cross cultural awareness

What the vaccination levels tell us about attitudes to risk and innovation in Europe

(This article was published in Japanese for the Teikoku Databank News in May 2021)

The coronavirus vaccine rollout in Europe is providing many insights into how countries in the region deal with risk.

The UK has now vaccinated over half its population, at least with a first dose. This is far ahead of other countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands where less than 20% of the population had been vaccinated by the beginning of April.

However, EU countries are expected to catch up rapidly over the coming weeks as the supplies of vaccines, including single dose ones, become more available. It is also sobering for me, as a British person celebrating my first vaccination dose, to remind myself that over 127,000 people have died of coronavirus in my country, one of the worst death rates globally. Perhaps we took the risks too lightly at first.

The UK did not join the EU’s vaccination procurement programme, even though it could have done. Instead, it appointed a venture capitalist who was a bio scientist with experience in investing in biotech and gave her free rein to invest a substantial amount of money in many different vaccination candidates.

Unsurprisingly, with over 25 member countries, the EU vaccination procurement programme took rather longer to reach decisions, but ultimately the European Medicines Agency has approved 4 vaccination types, more than any other Western agency.

Germany was cautious about rolling out the vaccinations, as it wanted to make sure that a second dose was going to be available within the time limit for effectiveness, before starting. The UK has not been so cautious and now there are supply difficulties. I hope I will get my second dose in June, but whether many people aged 18 or under will be vaccinated by the summer is unclear.

There has been some speculation as to whether, if the UK had been in the EU vaccination programme, the EU programme would have moved more quickly. The British tend to march into unknown territory without too much planning and preparation, and then “muddle along”, fixing things pragmatically as problems occur.

I discussed this with my German business partner and she said that Germans like to come up with a technologically outstanding solution, and then spend a lot of time worrying about how to deal with any risks, before starting on the project. Unfortunately, this is no guarantee that the technologically outstanding solution will actually work. This is how Germany approached the vaccination roll out – building centralized high tech vaccination centres, which meant it started slowly and resulted in a large stockpile of unused vaccinations.

The UK had a similar issue with the billions of dollars it spent on a supposedly “world beating” coronavirus test and trace app and centralized system, which is still not showing much success. It might have been better for both countries to go for a decentralised, low tech solution. Ultimately all countries were constrained as much by their existing technology infrastructure and processes as their attitude to risk – as companies also discovered as they tried to transform themselves during the pandemic.

(6 months on from when this was published, I did get my second vaccination in June, and am having my booster in two weeks. It seems Germany is undergoing a fourth wave of the pandemic, with much graver consequences than in the UK so far – one of the causes seems to be that it took Germany much longer to reach a similar vaccination level of its population to the UK. Whether a centralized system was or wasn’t the way forward is difficult to judge, as in a way the German system was decentralized – at a federal level – perhaps federally centralized would be the way to describe it?)

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The soft power of Japanese content

From time to time clients have requested that I show videos in my seminars for Europeans on how to work with Japanese counterparts. I usually try to dissuade them from this. Partly because the technology never works well – I either have to try to get a DVD player to work on the client’s system, or if I try to stream something from YouTube, there is a problem with the firewall or internet connection.

Also, there used to be a lack of good content to show. There are films like Karate Kid or Lost in Translation but they are either rather stereotyped or it’s difficult to find a clip that makes sense on its own without seeing the whole film.

We thought about making our own videos of Japanese and European actors interacting in typical business situations, but not only is this costly, it dates very quickly, and can look awkward and artificial.

I can understand why it would be good to show some videos. They would not only bring variety to the training, but also to help people feel empathy with other cultures through watching emotionally engaging films of people from those cultures, behaving in a way that they can relate to.

Recently I’ve noticed a huge improvement in the amount of video content available on Japan. I have been crying with laughter at Aggretsuko, the anime from Sanrio about a red panda office lady which is currently showing on Netflix in the UK. I assumed it would not be appealing to people who did not know the Japanese workplace, but actually my 18-year-old son, and our Hong Kong Chinese homestay student both really enjoy it too.

