Category: Japanese customers

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.

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。

Share Button
Read More
Japanese companies giving Office Ladies another look

About 15 years ago I wrote an article proclaiming the death of the Japanese “office lady,” or OL. The company I was working at, along with many other Japanese companies at the time, had stopped hiring new graduates and placing them on the so-called administrative track. They abolished the OL uniform and encouraged existing OLs to cross over to a management track.

Future administrative needs would be filled by temporary contract workers. I was quite pleased about these developments, as the OL system offended my feminist sensibilities. The companies themselves had ended the system more for financial reasons. OLs were meant to join companies when they were around 20-22 and only stay at the company until their mid-20s, when it was expected they would leave to get married.

In the meantime, they cleaned desks, emptied bins, made tea for the team, answered phones and processed the team’s paperwork. By the mid-1990s, however, it became clear that more and more OLs were staying in the company into their late 30s and, due to the seniority-based pay scale, were being paid well over the odds for such basic administrative tasks.

A tough decade followed, especially for young university graduates trying to find a job and even more so for Japanese women who did not want to join a temp agency. Many joined foreign companies and some braved the management track of mainstream Japanese companies.

The years were also tough for the women who had been on the administrative track. They often ended up being paid less, as the quasi-management track they had been forced onto was not as seniority-based as the administrative track they had been on. Almost all of them were working harder than ever before, as they were now having to manage teams of temporary staff. They had to train a constant stream of new temps, check their work and take the rap for any mistakes the temps made.

I was initially surprised to hear that the administrative track is now being reintroduced at my former company. Apparently the mistakes being made by temps and the strain on the remaining ex-OLs (many of whom have since taken early retirement) are having a significant impact on the business.

On reflection, it should not have been a surprise. When I conducted a series of customer satisfaction survey interviews with Japanese companies last month, more often than not, the female administrative staff had also been invited to meet with me, and their mostly male managers were very careful to ask for their opinions and comments.

The customers I interviewed expected their criticisms of the administrative capabilities of the supplier company to be taken seriously. Administrative mistakes are not trivial in Japan. Not only are they seen as an indication that there may be problems elsewhere, but there is a view that a small slip can have major consequences.

I was being snobbish in viewing administrative tasks as demeaning, and declaring that it is sexist if women are assigned to such tasks. I doubt I am alone in this prejudice. Indeed, I wonder how many Western companies would invite their secretaries to participate in customer satisfaction survey meetings?

This is the seventeenth article in a series by Pernille Rudlin, European Representative of Japan Intercultural Consulting, appearing in the 25th August 2008 edition of the Nikkei Weekly.

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。

Share Button
Read More
Giving a presentation in Japan? Think about sending it in advance

In previous articles in this series I have given a couple of tips regarding making presentations and proposals to Japanese customers or colleagues. One was on the usefulness of “visualisation” – trying to capture what you are saying in graphics. The other point I made was that presenting or pitching proposals in a Japanese context is like a maths exam – you have to show your working out, not just the conclusion, to get full marks.

The third piece of advice I have about presentations and pitches, especially if you are going to do them in English, is to send the documents in advance. You may think this detracts from the appeal of a presentation, but if your audience includes people who are not comfortable with English, prefer group based decision making and don’t like taking risks, then you are likely to be greeted by deafening silence when you ask for their go-ahead or if there are any questions. I’m not saying all Japanese corporate people fit this description but I have heard enough stories to suggest that it is worth making the effort to send your presentation ahead, if you can.

It may also be a good idea to send more than the slides. One group of British research scientists told me how when they first had a joint meeting with their Japanese counterparts, they presented their results using all the slideware tricks to make it as stimulating as possible. But when they asked for questions, their Japanese colleagues simply sat there – nodding, but silent.

The next time they met, the British scientists sent their Japanese colleagues not just the slides but also all the data, two weeks in advance. This time, when they asked for questions, everybody’s hand shot up. The Japanese scientists had not only been able to translate any of the English they did not understand, but probably also crunched the data themselves and, I suspect, had a discussion, maybe even allocating questions to each other.

