2 weeks Ago By Thilina Walpola
LESSONS FROM MY CAREER: SYNTHESIZING MANAGEMENT THEORY WITH PRACTICE – PART 9The Japanese Culture and Corporate PracticesAfter the preliminaries, we started the Asian Productivity Organization (APO) course in earnest. While different lecturers took us through the post-war developments, the structure of the industry, the Corporate Practices, and so on, a few struck me as unusual but effective in Japan, but perhaps not implementable in Sri Lanka.One was the lifetime employment practice of Japan and the loyalty to one organization rather than the profession.
For example, if you ask a Japanese what his job is, he will likely say, “I work for Mitsubishi, or I work at Nissan.” We in Sri Lanka would perhaps say, “I am an engineer, or I am an accountant”.Furthermore, the rise within the organization in Japan is on a rotational basis, meaning that your degree may be in engineering, but you may be placed in Marketing and move on to HR.
When you come to a senior level, you are familiar with all functional areas. There are very few specialists.Although there may be a premium for your qualification at the start of your career, the increments are based on seniority.
There is a very high respect for senior positions and for age. At Dankotuwa Porcelain, when I thought it was time to retire at 60, the Japanese would have none of it. “In Japan, life begins at sixty, they told me,” and I had to hold on.
The Japanese value teamwork and are shy about performing individual employee evaluations as they may disrupt the harmony of the team. Even the famous Edward Deming, an American who revolutionized quality management in Japan, considered individual employee performance evaluation one of America’s deadly diseases. He says it destroys people rather than build them.
In my career, I have always had a mixture of the American and Japanese systems.These sessions gave us a thorough understanding of Japanese practices, culture, and habits so that we could relate well to the lectures to follow. One word of caution, though: Many of these traditional systems are giving way to modern ones that are more performance-based, with faster decision-making and a high focus on performance.
The history lessons were also very appropriate: learning about the closed period to the outside world, the Meiji restoration and opening up, and modernization. This part of the program was for information only to better understand Japan. It was not meant to be prescriptive.
However, the next phase was more prescriptive.The Japanese are more consultative in decision-making, using Ringi and Kaizen to consult even the lowest-level workers to solicit ideas on floor-level issues. While they deeply respect the hierarchy, they often meet after work in a restaurant to have a drink and treat their bosses as peers.
The Japanese word for drinking is Nomu. Communicating freely while drinking is therefore termed ‘nomunication”.Japanese Culture through American EyesOne of our first lecture series was delivered by the President of the American Institute of Industrial Engineers, Dr Marvin Mundel from Purdue University, USA.
His knowledge and analysis of Japanese culture were superb. He was fluent in Japanese, speaking, reading and writing. He was married to a Japanese lady.
The American occupying forces had commissioned him to audit some Government functions during the post-war period. What more credentials would you need to teach us Japanese culture and habits from a different viewpoint? He would occasionally entertain us by relating hilarious stories. When Gen MacArthur was in control of Japan, the Japanese occasionally tried to fool the auditor and discuss the matter in Japanese, not realizing that the auditor (Mundel) understood every word they said privately.
Japanese are very private individuals, and it is very difficult to get into their inner core. I learned this much later, working with the Japanese at Dankotuwa Porcelain. While it took some years to gain their trust, it was a different story once you were closer to the core.
In fact, they were fiercely loyal to me thereafter. It takes some time to win their trust, but you will never get into the core.I recall Dr Mundel’s visit to Sri Lanka.
We hosted him and Prof John Carson for dinner. Professor John Carson was in Sri Lanka for one academic term to conduct a course at the Postgraduate Institute of Management. At the dinner, the conversion shifted to the Japanese and Japanese Management.
At one stage, Professor Carson asked Dr Mundel, “Have you ever got close to a Japanese because they are so reserved?”. The answer surprised Prof Carson because Dr Mundel’s response was, “Yes, I have got very close; in fact, I married one”. Prof Carson almost fell off his chair.
Back to the course, Dr Mundel’s industrial engineering expertise was mainly focused on measuring and improving the productivity of service sector activities. He even authored a publication on this, which was considered the “Bible” for industrial engineers. Just before coming to Japan, I was working on an assignment to improve the productivity of the Leave Unit at the Ceylon Tyre Corporation.