It led to an interesting conversation with my son who compared it to the Japanese manga Beastars which also had anthropomorphic characters. It turns out this will be shown as an anime on Netflix in 2020, joining other “made in Japan” series like Midnight Diner, The Naked Director and Terrace House.

My son’s generation get most of their content from Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime, to the extent that we hardly ever watch live TV together any more. The UK public broadcasting service, the BBC, is beginning to see its license fee revenue decline because younger people are watching these channels on their laptops and smartphones, and so do not have TVs.

This means that for businesses, the way to reach the younger generations is not through live TV advertising or news stories on TV or newspapers, but through online videos.

What seems to work best is either an authentic rather than scripted conversation, between real people rather than actors, or a short “how to” or story telling style narration of a video. These kinds of videos are much easier and cheaper to make than the older style feature film type videos. So I have started to record my own – but they will be to advertise my business rather than to use in a training session.

This article was originally published in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News on 11th March 2020

Recommended books on Japan or by Japanese authors

Apart from my books and other books and articles by Japan Intercultural Consulting consultants, I recommend:

The classics of foreigners writing about Japan

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword – Ruth Benedict, 1946
Empire of Signs – Roland Barthes, 1970
The Roads to Sata – Alan Booth, 1985
The Enigma of Japanese Power – Karel Van Wolferen, 1989

Dated but funny and still insightful

Max Danger – The Adventures of an Expat in Tokyo Robert J Collins, 1987
Dave Barry Does Japan – Dave Barry, 1992

More recent foreigners writing about Japan

Bending Through Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival – David Pilling, 2014 (apparently a new edition is due out in 2020)
Japan and the Shackles of the Past: What Everyone Needs to Know – R Taggart Murphy, 2015
Shinto: A History – Helen Hardacre, 2017
Ghosts of the Tsunami – Richard Lloyd Parry, 2018
Japan Story – Christopher Harding, 2018
Stranger in the Shogun’s City – A Woman’s Life in 19^th Century Japan – Amy Stanley, 2020
Japan’s Far More Female Future – Bill Emmott, 2020

Classic Japanese novels

The Tale of Genji – Murasaki Shikibu, 11^th century
Snow Country – Yasunari Kawabata
Silence – Shusaku Endo
The Woman in the Dunes – Kobo Abe
The Makioka Sisters – Junichiro Tanizaki
I am a Cat – Natsume Soseki

Modern Japanese novels

Norwegian Wood Haruki Murakami (and most recent Killing Commendatore)
Convenience Store Woman – Sayaka Murata
Out – Natsuo Kirino (and many other crime thrillers)

Websites/news

Most of these have free daily newsletters

The American/British language barrier through Japanese eyes

I visited Japan last year, to conduct a couple of training sessions for the subsidiaries of British companies on how to work effectively with their UK headquarters. Listening to the issues brought up by the Japanese employees, and also having heard the perspectives on those issues from the UK side, I realised yet again how often a language barrier is at the heart of many misunderstandings.

But it is not the obvious language barrier between the very different languages of Japanese and English. It is the language barrier between American English and British English, which is more rooted in cultural differences than linguistic differences.

Not only were the employees at these British subsidiaries taught American English at their Japanese schools, but several had also lived in the US or worked for American companies. British companies hired them because they assumed their linguistic ability and experience would make it easier for them to work in a multinational.

As many of the Japanese employees pointed out, however, the British and the Japanese are similar in the way they are so vague and indirect in giving direction and feedback, particularly negative feedback. “I can’t tell whether my British colleagues are angry or not”, said one Japanese participant. “I assume they are, when their emails are very long”.

The British were praised for making an effort to understand, forgiving bad English and being courteous, even when they were senior to the Japanese employee. Germans and Americans were seen as rather less gentle and standing more on their dignity. Those British who had experience of working in Asia were able to express themselves more clearly and slowly, but other British were very talkative, yet not at all clear in what they were trying to say.

I explained how the British management style is consultative and casual – preferring to give a vague, general guidance and ask team members for their input. Whereas the US leadership style is built for speed – setting targets, standardising reporting and directing individuals on what to do.

