The Leadership Japan Series Dr. Greg Story

There is a debate about whether Japan is any different from anywhere else when it comes to leading the team.  Intellectually, I can appreciate there are many similarities because people are people, but I always feel there are important differences.  One of the biggest differences is how people are trained to become leaders in Japan.  I should really clarify that statement and say how they are not trained to become leaders. The main methodology for creating leaders in Japan is through On The Job Training (OJT). I can see there is a crisp logic to the idea of OJT back in the day, however it is now a flawed system in the modern world of Japan.  In the West, leadership training is a given, because the value is recognised and so the investment is made to better educate the leadership cohorts through each generation.
The first problem with Japan OJT is it presumes your boss knows about leading.  There is very little formal leadership training going on in Japan.  I don’t believe it just about investing the money.  There is no great tradition here for corporate leadership training.  Before we dive into this subject, I believe we should clarify what is a leader in Japan and what is a manager and what is different. 
Japan, in my observation, is full of managers, and there are few leaders. A manager runs the machine on budget, on quality, and on time. The leader does all of that and two very important additional tasks.  The leader persuades the team that the direction they are advocating is the correct one and, secondly, they build up the capabilities of their staff through one-on-one coaching.  By the way, barking out orders like a mad pirate captain doesn’t qualify as coaching.
OJT probably made a lot of sense up until about fifty years ago, when it started to be disrupted by technology.  By the 1980s, desktop computing became common in Japan and gradually the boss lost his (and they were mainly men) typist and had to start doing his own typing on the computer.  The advent of email in the mid-1990s was the real death blow to the boss’s time management.  Now the boss had become super busy and time availability for coaching staff became much diminished.
What this means is that we have had been through multiple generations of staff mainly educated through OJT and who have been short-changed on the leadership modelling by their “manager” boss.  Each corporate generation passes on how to be a manager to the next generation and unless there is some intervention through formal leadership training, there is no real progress.
 Of course, there will always be exceptions who prove the rule and some managers who make it out of that gravitational pull of OJT and become real leaders.  This is the lightning strike theory of leadership development and isn’t a great proposition to ensure that the firm’s leadership bench is stacked with professionals.
The key plank in leadership is no longer task experience.  The old model was the boss had done all the tasks of their subordinates and knew their jobs inside out.  Today, there is much more speciality and technology is making sure it isn’t experience alone which will carry the day for the boss.  Many companies in Japan are moving away from the old model of age and stage and instead promoting people based on ability.  Just rotating through various jobs in the machine won’t be enough anymore.
Leaders have to become expert communicators and masters of environment building, such that individuals can motivate themselves.  How many leaders receive any training to assist their communication and people skills?  Very, very few and everyone else had to work it all out through trial and error. That hit and miss approach is very expensive.
The younger staff want different things to their parents and the modern boss in Japan has to adjust.  The bishibishi or super strict model of leadership is now cast out on to the rubbish tip of leadership history in Japan.  Bosse

Do leaders have to be perfect? It sounds ridiculous to expect that, because none of us are perfect. However, leaders often act like they are perfect. They assume the mantle of position power and shoot out orders and commands to those below them in the hierarchy. They derive the direction forward, make the tough calls and determine how things are to be done. There are always a number of alternative ways of doing things, but the leader says, “my way is correct, so get behind it”. Leaders start small with this idea and over the course of their career they keep adding more and more certainty to what they say is important, correct, valuable and needed to produce the best return on investment.
With an army of sycophants in the workforce, the leader can begin to believe their own press. There is also the generational imperative of “this is correct because this was my experience”, even when the world has well and truly moved on beyond that experience. If you came back from World War Two as an officer, you saw a certain type of leadership being employed and the chances are that was why there were so many “command and control” leaders in the 1950s and 1960s. The Woodstock generation questioned what had been accepted logic and wanted a different boss-employee relationship, where those below had more input into the direction of the company. Technology breakthroughs made hard skill warriors the gurus of leadership. Steve Jobs abusing and belittling his engineers was accepted, because he was so smart.
Technology has however democratized the workplace. The boss is no longer the only one with access to key information. Being smart and abusive isn’t acceptable anymore. The boss-employee relationship has changed. It is going to keep changing too, especially here in Japan where there are 1.5 jobs for every person working.
Recruiting and retaining people becomes a key boss skill. The degree of engagement of the team makes a big difference in maintaining existing customer loyalty and the needed brand building to attract new customers. Social media will kill any organisation providing sub-standard service, because the damage travels far, wide and fast. The role of the boss has changed, but have the bosses kept up?
