Category: Presentation skills

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.

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Englishnization – a precursor for the Rakuten Economic Bloc going global

Despite the acquisition of Spanish streaming media company Wuaki.tv and Viber (Israeli founded VOIP instant messaging company) and plenty of noise in the Japanese media about forcing employees to speak English, Rakuten’s profile in Europe seems pretty low to me, considering it’s the ‘world’s 3rd largest e-commerce company’.

Indeed, according to Nikkei Business, only 14% of its revenues are from outside Japan and it seems is not very profitable either.  Japanese domestic business – the so-called ‘Rakuten economic bloc’ of e-commerce, travel, banking and e-publishing – makes up the bulk of Rakuten’s business.

To charges that Rakuten’s business model does not work outside Japan, the founder Hiroshi Mikitani counters that he has only just assembled the ingredients for overseas success and that the first market in which he has started “cooking” is Taiwan.  He is hoping to learn from the experience to speed up overseas expansion.

It’s five years since Mikitani announced that the corporate language would be English, attracting much scepticism in Japan. “If we had not done that 5 years ago, we would not be the company we are today” says the Global HR GM Koichi Noda.  Japanese, Chinese and English flow around the canteen, and when different nationalities sit together, they naturally converse in English.

Mikitani’s recurring comment “Easy English is OK”, to Japanese struggling to present in English, must have helped overcome the Japanese perfectionist attitude to using English, as well as allowing people to attend English lessons during working hours. The average TOEIC score of Japan based Rakuten staff has risen from 526 in 2010 to over 800 in 2015.

As the Nikkei says, this has ensured that when overseas acquisitions join the family, other employees besides the person who led the acquisition can now converse with the new subsidiary.  Indeed, this is often the frustration of the local and expatriate executives of overseas acquisitions I have worked with, that the number of people in Japan HQ who could happily join a global conference call to improve communication flows is very limited.

The next phase of “Englishnization” as Mikitani calls it, is to improve conversation and presentation skills.  Just speaking English does not make you a global person, Noda agrees.  The second phase is intended to enable employees to negotiate and debate and will be using Pearson’s Versant testing rather than TOIEC as a measure.  The third phase is the Global Experience Program – whereby 100 or so Japan based employees spend half a year to a year overseas.

All very laudable, and I imagine there plenty of longer established Japanese companies who wish they could get away with doing something similar.

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Why Japanese minimalism does not apply to Japanese management

Following on from her article on why Germans work less hours than Japanese employees, Professor Ulrike Schaede takes a look in a second article at the need for a German “golden middle path” in Japanese management style.  She describes how Germans who know that the Bauhaus minimalist architectural style was influenced by Japanese minimalism are surprised by how Japanese presentations are so overcomplicated, or there are so many Japanese people on a team, who don’t seem to have clear roles and responsibilities, and how many meetings seem to be needed to make a decision.

In terms of the right balance on team numbers she cites Amazon’s 2 pizza rule – that team members should be no greater than 5 or 6, the number that can be fed adequately by 2 (American size) pizzas.  Individual responsibilities should be made clear, in order to improve a sense of ownership and motivation.  It has certainly been our experience at Japan Intercultural Consulting  in facilitating cross cultural sessions for teams which are multi-site (eg the Netherlands, Japan and USA) that the Europeans in particular know that teams are not going to function effectively if roles are not clearly defined.  The American “just do it” attitude and the Japanese “all pull together” approach do not work across borders.

As for too many meetings, she jokes that Japanese salarymen eat too much spinach – horenso in Japanese.  We often talk about horenso in our Japan Intercultural Consulting training sessions – it’s a mnemonic for HOkoku-RENraku-SOdan – reporting, updating and discussing, meaning “keep everyone in the loop”.  It’s true that it can lead to a lot of meetings – but in my opinion is also a basis for thinking about the kind of processes that might be needed to keep risk averse Japanese colleagues and customers happy.  Often the hokoku/report is not done via a meeting but as a one pager of bullet points about what happened once a week, for example.

But as Schaede points out, Japanese want to feel that everyone has been involved in a decision – she recommends that it is made more explicit which discussions everyone needs to be involved in and which decisions could be settled in smaller meetings.  A detailed agenda is also helpful, to keep meetings short and to the point.

She also makes a plea, as a university professor, for ‘less is more’ in terms of lecture load.  Japanese students are notorious for not studying very hard once they get to university, but as she points out, they are expected to attend many more seminars and lectures than their Western counterparts.  As a result, lecturers have a lot of their time taken up with preparing lectures, when in fact they could be spending that time on individual student needs, thereby perhaps encouraging more self study.

Schede has also noticed something that many foreigners new to Japan find it hard to get used to – “overcommunication” – the way there are constant announcements tor remind you not to leave things on trains or that the end of the escalator is coming, or that a lift is going up.  She claims not to mind this herself, saying it is a legacy of Japan’s wonderful customer service, to make customers feel looked after.

Her final contrast on “less is more” is between the minimalist business cards of Japan’s traditional elite – often showing the name only, and an increasing trend amongst the newer elite in Japan of having multiple cards, with different websites, email addresses and job titles.