Despite its eight clerical staff, it was unable to meet the deadlines.They resisted my efforts, claiming that no one could measure clerical work. I got all the answers in Japan, learned the techniques from Dr Mundel’s 10-day course, and solved the problem on my return.
I even recommended reducing staff by two and improving the process to deliver the required information much earlier than expected. The unit discussed the new timeline with the general manager and agreed to the new timeline but requested that the transfer of the two redundant staff be suspended for the time being. It was granted.
The unit was unhappy; they were dissatisfied with me and showed it at every party after the first round of drinks.Absolute cleanlinessLearning Corporate Management TechniquesThere were many lectures that taught us quality management techniques, productivity analysis, problem isolation, and so on. They were so refined and nowhere comparable with what we were using in Sri Lanka.
The Japanese strategy of making everyone understand the concepts of quality improvement through lessons on the radio, lessons on TV, and Government exhortations to improve quality to enable the country to bounce back after the war was unique.A technique I learned and use even today is “Behaviour Modelling,” which trains managers to handle employee grievances. The philosophy of looking after your workers has long historical roots in Japan.
There are many examples of Japanese companies experiencing a downturn, but the last resort is retrenchment.Another great habit I got to know and practice even now is the habit and techniques of getting to the root causes without merely using your gut feelings, assumptions, and hunches. In the rest of my career, I had a policy for my subordinates: They were disallowed from suggesting causes without analyzing the data substantiated with visual presentations.
The one-week Business Game halfway through the course was to surface what we did not know. It was exhausting and set up according to an actual Japanese business cycle, with a mock bank and a media house. We were organized into companies.
Two companies went bankrupt. The lesson was that we need to understand finance and marketing, too, to be successful decision-makers.The final presentation was in a lovely hotel near Mount Fuji.
It was at that program, when I made my presentation and separated what we can control from what we cannot, that Professor Kawase of Keio University told me, “Mr Wijesinha, in Japan, we do not consider anything uncontrollable. What you see around you and Japan’s economic miracle are due to this belief.” Since then, I, too, have adopted this policy.
Study ToursOur visits to factories were many and quite fascinating. They were all guided, and all important aspects were well explained. I had never seen such orderly and clean factories.
Even the small-scale, family-run factories were well organized. One phenomenon in all factories was that the refreshments served were never lavish. Much later, at Dankotuwa Porcelain, the Japanese Technical Director told me that there is a saying in Japan that if you are lavish with your entertainment, the organization is bound to fail.
We were beginning to understand the frugal habits inculcated by the Shinto practices.Having seen the wonderful Japanese factories, I was determined to improve our Tyre Corporation factory upon my return. While I got some support from the middle management, I found the senior management quite sceptical.
I managed to get at least the floor lines drawn to separate the walking aisles on which no material or trolleys should be kept only to find that the lines were deliberately obliterated by the workers that very day. Our strategy may have been wrong. We should have convinced the workers of the benefits.
After my MBA, about five years later, I learned the science and art of managing change.Sightseeing in JapanThe organizers generously arranged sightseeing tours for us, often along with factory visits or educational programs. From the Tokyo Tower to the Mikimoto Pearl Island, we saw most of the significant places.
Kyoto, the ancient capital, was fantastic. The places of worship were so clean and hygienic. The temples and shrines were frequented by busy businessmen and corporate executives who would move their hands to gather the incense fragrance towards them to “purify their heart,” they said.
These three months in Japan changed my life, my beliefs, and I was able to contribute substantially to transfer of Japanese Management Techniques to Sri Lanka.The next episode would be Moving On from the Tyre Corporation.Sunil G Wijesinha(Consultant on Productivity and Japanese Management TechniquesRetired Chairman/Director of several Listed and Unlisted companies.
Awardee of the APO Regional Award for promoting Productivity in the Asia and Pacific RegionRecipient of the “Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays” from the Government of Japan.He can be contacted through email at bizex.seminarsandconsulting@gmail.
com).
