Episode #63 Japan's Work Rhythm Is Different

Every culture has their work rhythm. Some are a start early, go home early preference, the mainstream is probably more a nine to five approach and Japan has its late evening finish. There are big variations according to the climate. Slugging it out through the heat of summer in my native Brisbane is debilitating because the heat drains you of your energy. Winter in Tokyo achieves the same feat, as you struggle to survive the cold winter months. Lifestyles of the modern Japanese are usually sleep deprived. Pitched together with horrendously long commutes, in packed train carriages, ensures you are physically exhausted by the time you get to work. The global matrix reporting lines add more complexity such that meetings are at odd hours of the night, because of the time zones at play. Are we as companies recognizing these issues? Are we focused on hours of work put in or productivity per hour? Are we out thinking the competition because our brain trust is well rested and raring to go?

Before we get into this week’s topic, here is what caught my attention lately: The number of foreign visitors to Japan topped thirty million in mid-December marking a record high in one year. The expectation is it will finish even a million higher by year end. Back in 2013 the visitor number was only ten million and in 2016 it climbed to twenty million. The target is forty million in 2020 when Japan hosts the summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. In other news, Japan last year received thirty one thousand nine hundred and sixty one applications for design registrations. Compare this to six hundred and twenty eight thousand, six hundred and fifty eight from China and sixty seven thousand three hundred and seventy four in Korea. Back in the 1980s Japan had nearly sixty thousand applications a year. The government is urging corporate executives to pursue design driven management, whereby a company leverages design as a primary driver of competitiveness

This is episode number sixty three and we are talking about how Japan’s Work Rhythm Is Different.

There are specific work rhythms for Japan. Spring is hopeless because of all the different types of kafunsho(allergies) killing our concentration. May is no good because ofgogatusbyo(May miasma). Everyone is adjusting to the start of the new financial year in April and many are struggling with their new environments and situations. How can you get any work done in that situation, I ask you?

Also, after the Golden Week break, people are exhausted from the crowded train, plane and road travel and from all the family activities which take place during that time. Summer in July and August is also bad because the heat makes us feel supremely drowsy (natsubate).

Of course we also have tsuyubyoor summer sickness thanks to the endless rain, high humidity and associated joint pain. The August Obonseason is no better because you have to travel back to your hometown to worship at the ancestor’s grave and the roads are clogged and the railways packed. Recently, we have added a couple of new ones - akibateor Autumn drowsiness - to our woes. Plus we get to reprise our kafunshoallergy season, this time in Autumn, thanks to all the grasses flowering at that time. November onwards means we face those long dark days of winter are seriously depressing and the bitter cold seeps into your bones, tiring you out every day. We have to be careful not to break something, if we fall down on those black ice pathways

There are also the rhythms of the day. We need to stay up really late watching mindless television or fixated on our tablet or hand held device’s screen. “Oh, look at what that cat is doing”, type of escapism. We have to get insufficient sleep, drag ourselves out of bed at the last possible moment, rush around in a panic to make the last possible train to get us to work on time. In Japan, 92% of people start work after 8.00am, so peak hour trains are incredibly packed, hence the torturous and exhausting commute. Trust me standing up in a moving sardine can of a train carriage for long periods of time is exhausting.

We should also stay really late at work, either waiting for the boss to leave or go out drinking with work colleagues. In the latter case, stagger home drunk and add to the excitement of re-enacting yesterday’s commute from hell, but now with a hangover. The afternoon is hard slog, because we are so sleepy after lunch. Japanese do work long hours and 16% of workers here never take a day off. Of those working more than 60 hour weeks, 27% never take any days off. I see it in my own team. They can only keep their accumulated holidays for two years and invariably they don’t use them and lose the opportunity to take a break. As the boss, I have to monitor the leave taken, not because they take more than they should, but because they don’t take enough! Tired people are expensive, because of the huge opportunity costs involved.