So how many meetings, slides, lectures, team members and reports are enough, if cutting completely is going too far?  Professor Schaede says she often says to her students that their work could easily be cut by 10% and up to 20% if they try, and that this would sharpen their point, without losing much.

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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English should be like learning a sport, except you need cultural education too

Eriko Kawai didn’t say much when she first started at Harvard University. She had learnt English the usual Japanese way, in order to pass written exams, so had become a perfectionist. It was only when she did her MBA at INSEAD in France, and had to learn French quickly that she realised the importance of having a balance between reading, speaking, writing and listening and not being afraid of making mistakes.

She then worked for the Bank for International Settlements and the OECD in Europe, and came to realise that Japanese opposition to globalization is on the assumption that globalization means extreme Anglo-Saxon capitalism, when in fact in Europe there are many models of capitalism, and national cultures are still strong.

Consequently, to communicate effectively, you have to understand the different cultures – their politics and history, but also need to be able to talk about Japan’s own politics, history and culture, she believes.

Japanese should not be afraid that teaching English at primary school will mean that they will not speak Japanese properly, she asserts – however Japanese children should be taught to reason effectively in Japanese, otherwise they will not be able to reason in other languages. She still tries to memorise any presentations she has to make or interview questions she wants to ask in English, to ensure that there is eye contact and emotional engagement.

By practicing every day, speaking out loud and having fun doing it, you should be able to develop English “muscles”, says Kawai.

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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Marketing Japan to attract foreign investment – a fourth arrow?

Prime Minister Abe made a short, punchy speech at the “Invest in Japan” event I attended yesterday in London.  Perhaps not quite as passionate as his longer speech at the Guildhall last year, but his key message was clear, that Foreign Direct Investment was an important pillar of his growth strategy and that he was aiming, with Abenomics, to make Japan a more market friendly, more exciting destination for foreign companies.

The current fashion is to say that Abenomics is losing steam, because of the lack of progress with what Abe has termed the third arrow – deregulation and structural reform.  My view on this is that the Japanese government can deregulate and pass new, more liberal laws all it likes, but without significant support and action from major Japanese companies, not much will happen.

So foreign investment might be a way to stimulate action and change, if foreign competition is able to enter the Japanese market more aggressively.  There is something of a chicken and egg situation, however, in that foreign investors often say they need to see deregulation and structural reform implemented before they will invest in Japan.

There is also a concern, voiced by ex ambassador Sir David Wright at the event, that foreign companies are still seen as “foreign” and may not get equal access to the benefits of any reforms or incentives.  The mayor of Kobe was quick to pick up on this point – “foreign companies in Kobe will be seen as Kobe companies” he said, which is no doubt a legacy of Kobe’s long standing history as an international port.  Certainly we felt very at ease when we lived in Kobe, as long ago as the 1970s, despite not being members of the rather snobby expat Kobe Club.

So Abe gave concrete examples of where there had been deregulation, in the energy sector and pharmaceutical sectors and also a strengthening of corporate governance, based on British standards.  The rest of the morning was given over to presentations by the mayors of Fukuoka and Kobe, and the governors of Mie and Hiroshima prefectures, who were keen to emphasise another area of reform – the new national strategic special zones, where regulations will have a lighter touch, to enable innovation.

It seems Japan’s mayors and governors have more autonomy than in the UK, so many of them were able to showcase particular initiatives and tax breaks they had introduced to encourage investment into their regions.  I had been dreading these presentations, expecting a succession of grey men explaining word for word, dreary, text box heavy powerpoint slides in incomprehensible or badly interpreted English, but to the audience’s great delight, the 4 regional leaders wowed us all with their youthful energy, dynamism and sometimes excellent, but always bravely and strongly delivered English, which seemed to come from the heart rather than a script written by someone else.

These men (there was supposed to be one woman too, the mayor of Yokohama, but she was unwell) could be Abe’s fourth arrow – if they can make a convincing case for a Japan as an Asian hub, beyond the bureacracy and vested interests of Tokyo – but I think a bit more strategic thinking behind the marketing is needed.  Some sectors in the UK are already aware of Japan’s potential – I was delighted to see Paul Alger of the UK Fashion and Textile Association steer Hawick Knitwear towards Japan as a basis for entry into China, in the recent BBC programme The New Troubleshooter.

The Fukuoka mayor got some way there, with his eyecatching map showing that Fukuoka was equidistant to Shanghai, Seoul and Tokyo.  Not to mention the fact that KLM has just started flights from Amsterdam to Fukuoka – a point that caught my attention, as we are about to move to Norwich, and I am looking forward to using Norwich International (sic) Airport  to get to Japan, as it has several KLM flights to Amsterdam a day.

There was rather too much emphasis on the nice lifestyle to be had in Japan’s cities (and it made me very nostalgic for the lovely times I had living in Hiroshima and Kobe) and not quite enough hard headed business appeal, particularly along the lines of the point that Steve Crane, of Business Link Japan, made in the final presentation of the day, that it is important to move near your ecosystem and supply chain, when considering location.

