Episode #557: How Effective Is Your Team In Japan?

As the boss, we are always super busy. We have the management of the team and the results to work on. Everything has to be progressing on cost, on time and on quality. At the same time, we are setting the strategy, the direction for the team, communicating that so that everyone understands, establishing the values, and we are coaching and building the team members. Phew, I get tired just thinking about all of those boss roles. It is rare though that we can take a breath and reflect on the effectiveness of the teamwork. When problems arise, we tend to work on those in isolation and never have a moment to see the team as a unit, as a whole.
Here are three things to look at in your team and reflect on if you are happy with the effectiveness of the team.

1. Conflict
In a Western context, we might think we need to have constructive conflict which will help us to make better choices? In Japan, disagreements are more likely to be ignored because if we surface them, we have to publicly deal with it and discretion is the better part of valor here. Nevertheless, we cannot leave things fester and as the boss, we need to take action and sort things out.

However, the Western idea of getting the two people in the room and thrashing it out will never work here. You might force people to get together, but no one will say anything in that meeting. Conflict resolution is best done individually, privately, and quietly. We have to take an entirely different approach to sorting out conflict in Japan. We talk to each person many times and, like war time negotiators, we move them toward an armistice that can stick. Hostilities will cease and the conflict will become muted, although never forgotten.

Japan is better at working together to come up with solutions when everyone is involved and has a sense of shared ownership. We should concentrate on creating these occasions and the idea of creative conflict becomes replaced with creative cooperation, which suits the Japanese psyche much better.

2. Cooperation
In teams, there can be contradictions where it can be difficult to square the circle. Sales teams are being measured on sales results and the numbers tell everything. There can be an issue though, depending on how the salespeople are paid. If they are on salary and bonus, then there is a natural preclusion to cooperate. Japanese salespeople would love to have no individual responsibility. They always vote for salary and a group bonus, related to a group target.

This is great for hiding and avoiding accountability and these are two aspects where the Japanese salesforce can operate at ninja levels of accomplishment. We don’t do this in our organisation because we know we will always underperform and no one will be accountable. We want individuals to have specified numbers against their targets and for them to be held responsible for hitting those numbers. As you might imagine, this is not a popular idea here.

If they are on individual commissions with a base salary, then there is an inbuilt resistance to cooperating with anyone else. It becomes “everyone for themselves” very easily. This is where values and culture need to play their part and glue the unglueable together. The boss has to work hard at gluing the team together, even when there are these fundamental contradictions at play. It can be done, but it takes a lot of consistency, brand building and communication.

3. Communication
Working from home during covid definitely impacted the communication levels in our organisation. We were all operating in our bunkers at home, and the level of clarity and common understanding went down in my observation. Introverts like me loved it. You didn’t have to see or talk to anyone. For the organisation, though, it was not good. We have returned to the office and when we have people chatting in the office, it shows that what was missing before has been reclaimed.

Japanese culture is an impediment to clear communication. The language is highly circular, purposely vague, very cautious about what is being said and against declarative or strong statements. “Telling them how it is” just doesn’t fly here and people from overseas who do that are seen as children, unable to compose themselves properly. The nuances of the message are what we have to focus on in communication in Japan and we have to keep checking what we think we understand is being said. Does this suck up a lot of time – Yes. Is it going to change – No.

So how did you go analysing your own organisation against these three items of conflict, cooperation and communication? Working on our businesses rather than just working in our businesses is always a struggle. We have to proactively make sure we step back from the fray and take a cold hard look at what is really going on from time to time.