I told this story to a rueful European marketing director of a Japanese electronics company the other day. He had told me that on his appointment, he was invited to Japan to meet with the President of the company. Being a marketing director he of course put together a slide presentation on his strategy for Europe. When he arrived at the Tokyo headquarters for his meeting, he was asked to wait, as the President was with a customer. Finally, 45 minutes late, he went in to see the President. The President apologized profusely for keeping him waiting and then said unfortunately another customer was coming in 15 minutes. “We ended up drinking tea and talking about the weather and I never showed my presentation” the marketing director told me. If he had sent the presentation in advance, it probably would have been picked up by the President’s executive assistant, who would have translated it, summarised it and even suggested questions for the President to ask. At least then they could have talked about more than the weather.

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 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。

Share Button
Read More
Establishing credentials with Japanese business people

My company recently applied to join another of the Japanese Chambers of Commerce in Europe. As we are not a Japan-owned company, this is still quite an unusual thing to do.

Sure enough, a few days after submitting the application, I received a phone call from the head of the chamber, with lots of questions (in Japanese) about why we wanted to join, what our company did, were we OK with everything being done in Japanese, and so on.

All these questions were fair enough, but I knew what he was really trying to do -establish whether or not we were “appropriate” as members. Could we be trusted to behave according to the norms of the organisation? So, as soon as I could, I mentioned that we were already members of several other Japanese chambers of commerce in Europe. “Ah,” he said, audibly brightening, “do you know Mr Tanaka [head of one of the other chambers] then?” “Oh yes,” I said “and actually I also worked for nine years at the same Japanese company that he used to work for”.

Again, the relief was palpable. Not only could he now ring Mr Tanaka to check us out, but he was reassured that I had worked at a blue-chip Japanese company, so would almost certainly be well aware of how to behave in a Japanese corporate context.

It reminded me of the time when I first moved to Tokyo, and had to furnish my apartment. I went to a major furniture store, famous for its generous store card. As I approached the store card application desk with the list of items I needed, I could see a nervous look and beads of sweat appearing on the assistant’s face, as he realised he would have to deal with a foreigner.

He calmed down slightly when he realised I could at least speak Japanese. But then looked worried as he produced the application form – would I be able to read and write Japanese too? I assured him I would do my best. I then took out my business card, so I could copy the work address onto the form. The assistant suddenly leant forward as he caught sight of the well known corporate logo on my card.

“Can I call your team leader at the company, to confirm your salary details?” he asked. He scuttled off into a back office, and returned a few minutes later, beaming. “You can have a better fridge than that! And why not have two televisions?” He couldn’t have been more helpful.

So, whenever you sense a doubt or worry in a Japanese business person you are meeting for the first time, do not hesitate to introduce your credentials. This could be something to do with your company (well known name, long history, past clients) or you (education, Japan experience, past employers) or a mutual acquaintance – anything that establishes you as a trustworthy potential member of the “in-group”.

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 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。

Share Button
Read More
Visualisation – I see what you mean

We’re just starting the process of selling our home and looking for a new house here in the UK, and I have been struck by how showing layouts of a house and listing its total floor space is still a relatively new trend in Britain. In Japan it would be unthinkable to give particulars of a house or flat without also providing a floor plan and an estimate of how many square meters or jo, number of tatami mats, the floor space is.

I don’t think this is just because land space is so precious in Japan. I think it is related to a general Japanese preference for visualisation over text. It’s well known that Toyota Motor Corp., for example, promotes problem visualisation in its factories. In other words, don’t just have an alarm that sounds or a printout that indicates a problem; make sure there is some visual control or graphic display of the problem.

Toyota also has a policy of using A3-size paper for its reports on problem solving or proposals, which have a visual storyline of interlinked boxes, that relieve people from having to read densely typed 20-page memos.

Visualisaton isn’t about oversimplifying problems; it is about condensing a problem and often conveying quite a lot of information or logic without spelling it all out in words. I think the ability to convey rich detail in a graphic form originates from the use of kanji, the Chinese ideograms that are sometimes obviously derived from the thing they are meant to represent – trees, mountains, rivers – or can be broken down into components which represent concepts from which a meaning can be deduced. For example “speech” plus “true” = “evidence”.