Recent Dale Carnegie research on leaders found four blind spots, which were hindering leaders from fully engaging their teams. None of these were hard skill deficiencies. All four focused on people skills.
Leaders must give their employees sincere praise and appreciation We just aren’t doing it enough. With the stripping out of layers in organisations, leaders are doing much bigger jobs with fewer team members. Time is short and coaching has been replaced by barking out commands. Work must get done fast because there is so much more coming behind it. We are all hurtling along at a rapid clip. The boss can forget that the team are people, emotional beings, not revenue producing machines. Interestingly, 76% of the research respondents said they would work harder if they received praise and appreciation from their boss. Take a reality check on yourself. How often to do you recognise your people and give them sincere praise?
Leaders do well to admit when they are wrong The scramble up the greasy pole requires enormous self-belief and image building. Mistakes hinder rapid career climbs and have to be avoided. Often this is done by shifting the blame down to underlings. The credit for work well done, of course, flows up to the genius boss who hogs all the limelight. The team are not stupid. They see the selfishness and respond by being only partially engaged in their work. In 81% of the cases, the research found that bosses who can admit they made mistakes are more inspirational to their team members.
Effective leaders truly listen, respect and value their employees’ opinions Who knows the most? Often the boss assumes that is them, because they have been anointed “boss”. They have more experience, better in

Here is a handy success equation which is easy to remember: our mindset plus our skill set, will equal our results.  This is very straightforward and unremarkable, but we get so embroiled in our day to day world, we forget to helicopter above the melee and observe the lay of the land.  A great mindset coupled with lacklustre skills, won’t get us very far.  A poor mindset with great skills won’t do it either, so we need both.
What is our mindset composed of?  How we think is critical.  Are we operating with a positive mindset?  If we are deep in depression about the circumstances of the business, we are stuck in a hole from which it can be hard to emerge.  We are what we think, so control over what we think becomes so important. That also means being strict about what we put into our minds.  Stay away for fluff, endless scrolling on social media and negativity.  Find the useful, positive and valuable and make that the diet for our mind.
Our opinions influence how we see the world.  Where do these opinions come from?  They are usually the product of our access to quality, correct information.  There is a tricky balance here because a lot of the news we need to consume is laced with negativity and that can pollute our positive attitude.  So we need to curate the information we take in, to help us make informed decisions, based on correct data.
Our beliefs are similarly formed from data, personal experience and what we hear from people we trust.  Our degree of success can be impacted by our self-belief. It can be a drag on our progress if we are limiting how we see our potential.
We believe we are operating logically, except we often make decisions based on emotion rather than logic. Being in control of our emotion is a fundamental first step to getting ourselves into a position to be successful. Wild mood swings make us a difficult person to work with or get close to.  A short temper can have us explode in haste and repent at leisure, after we have created havoc all around us.
We are all drowning is a sea of information today as the internet propels constant updates and new content at us.  When I was at University we went to the stacks in the library to find the few books available there and if someone else had that textbook you needed you dipped out. Microfiche was the big innovation to access information in a non-paper format. For the younger generation out there, microfiche was an ancient method of taking microphotographs of physical pages and putting it on to film you could scroll through, using a special microfiche reader. I noticed with my son’s education, his problem is the constant assault of data and the difficulty of working out which information was valuable amongst the flotsam and jetsam battering his attention everyday. Getting insight becomes the game of success because we don’t lack for content anymore.
Once we have the mindset correct then we have to take action.  This is often easier said than done. We are so busy and translating insight into outcomes is not a given in this constant rabid struggle against the demands on our time. Behaviour determines outcomes and the formation of good habits is the key here. If we form the right habits then we take the right actions and we form the right default behaviour which adds to our success.
The way we communicate flows from these habits and behaviours and we should be seeking inclusivity.  Business is too complex for relying on the hero worker who can do it all by themselves – that ship has sailed.  We need to be persuasive and able to garner collaboration in the workplace today.  There is so much technology available today and it spews out endless choices.  How do we get others to follow our ideas and adopt our suggestions? Our degree of cooperation from others is a compilation of our interactivity.  If we have good people skills then we can interact with other in a constructive and positive way which adds to our success. Often

It is very common to hear from expat leaders here about their frustrations with leading teams in Japan.  They get all of their direct reports together in a meeting room to work through some issues and reach some decisions.  All goes according to plan, just like at home.  Weeks roll by and then the penny drops that things that were agreed to in the meeting are not happening.  “Why is it so hard to get people who are being paid good money to do their job?”, they ask me.