The leaders did note the various industries or specialist zones that they were focusing on regionally, but it’s possible that they took it too much for granted that we would understand how industrial clustering works in Japan.  Actually, as most of the audience were the usual Japan gang, this kind of marketing would have been wasted on us anyway.

Which brings me to my biggest constructive criticism – the government bodies that organised this seminar, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Embassy of Japan in the UK, the Japan Local Government Centre and JETRO, really need to network more with the various regions, cities and companies in the UK, so that more representatives of UK companies come to these seminars.  JETRO is apparently about to hire some industry sector specialists in Europe as consultants – I presume to help with that.  The JLGC head told me that twinning Japanese cities with regional governments in the UK has proved difficult, as no British politician or bureaucrat in this current climate of austerity wants to be seen to be jetting off to Japan on a sushi and sake junket.

As Sir David Warren, former ambassador to Japan, succinctly put it, “it needs to be proved that Japan can be more than a profitable niche”.

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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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。

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Business presentations should be thought of like maths exams

Westerners who have sat through a presentation by a Japanese businessperson usually complain afterwards that it lacked punch and a logical progression, and seem to have had too many slides, crammed full of data and graphics, with a jumble of font sizes, typefaces and colours. More often than not, due to a discomfort with public speaking, especially in English, the Japanese presenter has had his head stuck in the script the whole way through or read out the bullet points on the slides, word for word.

This public speaking style is partly explained by the difference in Japanese and Western education. Whereas Western schools give plenty of opportunities for practising public speaking – drama classes, school plays, public speaking competitions and class debates – most Japanese schools are still focused on the teacher disseminating information, rather than classroom discussions. And, of course, English teaching in Japanese schools is still far more centred on written rather than spoken English.

Slideware took a long time to take off in Japanese corporations, but if you look at the shelves of business books in Japanese bookstores now, you can see that self help books on mastering slide presentations have become increasingly popular.

While I see more and more Japanese who know how to present in a way that appeals to Westerners, I sense that there is still a fundamental difference between Japan and Europe or North America in what a presentation is supposed to be about.

Last year, I was involved in helping German and Japanese senior managers make pitches to their board directors. The German managers were happy with our standard Western approach. We cut out some of the slide content, tried to get a clear line of logic and then rehearsed the presentation until it was slick and within the time limit. The Japanese managers looked increasingly unhappy, however. I thought it was just because of the stress of having to learn their lines in English, but they said they felt there was a fundamental cultural difference. “Our German team mates seem to believe presentations are all about style”, they said, “whereas for us, it is about showing our effort (doryoku). We need to explain the process of our thinking”.

This could be a difference in what constitutes “logic”. In the West we are told that when making a presentation or writing an essay you should “say what you are going to say, say it, then tell them what you just said”.

The Japanese philosophical model, ki-sho-ten-ketsu (introduction, follow-up,turn/change conclusion), may look similar, but the emphasis is on giving the context and often leaving the audience to figure out the conclusion. So, when presenting to Japanese customers, although I am not saying you should bore them into submission, you may need to give more details on the context and history, before reaching your conclusion. Rather like a maths exam, you have to show the working out, not just the answer, to get full points.

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。

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New book from Pernille Rudlin and Rochelle Kopp

We are delighted to announce that Business Communication, written by Pernille Rudlin and Rochelle Kopp, was published in Japan by Lightworks and First Press on 21st June 2008.

ビジネス・コミュニケーション

ライトワークスビジネスベーシックシリーズ

ロッシェル・カップ 著　パニラ・ラドリン 著　ファーストプレス 版

2008年06月 発行　ページ 107P　サイズ Ａ５ソフトカバー　 1,260円（1,200円＋税）

ISBN 978-4-904336-01-4 (4-904336-01-1)

ビジネス・コミュニケーションとはコミュニケーションの基本は、「自分の意見を他人に伝えること」と「他人が言おうとしていることを理解すること」に尽きる。ビジネス・コミュニケーション能力を身につけることは、ビジネスパーソンが成果を上げるための最も確かな方法の一つである。世界標準をマスターする!日経新聞、日経WOMANで活躍中の著者が 日系企業へのコンサル経験を基に執筆 日本人が陥りがちな弱点の克服法を米英スペシャリストがわかりやすく解説。

Written with young Japanese managers in mind, the book contains short case studies, graphical illustrations and descriptions of various key topics in business communication such as giving feedback, making presentations and brainstorming.

第１章　効果的なコミュニケーションの要素

１　明快さ

２　一貫性

３　前後関係

４　礼儀

５　確認

６　簡潔性

７　論理的な構成

８　衝突の回避

第２章　一般的なコミュニケーションのタイプ

１　効果的な質問

２　説得力のある主張

３　要求／指示をする

４　情報の伝達

５　ポジティブ・フィードバック

６　ネガティブ・フィードバック

７　問題解決

８　非言語コミュニケーション

第３章　特殊な状況下でのコミュニケーション

１　ビジネスメール

２　ミーティング

３　ブレーンストーミング

４　インタビューを受ける

５　インタビューをする

６　交渉

７　プレゼンテーション

８　危機管理

It’s available on Amazon.co.jp and Rakuten

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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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”

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