The preference for visualisation can lead to cross-cultural communication snafus. Japanese PowerPoint presentations have a tendency to be so densely packed with graphics full of tiny text that squinting Westerners start to yearn for white spaces and a maximum of five bullet points per slide. If you add an allergy to long paragraphs of English to a preference for visuals, it’s no wonder many lengthy English reports and emails are left unread by Japanese recipients.

It’s not just written communication where problems occur. Whilst Americans and the British may be happy to yak away in a teleconference, the chances are that Japanese person lost the thread way back, and is wondering what the canteen lunch special is.

So what to do? Obviously, when presenting an idea or showing a problem to Japanese people, try to use visuals – bar charts, pie charts and so on. Even trying to sketch your idea on a piece of paper or a whiteboard as you talk can be of help. I have heard that teleconferences that have a web based visual component – slides or a spreadsheet that can be pointed at – work much better when there are Japanese participants than pure voice or visuals of ‘talking heads’.

So, the next time you need to make a proposal to a Japanese person, see if you can draw it first.

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 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。

Share Button
Read More
Bow, shake hands or poke someone in the eye?

When this month’s shinnenkai (New Year’s parties) started, I found I had to snap back into remembering to bow properly, whilst negotiating my wine and canapés, as I exchanged akemashite omedetou with Japanese business acquaintances. It felt awkward at first but thanks to my time in a Japanese school, where we bowed every morning to the teacher, and had twice weekly outdoor assemblies where we rehearsed standing at ease, then standing to attention, then bowing – the proper way to bow is somewhat instinctive for me.

Non-Japanese bowing will almost certainly get it wrong

For most non-Japanese people, bowing correctly is a challenge, and in my opinion, we worry too much about it. Most Japanese people, when meeting with a foreign person, will expect to shake hands. I usually advise that a slight nod of the head or bend at the waist is a good cultural compromise when shaking hands with a Japanese person. If you have not been brought up to bow, and also had it drilled into you again at an induction course in a Japanese company, when you do try to do a full bow, you will almost certainly get it wrong. Bowing too deeply or for too long a time will result in your Japanese counterpart feeling obliged to dip down again for a further round of needless bowing.

No bowing zones?!

You often see this happening in public in Japan, where neither party wants to stop bowing first, in order to show respect. In the mid-1990s, an English-language magazine targeting Tokyo’s expat community extrapolated on this phenomenon by publishing an April Fool’s article saying authorities were going to set up “no bowing” zones, near revolving doors and on station platforms as excessive bowing was causing a safety hazard. Plenty of people believed the article.

I do know of one case where bowing actually did lead to physical injury. A British employee of a Japanese company in Europe related the story to me: “Our new Japanese Managing Director for Europe was going round all the departments to introduce himself and as he turned to me I put out my hand to shake hands. He, however, had started to bow down low, and I caught him right in the eye. Fortunately it turned out he has a good sense of humour, and whenever I see him in the corridor now, he covers his eye with his hand!”

Bowing is deeply engrained in the Japanese psyche

Bowing is deeply engrained in the Japanese psyche, it would seem. One Japanese friend of mine, who has been living in the UK for 30 years, still bows whenever he meets a Japanese person, even in the streets of London. I asked another Japanese friend of mine, who has also been living for many years in London, if she would ever consider hugging her mother when she came to meet her at Narita airport each time she returns to Japan. “Ewww no!” she said, and then laughed, realising how years of kissing, hugging and shaking hands in the UK had made no impact on her instincts at all.

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.

 

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。

Share Button
Read More
Attitudes to time

Whenever I run training sessions for mixed groups of Japanese and European managers, it is always fun to observe the nationalities of the participants who arrive first and of the people who arrive last. In a seminar last week, the Norwegian participant was precisely five minutes early. The last to arrive (more than an hour late) was a Frenchman, originally from the south of France. In Europe, it is reliably the case that the further south you travel, the more people have a ‘flexible’ view of time.

When I later picked up on this with the Norwegian participant, he looked worried for an instant and said “I was only five minutes early”. This attitude strikes me as very similar to the Japanese approach, which is to be early for appointments, but only by five minutes. Any earlier than that would inconvenience the other person. I have been in coffee shops in Japan, near clients’ offices, and realised that other salespeople, like me, who had arrived too early, were killing time with a quick cup of coffee. I realised this because at about ten minutes to the hour, we would all rush to the till to pay and go.