One reason is that some of the people in the meeting room looked like they were in agreement because they don’t want to single themselves out as disagreeing with the boss in a public forum.  They keep a low profile and choose not to execute on a piece of work they think is a bad idea.  The Japanese methodology is the exact opposite. 
Before the meeting, the boss checks in with the key people about this idea they have and gets input and feedback.  Once these consultations have taken place and any necessary adjustments have been made, then the meeting is called.  The attendees rubber stamp the decision and then get busy making it a reality, with great haste and no resistance.  Which is better?  Well, in Japan, the nemawashi or groundwork method works very well because this is how things have been done around here for thousands of years.
For leaders, the preferred follower is both independent and highly engaged.  They know what to do and think about what they are doing, adding in extras without waiting around for the boss to tell them how to do things.  Another variety of follower, which by the way, is very common in Japan, is the dependent variety who are engaged, but need a lot of guidance.  Part of the reason here is that everyone is highly risk averse. The safest course of action is to do extremely well what the boss asks for, but don’t take any initiative. In this way, the buck stops with the boss and if things go pear-shaped, then there is no blow back on the staff member.
The more problematic types are the dependent staff who are disengaged.  In Japan, in big companies, the staff advancement method is based on age and stage, rather than outputs.  This breeds a uniformity which is easy to control but which does not generate great results.  They do their job at the minimum and that is it.  They do what they are told, but no more.
The much, much more worrying variety is the independent staff who is disengaged.  They are unhappy working for you, are capable, but are not aligned with your direction.  Maybe they think you are a dill and not adding any value here in Japan and the sooner you get on a plane and buzz off to your next posting, the better. They can be internal bomb throwers sabotaging you. 
As the leader we have many power plays we can utilize to get the team to follow us.  The obvious one is the three strips on the sleeve which says “I am the Boss, got it!”.  This authority power is backed up by the machine and gives us access to money and decision making.    Most staff get it and will respect the position even when they have doubts about the incumbent.
Expert power is a strong one because we show we bring firepower to the team and the operation.  People realise we have a lot of expertise they don’t possess and we are adding value to everyone’s efforts.  This type of authority is hard to push back on.
Reward power makes a lot of sense because we can facilitate pay rises, promotions, bonuses, study trips to cool brand name universities, choice projects, etc.  In Japanese we have the ame (飴) and the muchi (鞭) – the sweeties and the whip – this would be the sweets part.
Role model power is also effective.  We are the very model of a modern leader; we tick all the boxes.  We are skilled professionally and also with working with all different types of people and are excellent in communication.  We are a star who no one can deny.
The other power play is coercive power.  Those independent, d

I was reading an article by Anjli Raval in the Financial Times about the transition for CFOs to the CEO job. She quoted a survey by Heidrick & Struggles which showed a third of CFOs in the FTSE 100 firms became the CEO.  This is up from 21% in 2019.  Raval makes an interesting observation, “research shows that CEOs promoted from the CFO job do not drive top-line revenue growth as quickly as those from other backgrounds, particularly in the first few years”.  Why is that the case?
The article offers a few reasons about these promoted CFOs having a “cash-preservation mindset over a drive to pursue new opportunities”. Also, as the CFO, they had been making tough budget allocation decisions which had not been popular with their division head colleagues. Now they are the boss, but not everyone is happy about it.  As Yogi Berra said, “Leading is easy. It is getting people to follow you, which is hard”.
That skill set isn’t taught to people trained in finance and accounting.  Analytical people, in general, are not particularly people focused.  They are focused on the numbers and protecting the cash flow.  Nothing is wrong with that but the leader’s role is different.  They need a defined set of skills and usually they are promoted to CEO, but given no training on the areas where there are bound to be gaps.
Sales skills are not part of their academic curriculums and usually nothing they have ever done themselves.  If you are the boss of an organisation with a salesforce, then your accounting credentials count for nothing.  No one in sales will take you seriously as having any opinion worth regard.  Salespeople are a tough crowd.  They are self-sufficient, robust, resilient, self-made in their careers based on their success in selling solutions to buyers.  From their point of view, someone who just counts up the numbers, but has never sat across from thousands of ornery buyers, won’t command much respect. Fancy degrees and letters after your name are irrelevant to salespeople.