A Japanese manager, fluent in American English who had been working for American multinationals previously, was very frustrated that he kept having to repeat himself in emails, because of the lack of clear responses from the UK. “Don’t they understand what I am asking for or are they deliberately ignoring me?”

We agreed that the solution to this might be to have agreed timeframes for responses and processes on how to communicate urgency, negative feedback and whether a request had been understood and was being worked on.

I thought back to my early days at Mitsubishi Corporation, where we communicated by telex, even though email was available. The good thing about telexes was that there was a standardised way to write them, using simple, clear English which every new employee was trained in.

I wonder whether British and Japanese multinationals might need to introduce something similar, for email communication, to overcome their mutually polite, vague, miscommunications.

This article was originally published in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News on 12th June 2019

Five elements of building trust between Japanese and European business cultures

If I were to capture what I try to do in my work in one phrase, it would be “build trust between Japanese and European business cultures.” This of course leads to questions of how trust is defined, and therefore how it is built.

The title of my new book, Shinrai, is the Japanese word for “trust”. It is composed of two characters, shin, meaning “believe”, and rai, which means “to request”. In other words, if you trust someone, you believe they will do what you request. The character for shin can be broken down further into components which mean “person” and “word” and the character for rai can be broken down into “bundle” and “leaves or pages”. It implies communication between people is a fundamental part of building trust, but also getting things done and pulling together.

Analysing the work I have done with clients over the past fifteen years, I would say there are five components of building trust in multinational companies. In sequential order they are communication, mutual interests, processes and regulations, reliability and accountability and vision and values – and then back to communication again in a virtuous circle.

1. Communication

Having a common language is critical – this is why any initiative to help immigrants integrate into a society usually starts with language lessons. The problem for Japan is that for native speakers of European languages, Japanese is one of the most difficult languages to learn and Japanese feel similarly about English. Japanese companies can do more to help Westerners learn Japanese – an intensive course in Japan is one of the most effective ways to do this. Japanese companies can also communicate better than they do in English – it’s not enough to make English the common language or force a minimum English level on employees, management needs to communicate vision, strategy and plans in English more effectively than it currently does.

2. Mutual interests

The Economic Partnership Agreement between Japan and the EU is a classic example of common interests helping to build trust. People have differing degrees of interests, but finding mutual interests means that there is a stable basis for negotiation. Japan wants to sell more cars in Europe, European consumers are happy to have cheaper, good quality Japanese cars. Europe wants to sell more food and drink to Japan, Japanese consumers are happy to have cheaper, good quality European wine and cheese. On a micro level, this is why I always encourage Japanese expatriates in Europe to engage in small talk with their European colleagues – it’s a way of discovering mutual interests, which means mutual understanding, compromises and agreements are more easily gained.

3. Processes and regulations

Once you have discovered your mutual interests, you can come to an agreement, but it needs mutually recognised standards to work well. What are the quality and safety standards expected of a car, or a cheese in your respective countries?

When there is a low level of trust, laws, regulations and processes are needed as a fall back. However, both Japanese companies and the European Union are sometimes guilty of becoming bogged down in bureaucracy and process. You have to show you are obeying regulations and following processes in order to be trusted, but ultimately, this is not sufficient. How you do something in terms of your intentions and behaviour towards others is as important as carrying out the process correctly and obeying the law.

4. Reliability & accountability

When you trust someone, it is not only because you believe they will obey the law, but also that they will do what they say they will do. For Japanese companies, this can be hard to define, as the culture is often a family style one, where everyone’s roles are vague, with no job descriptions and rely on a seniority-based hierarchy. It’s assumed everyone will do whatever necessary, in the best interests of the family. Rules can be bent for family members but this vagueness does not work well in more diverse organisations.

The current fight between Carlos Ghosn and Nissan is focused on processes and regulations. Nissan will try to prove Ghosn flouted Japanese law, but will have to answer questions about its own internal rules. Ghosn will try to prove that he followed both internal and external regulations. But what really seems to be at stake is a loss of mutual trust between Saikawa and other Japanese executives and Ghosn. If you are an insider in a Japanese company, you are trusted as a family member to act in the best interests of the family, and rules can be bent accordingly. But once you are seen as an outsider and acting in your own interests, possibly harming the company, then the rules are applied rigidly – just as the UK is finding out as it negotiates to leave the EU.