This behaviour seems to be in direct contradiction to Japanese schedule-keeping patterns when it comes to internal meetings, however. Unless there is a senior executive at one of these meetings, Japanese employees are frequently late. This also holds true, regrettably for me, for training sessions. If there is a senior person is coming, the five minute rule applies. I have even seen junior employees peer through the window, see that a senior person has already arrived, and run away rather than be late.

It would seem that when the meeting is of peers and is ‘in-group’, Japanese people revert to a more relaxed view of time. Not only are they frequently late, but they will answer e-mails via their laptops in the meeting, keep their mobile phones switched on to take calls and be hauled out of the meeting to talk to someone else, sometimes not returning for half an hour or more.

My explanation of this is that when it is an internal meeting, a Japanese worker does not feel the meeting excludes or has priority over all the other relationships that he or she is having to attend to at the time.

While this kind of behaviour drives North Europeans crazy, I also had a Japanese expatriate manager complain to me about the behaviour of a German purchasing manager he went to visit. Apparently the German left his mobile phone on, without even muting the ringtone, all the way through the meeting. Every time the phone rang, the German purchasing manager would look at who was calling, then put the phone back down and let it ring until it switched to voice mail.

I have talked to various Europeans, including Germans, about this, and have come to the conclusion that, for once, there is no national cultural tendency behind this behaviour, it is merely a customer playing status and power games with a supplier!

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 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。

Share Button
Read More
Women in Japanese Business

Many of my clients who have Japanese customers have been asking me recently whether there will be a problem if they put a woman in charge of a Japanese client account. Being female myself, I instinctively want to support other women in business and declare that there should not be a problem.

I never felt discriminated against or even any resistance from clients in the nine years I worked in a Japanese company, selling to Japanese customers for many of those years. No doubt it helped that I clearly had the endorsement of my blue chip Japanese company, and that I spoke fluent Japanese. Also, as I described in my previous article, the “person in charge” role I had, known as madoguchi or tantosha, is understood to have a team behind it, including a team leader and general manager, so if there was some need to have a senior, male person involved, this could easily be arranged.

I also thought there were some positive advantages to being female. I sensed the clients enjoyed the novelty of having a young, foreign female to deal with and that they also felt more relaxed and were more open with me than they might have been with a male salesperson. Showing that you are intelligent and competent is of course key, as well as making the most of the perception that (rightly or wrongly), women are more detail oriented and accurate.

It is harder for Japanese women than foreign women to gain management roles, as there is a widespread assumption that that any Japanese woman must be in an administrative role. This is based in harsh reality – Japan has the lowest percentage of companies with a woman in senior positions, according to a worldwide survey published by Grant Thornton this year. Nonetheless, Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey and PwC all have or have had Japanese women as partners or in senior positions in their Japan offices and Accenture Japan makes a special point of welcoming women graduates in its recruitment.

Even Japan-headquartered companies are having to change the way they treat women employees. “Tayousei” (diversity) has become a buzzword, and is taken to mean giving equal career opportunities to women. Most major companies stopped graduate recruitment of so-called ‘Office Ladies’ in the 1990s and now outsource most of their administrative staffing needs to temp agencies. Although the number of women in the management track at major companies has not increased dramatically, with an ageing population and a dearth of middle management due to hiring freezes in the 1990s, making the best use of half the population has become a necessity rather than window dressing.

I have heard Japanese men say that the reason they don’t put women in client facing positions is that women “don’t drink”, which is a euphemism, I suppose, for the client entertainment, in hostess bars and so on, which are deemed by some in Japan to be necessary for good business relationships. This may be so, but frankly, if the main reason your customer chooses you as a supplier is because of your in-depth knowledge of girlie bars, you have a problem!

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 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。

Share Button
Read More
‘Tantosha’ and ‘madoguchi’ coordinate communication traffic

When I worked for a Japanese multinational in the UK, I used to answer my phone with the name of the company. Annoyingly, this meant I was often mistaken for a secretary or a receptionist, but I persisted because I knew it was what our Japanese customers and colleagues expected. We all had direct lines, both in the UK and Japan, but in Japan there was ‘group pick up’ for each team and it was considered unprofessional to let any phone on the team ring more than a few times. Voicemail was not used and still is not widespread in Japan.