If the new CEO wants to get salespeople behind them, then they had better spend a lot of time with their salespeople visiting buyers and hearing firsthand how tough the profession of sales is.  I am thinking back to all the CFOs I have worked with and in my experience, most of them looked down on salespeople.  That attitude won’t win any hearts and minds and as the boss, we need our salespeople to be fully committed and firing on all cylinders.  Treating the salespeople as the great unwashed may make the new boss feel superior, but salespeople are experts at reading between the lines and summing people up very quickly.  They won’t be fooled.
The other usual skill gap is in dealing with all different types of people.  When you spend your career in technical specialty areas, there is a common language and understanding with your immediate colleagues which is not shared outside your division.  Lawyers, engineers, IT people spring to mind.  Their education didn’t put much emphasis on communication and people skills and when they become the boss, that gap is highlighted. Does the organisation recognise that and give them any training?  Usually “no”.  Somehow it is imagined they will just magically transform themselves after a long career path in a box and become hale fellow well met types to the masses.
I am thinking of a lawyer I know here.  I see him at a lot of networking events and always wonder about what he is trying to achieve?  Presumably he is looking of potential business as a lawyer.  Interestingly, when I engage him in conversation, he is stiff, awkward and definitely does not make you feel welcome, comfortable or relaxed in his company.  The contradiction of aims and reality is quite profound.
If you make the leap from technical person to leader, then you need to work on yourself.  The company might give you an Executive Coach, but unless they are experts in communication and people skills,

It sounds very obvious, doesn’t it, to remind the team what we are trying to achieve, but are we doing it?  Yes, we had that team Town Hall a few months ago and as the leader we outlined where we need to be at the end of the financial year. After that session, we have all been head down and getting on with it. “They know right?  I told them everything they need to know, to get on with it” is what we have ringing in our internal conversation with ourselves.  Is this true, though?
Yes, we know the number we have to achieve, but what about the strategy to get there?  Is that clear enough to everyone? Do they all remember the details or have they been consumed by the minutiae of “doing” and have been neglecting the big picture of what we need to do to deliver the result?  The daily grind makes us small.  We are worn down by the doing and the bigger picture gets shoved into the background.  The leader’s job is to brush the dust off the plan and keep reminding the team what we have to do and how we are doing it.
The other issue we face is, as leaders, we are perfectly clear and we know what needs to be done, but have we properly communicated this to the team?  In Japan, we are working across two languages all the time. Even though we think we have been clear, we know that even amongst native speakers, there can be cases where we haven’t been clear enough.  Multiply that possibility when we are operating in imperfect Japanese or our team are using imperfect English and there are endless possibilities for a lack of clarity.
It happens all the time too, that what we expect to happen doesn’t happen at all or doesn’t happen when we thought it would happen.  Our staff member didn’t actually understand what they needed to do, but it is embarrassing to admit that to the boss, so they smile nicely and disappear. We find out weeks or months later that something key has been missed or done incorrectly.  Whose fault was that?  We might want to blame them, but we had better take responsibility for not checking that our understanding of what would happen next was shared by the staff member who was going to do the work.
I always keep in mind that “I don’t know” is a code phrase in Japan for “I don’t agree”.  No one in this country believes that direct confrontation with the boss is going to get you anywhere, so everyone operates at ninja levels of obfuscation.  “Why didn’t that project get done on time” is greeted with “I don’t know” and that conversation takes us precisely nowhere.
We may have explained the rationale for the thing we wanted done and to us, that made perfect sense, but to the staff member that may represent more work and they already feel overwhelmed by what they have on their plate right now.  That project gets pushed to the back of the cue.  Conveniently, their boss is super busy and distracted by numerous other projects, so there is a strong chance the boss may forget about this imposition entirely and they can keep doing what they want to do.  When we do circle back and find there are problems, we then hit this wall of denial.
We should always assume that what we said wasn’t entirely understood, in whichever language we were using.  That means we have to be well organised time wise to be able to check on progress on the way through, rather than neglecting the process and turning up at the end expecting results. 
We should also have a regular cadence for reminding everyone what we are supposed to be doing, in terms of getting results and also referring to the strategy on how we are going to make that happen.  Yes, we told them before, but let’s assume they have all been busy and have forgotten some of the finer points.  In particular, the WHY is a big factor which we need to keep reminding everyone about and not just the what and the how.
If we are well organised, we can do this and we can smooth out a lot of wrinkles.  We can make the work process