5. Vision & Values

This is why you need a clear vision of where the company is going and how you want it to be seen. The vision and values have to be discussed with and shared with employees so they feel they belong. The values will guide them as to how they should behave in order to achieve that vision. If the vision is simply to hit various targets, within the boundaries of rigid rules and processes, without employees engaged with the company values, then the kinds of corporate scandals we have seen in both Japanese and European companies will continue, with catastrophic consequences for trust across societies and cultures.

This article is in the introduction of “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe” by Pernille Rudlin, available on Amazon as a paperback and ebook.

Is it worth the effort to learn Japanese?

When people hear that I speak Japanese they usually say “how amazing – you must be so clever” and “you must be in demand for all sorts of jobs”. Actually I learnt Japanese the stupid way, which was to live in Japan as a child, and go to a Japanese school. And as for being in demand, I find that most companies do not want a Japanese specialist as a full time employee.

Think vocation before language ability

So I recommend to Japanese speakers that they think about what profession or industry they want to be in first, and then look for ways to incorporate their language skills. Most companies rightly put a priority on people’s technical or interpersonal skills rather than a specific language ability.

Avoid jobs which might use your language, but there’s no career path

It’s true that Japanese companies and people who supply services to them outside of Japan often hire Japanese speakers – but this can end in frustration if the Japanese speaker is simply given a nebulous role as a translator/customer liaison/interpreter with no clear career path.

Once a week Japanese lessons lead to frustration if you want to be fluent

Non-Japanese people working in Japanese companies often ask me if it’s worth learning Japanese themselves. I always say yes, although I warn them that they may get very frustrated if they expect a lesson a week to lead to fluency. Once they discover the three different ways of writing and multiple levels of politeness, not to mention the countless ways of counting, it’s very easy to give up in despair.

I’ve also been asked a few times if it’s true that Japanese colleagues dislike it if you speak Japanese, because it means that you know what they’re saying even though you’re not “one of them” and can’t be trusted with secrets.

This seems paranoid to me and certainly I’ve never experienced anything but relief from Japanese colleagues who realise that they don’t have to struggle to explain themselves to me in English.

Japanese is like skiing

What can cause mistrust however is reaching an intermediate level, where you think you understand what is going on (but maybe don’t), and inadvertently say the wrong thing or say something in an offensive way, because your language skills aren’t quite as good as you thought. Your Japanese colleagues assumed your Japanese was good enough to rely on you, but now you’ve let them down.

It’s a bit like skiing – the most dangerous level is the intermediate level. At the beginner level you might fall over a lot but you are unlikely to be going at speeds or off piste so it won’t kill you. But if you become overconfident, and attempt something risky without the advanced skills necessary, you may well end up in hospital.

The occasional mistake is forgiven

The occasional mistake is usually forgiven, however. Once – in a hurry – I sent an email to a customer saying “thank you for your response” using the Japanese word “henji/返事” for “response” but I failed to notice that for some reason it had auto corrected to a different “henji” – “変事” – which means “strange thing.” It probably helped that I was young and also had – up to then – been efficient and polite. My customers just thought it was very funny.

Even a weekly lesson will help you understand Japanese culture

Even though rapid fluency in Japanese is pretty impossible with just a lesson a week, I nonetheless think Japanese companies should fund employees’ efforts to learn Japanese. There is more and more evidence to show that learning another language helps you understand the culture and even unconsciously adapt the way you behave – how you analyse and react to situations.

For example, the Japanese language is “selfless”, which is a core Japanese value too. A typical English sentence has a “Subject, Verb, Object” construction. “I love you” for example. But in Japanese there is often no subject, and even no object. You just say “love”, and the context provides all the clues. This is another Japanese communication trait – to be “high context” – to understand what is not being said, and be sensitive to the context.