Japanese customers expect to get through to the person in charge, the tantosha, or someone who is on their team. We had a whiteboard calendar in my Japanese office, where everyone wrote in their business trips and meetings, so each team member knew where the others were. We also knew the basics of each other’s business, thanks to the fact that, as in most Japanese companies, we had an open plan office, with teams clustered together, so we could hear and see what other team members were doing. So not only could we tell the customer where the tantosha was, but we could usually say something more helpful about the status of their business than “can I take a message?”

A tantosha is not necessarily in charge of the team nor do they have ultimate decision-making authority but does have day-to-day responsibility for that customer’s business.

The term ‘madoguchi’, window, is sometimes used, when someone is the ‘window’ into an overseas office or another partner company. They may not be the expert or decision maker that the other company ultimately need to speak to, but they are the ‘first port of call’ or may be in charge of the overall coordination of a deal.

An Australian fund manager I met last week commented on this ‘madoguchi’ system. “I think the poor Japanese guy in the company we were dealing with was confused and overworked, because he seemed to be the only person on their side working on the deal. Whereas on our side there were about half a dozen people he had to talk to, each expert in their own area, and each with decision making authority. He, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any decision making power at all.”

Japanese customers are accustomed to this idea of an assigned contact person, who is accessible at almost all times, who is part of a team that works collaboratively, and the access point to a network of decision makers and experts. In the UK, many of the professional services firms I advise, such as accountants and lawyers, have adapted to this expectation by setting up a “Japan Desk”, manned by Japanese speakers, who deal with incoming client queries, divert them away from using costly senior management time and provide customers with accessible, consistent and knowledgeable service.

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 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。

Share Button
Read More
There is no excuse for not having an umbrella in Japan

Japanese people who have recently arrived in the UK often wonder why British people do not use their umbrellas when it rains. I think this is partly to do with the different type of rain we have in the UK. Our weather forecasts are usually for “light showers” or “sunny intervals” or “occasional rain”. We do not have the “40% probability of rain” forecasts that you get in Japan. When it rains, it is usually not very heavy or very prolonged, unlike Japan in the rainy season. So British people can’t be bothered to carry or put up their umbrellas. The chances are it won’t rain at precisely the moment we are outside, and even if it does, it won’t be very heavy, so we will soon dry off, whereas in Japan, if it is summer, it is so humid, you can end up being damp all day if you get wet just once.

This British “can’t be bothered”, phlegmatic mentality does not work so well in Japan. There is no excuse other than that you are stupid or disorganised if you do not have an umbrella when the weather forecast says there is an 80% chance of rain.

Similarly, there is no excuse other than lack of self discipline if you are late for work or a meeting with a customer. Trains in Japan run on time. In the UK, our train systems are unreliable, and traffic congestion is a perennial problem, thanks to road works which take place during the day rather than at night as in Tokyo.

The further south you go in Europe, the less worried people are about punctuality and deadlines; what is known in Spain as the “mañana” (tomorrow, later, in the future) attitude. British people, who are of course northern European, want to be punctual but rarely are. We have almost given up trying because inevitably something will prevent us from being on time. We feel upset by being late, so we end up explaining in some detail what went wrong, to which the correct response, in the British mind, is sympathy. However, as I explained in a previous article in this series, such explanations can sound like iiwake (pointless excuses) in Japan.

A clinical trials manager at a Japanese pharmaceuticals company in the UK told me how a drugs trial she was conducting ended up being invalid, because a large number of the participants failed to complete all the tests. They simply did not turn up, because their car had broken down, they were hung-over, the trains weren’t running and so on. Her Japanese colleagues were not sympathetic. In Japan, participants would turn up. They felt she must have managed the trial badly, and indeed, I think she should have signed up even more participants than she did, as it could have been anticipated that a large percentage would drop out. It is best to be over-cautious, not optimistic, in setting deadlines when working with Japanese people, especially if part of your supply chain is in Europe.

This article by Pernille Rudlin originally appeared in the Nikkei Weekly.  This and other articles are available as a paperback and e-book “Omoiyari: 6 Steps to Getting it Right with Japanese Customers”

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。

Share Button
Read More