post war Japan is a much more egalitarian place, and sponsoring the arts would be seen as flashy.

Pre-war many wealthy individuals did build up art collections (the Mitsubishi founding family Iwasaki’s Seikado collection or Idemitsu for example) and post war there is some sponsorship, such as Suntory’s famous concert hall. So the question I did not ask, was whether she was hoping that Japanese companies could fill the gap more than they do now.

As was pointed out by Akiya Takahashi, the director of Mitsubishi’s Ichigokan Museum in a recent interview (in Japanese) in the Nikkei Online, many major exhibitions in Japan are sponsored by newspapers and often take place in department stores. The staff therefore tend to be newspaper marketing employees, and there is a consequent lack of professional museum and gallery people, who can network with their peers in other countries. Also, what museum and gallery staff there are tend to return to universities to become academics. He is trying to change this by developing professionals at Ichigokan, encouraging them to travel abroad.

Furthermore, the newspaper sponsorship/temporary exhibition culture means that Japanese museums often do not have a permanent collection of any great strength. Again, Takahashi has been encouraging Mitsubishi to buy up some private collections for its museum. So my old employer Mitsubishi Corp is certainly doing its bit to help Japan’s soft power (and in the UK too – sponsoring the Japan room at the British Museum). I am very much hoping to see other Japanese companies “putting their money where their mouth is” as they say, and I suspect that was the subtle message of Mami’s talk too.

Category: Corporate culture