Japanese companies value multilingual people even if Japanese is not one of their languages

Having multilingual employees is a benefit not just because they may understand Japanese corporate cultures better. Recent research in neuroscience shows that multilingual people’s brains operate differently. For example, they make more rational decisions if they are functioning in a non-primary language. Working in another language reduces loss aversion, so people become better at assessing risks and benefits.

My observation, having worked with hundreds of Japanese companies in Europe over the past 12 years is that they tend to hire proportionately more multilingual employees than domestic European companies do. Perhaps they instinctively realise that multilingual people – even if Japanese is not one of their languages – are more likely to have the abilities to manage complexity and problem solve that they are looking for.

What to do if you want to work for a Japanese company

· Just speaking Japanese is not enough – at least for long term career fulfilment (on both sides). So think about your vocation – what you will love doing professionally – first. Then look for ways to develop or incorporate your language skills.

· If you want to improve or learn Japanese well enough for it to be of use in a Japanese company, you need to immerse yourself as much as possible. If you can’t go and live in Japan, then make sure you take the opportunity of someone like LinguaLift’s services to do something every day to expose yourself to the Japanese language.

· Even if you can’t reach a professional level of Japanese, don’t despair – just the fact that you made an effort will impress a Japanese employer, and give you some clues into Japanese culture, which will help you be effective in the Japanese workplace.

· If you’re multilingual in other languages as well, apply to the regional headquarters of Japanese companies – that’s where they need people with all kinds of linguistic and cross cultural communication talent to coordinate their business overseas. And if working in Japan is one of your goals, they may well be open to transferring you to their Japan headquarters. Then you’ll get good at Japanese – fast!

You can also try some of Japan Intercultural Consulting’s online modules – the certificates of completion will prove to a Japanese company that you know what you are getting into!

Trust, scheduling and decision making – the differences between China and Japan

“Japanese people are punctilious about time keeping and the detail of their work, loyal and don’t complain. From a non-Japanese perspective, this conscientiousness, loyalty and perfectionism are something to be respected”. So says Kurasawa Misa in an interview with Erin Meyer, professor at my old business school INSEAD in the Toyo Keizai online.

Meyer has recently published a book based on her 17 years of interviews with business people from around 55 different countries, which condenses her findings into 8 different cultural maps. We have 19 at Japan Intercultural Consulting, and see a lot of similarity in her work with our dimensions and cultural maps, which is comforting.

Kurasawa: Are Japanese people particularly difficult to work with from a Western perspective?

Meyer: Certainly Westerners find it challenging to do business with Japanese people. One reason is that Japanese people are not very emotionally expressive. Also they are not particularly troubled by silence or vagueness. You often hear that when Westerners give a presentation to a Japanese company, it ends in puzzlement. The Japanese audience sits quietly with no response or eye contact. This is confusing for Westerners.

I have had similar experiences. I have asked at the end of a presentation if there are any questions and no one raised their hands, so I went back to my seat. Then a Japanese colleague said to me “Erin, there was a person who wanted to ask a question. Do you mind if I find out?” So he stood up and said “Professor Meyer’s lecture has ended, but are there any questions?” No one raised their hand, so he looked across the audience and then asked one particular audience member – “I think you have a question?” and indeed that person asked a particularly important question. Then, in the same way, various other questions were asked. Afterwards I asked him how he knew which people wanted to ask questions and he said “their eyes were shining”.

I thought I should try this so asked his advice. He said “Japanese people do not make as much eye contact as Americans. So when you ask if there are any questions, most people don’t look at you but look elsewhere. But amongst the audience were people who were looking at you steadily. Those people probably have shining eyes.”

Sure enough, the next time I made a presentation I saw one woman was watching me the whole time, and when I asked if she had a question, she nodded.

Kurasawa: That’s a very ‘Japanese’ way of expressing intention isn’t it?

Meyer: Japanese people send messages in all kinds of ways, and this is the Japanese communication style. If you are not aware of it, you cannot do business in Japan. It will just end with “they don’t talk, they don’t ask questions.” You have to make the effort.