It is hard to be an idea genius when you are tired every single day of your work life. Innovation rarely surfaces amongst the exhausted. Yet we expect results, innovation, creativity, high work productivity and happy staff. You need to be well rested and in good condition to operate at a high level. Look at high performance athletes. They are extremely careful about their rest, recuperate ratios to their daily work out regimens. Don’t we want everyone at work also operating at peak performance levels if possible?

How many foreign bosses adjust their high powered expectations and allow for the different rhythms here though? Probably zero. In a globally connected 24/7 world, there is no modern tolerance for differences in rhythms. Matrix organisations stretching across vast time zones can’t even schedule meeting times with any rationale thought for those joining in from distant climes. If they are that insensitive to local conditions, how can they possibility gauge the local working conditions described earlier around the different seasons in japan.

So like our predecessors over the last two hundred years, we try and “hustle the East”. We meet with pretty much the same degree of success too – basically none! Rather than hustle the East, why don’t we just make some simple alterations to our work style and introduce a different work culture.

Do you have strict policies on working overtime? In many companies it is just worked, whether it is needed or not, because that is how you improve your monthly take-home pay situation. Pre-approval systems for working overtime, control long hours pretty effectively. We have that in my office. All overtime has to be signed off by me and I question they need. If they do apply, then they have to nominate on the same form, the time in lieu they will take, to balance it out.

What about having more flexible work hours so that more can start earlier or later and miss the crush during peak times. Typical Japanese company rulebooks say everyone has to take lunch between 12.00pm and 1.00pm. Why? Simply change that and we can all get into our favourite restaurants more easily at lunchtime.

Get the company seniors to take some ownership of the culture change and have them leave work much earlier. The mantra must be productivity is valued above blunt loyalty, the latter simply demonstrated through working long hours. Loyalty and hard work are great, but we need both the efficiency and effectiveness of production too. A big effort but without sufficient results doesn’t pay the bills and keep businesses afloat. Encourage the team to take (shock, horror), two or three weeks leave in a row, so they can get some well deserved rest and refresh themselves.

I remember years ago, a Japanese senior businessman I knew had been part of an industry delegation visiting South Africa. One of the local businessmen he met there asked him how many days off Japanese executives took during the year. The Japanese businessman proudly told him they hardly take any days off because they are all such hard workers. The South African’s reply stunned his Japanese visitor by saying, “the level of Japanese businessmen must be low”. After a fair bit of sputtering in shocked disbelief he asked him what he meant by that statement, which he took as a gross insult to all those hard working Japanese executives.

The South African explained to him that he took four weeks off every year. How could he possibly do that and run his business he asked. The reply was insightful. He said, in the first week, his mind is still full of work. By about week two he is starting to enjoy reading and relaxing, at last starting to rebuild his energy. This continues and gets deeper in week three. In week four though he is getting restless to get back to work and cant wait to get back to his desk. I asked my Japanese executive friend, if he adopted any of these good ideas he had heard and he said “no”, he just kept working like a dog in typical Japanese fashion because of all the peer pressure to conform.

There is a lot of wisdom in the approach of that South African businessman and we need to rethink how we make sure we are able to operate at high levels of performance, sustained over long periods of time, throughout our careers. We are all going to be working into our seventies, so this type of long time frame invites fresh ideas about how to keep going hard and going forever.

Counsel the team about the importance of getting enough sleep, to rest before they get tired and to take breaks at work, so that they are fresher and therefore less likely to make mistakes though tiredness. Remind them that the fresher team will beat the tired team, and so let’s change the dynamic at work and win.

Tired people rarely have enough bandwidth to come up with really great ideas and innovation is the key to out performing the competition. We want to put ourselves in a winning position and getting more sleep is one simple, low cost way of doing that.

Action Steps

1. Check the company work rules for outdated content
2. Introduce flexitime and restrict overtime
3. Encourage the team to take their holidays
4. Promote the importance of rest in order to beat the competition