On the other hand, when Japanese people work in a different culture, they have to realise that not raising their hands to ask a question will be interpreted as a lack of passion, or that a message did not get through, or that the Japanese person just doesn’t care.

Kurasawa: In your book, Chinese people are often relatively close to Japanese in the positioning. Yet to Japanese people, there are big differences in the Chinese national culture and way of doing business?

It’s true that when you look at the culture maps, Japan and China are very close. Both have hierarchical organisations, both do not say directly what they mean but still manage to communicate their intentions. However if you directly compare China and Japan you can see some big differences.

For example, I visited China a few months ago and saw a surprisingly big difference in attitudes to planning between Japan and China. Japanese are very punctual and plan everything down to the last minute. On the other hand, in China there are regular changes to schedules. The timing and location of the seminar will keep changing right down to the last minute and the speakers and the participants will also keep changing. However it all works out in the end. Chinese people are very flexible about change.

So it is a very different experience for Americans visiting Asia when it comes to Japan and China. With Japan the scheduling starts months in advance right down to where the dinner will be held. My most recent seminar there started at 10:03 and even then someone said “this is later than planned”! I was very surprised. When you have this kind of experience, you cannot really say “Asian” meaning Japanese and Chinese together.

Kurasawa: So what should Japanese people bear in mind if they are doing business with Chinese or Korean people?

Meyer: If you look at the culture maps, there are three areas in which China and Korea are different from Japan. For example in decision making Japan is one of the countries of the world which most values consensus, whereas in Korea and China there are strong top down tendencies. So in Japan decision taking takes a long time but the decision is almost always executed as planned. Whereas in Korea and particularly in China, not much time is taken to make a decision, but it often changes.

So Japanese people in China often feel unhappy that they are not involved in a decision and that Chinese business-people are not very “professional”. This is not the case, but Chinese people feel that they want to get their products to the market faster than anyone else so prize speed and flexibility.

The second area is around scheduling. Japanese people are very precise about timing and want everything to go according to the plan. Chinese and Korean people are much more flexible about time.

Attitudes towards trust also vary. For Japanese people, the basis of trust is a high quality of work and products, to be on time. For China and Korea, emotional ties are the guarantee of trust.

Kurasawa: So even when countries are geographically close, there are some important differences?

Meyer: That’s the key point. From previous research into diplomats, I saw a surprising result – the highest failure rate in being posted overseas – in terms of not becoming accustomed to the culture or lifestyle and returning home early – was among American diplomats posted to the UK.

From an American perspective, you would think it would be much harder to live Japan where the culture is completely different than in the UK where at least you can speak your own language. It seems that if you feel culturally close to a country, you don’t bother to learn the culture so much and are not so flexible and open. Then you start as a result to feel stress from the differences and become depressed.

Japan, China and Korea are the same. For example, when a Japanese person is working with a Korean person, they may not make a positive effort to understand their culture. So when a Korean person behaves in a way that is different to what they were expecting they simply think they are inefficient, and feel stress. If their counterpart was Australian, they would just understand it as a cultural difference and be more open-minded in their reaction.

What is most important in multicultural or bi-cultural environments is the small differences. Above all you need to recognise that your counterpart’s culture is different. If you think that people are the same everywhere you will end up judging everything by your own country’s cultural values.

Kurasawa: It’s important to take steps towards the other culture, but some people feel it’s too much trouble if it’s only you making the effort

Meyer: In order to get the results you want, you have to show you understand the other person’s culture, and adjust your own attitude. I often get asked “should I stick to who I am, or prioritise being flexible?” In other words “should I focus on doing it the Japanese way or totally adjust to the other people I am working with?” For those who want to produce results in a global environment, the answer is you have to do both.

Global leaders have a foot in both camps. They know how to ask questions of Indian colleagues in a way that will get the right answer. They know how to communicate effectively with British people that they work with.

But there are not many executives who make this effort. In future, the leaders of global companies will have to understand deeply the way business is done in each country, and be flexible in the way they approach how they do things.

Last updated by Pernille Rudlin at 2021-11-23.

Category: cross cultural awareness