Episode #241: My Japanese Managers Are Duds

The foreign firm sets up in Japan and they hire an experienced senior Japanese President. Things roll along, although with Japan operating like another planet. VIPs visit. Meetings are held, plans are made. The results never seem to come to fruition, despite the passing of time. “Japan is different” is trotted out each time to explain. Finally headquarters snaps, fires the extremely well paid Japanese President and send in their own guy or gal to turn things around. The newbie arrives into a heavy fog engulfed landscape, where nothing seems quite right. Three years fly by, the fog is lifting a little, but no real progress has been made. The newbie is transferred out and another one is dispatched to Nippon.

Now in the process of trying to reattach Japan to the mothership, for the first time, headquarters has better information about what is going on in Japan. It doesn’t seem to be helping much though. The new President surveys the team and finds major gaps, especially with the managers. The first observation is that they don’t seem to be any good any managing. They seem to be weak on communication, coaching and motivating skills. This is a bit hard to tell though because of the language barrier.

Over time the President finds an interpreter inside the company who can help with the language challenge. Without knowing it, the new boss has now anointed this handy person with a lot of power to influence. If they are a relatively junior person, which is often the case, then they start to be whisked outside their expertise areas pretty quickly. The boss starts asking their opinion about issues that are way outside their experience level.

The firm is being divided up between those that are ready to support the changes the boss wants to introduce and the group who want to maintain the status quo. From a Japanese perspective, having some “green” expatriate turn up into the country who doesn’t know the culture, language, business practices, clients, competitors or how things are done around here is a scary proposition. The potential damage they could do has to be minimized.

The best way to do that is keep them in the dark, uninformed about what is really going on and to secretly resist all dubious changes. Waiting them out seems like a splendid option. To the new boss’s astonishment, things they want implemented are not. Changes they need made are not. In fact, it seems so hard to get anything done in this country.

When the new boss tries to work through the managers it doesn’t seem to work. They don’t seem to have a strong sense of personal accountability for the results. They seem bereft of any ideas or innovations. They can’t seem to lead anyone to get anything done. They appear to be company bureaucrats who seem wedded to the old way of doing things. Tasks allocated are not completed or are completed at a glacial pace.

Things start to get desperate because now headquarters are breathing down the new boss’s throat about where are the improved results. Desperate times require desperate measures and maybe a good round of firings may focus the attention of the survivors. This is when the new boss discovers things are not so straightforward. Getting rid of managers for incompetence doesn’t constitute a justification for firing them in Japan. The HR function seems to be in the business of protecting people rather than helping to rationalize them.

The opposite tack doesn’t seem to be yielding any value either. Offering people bigger bonuses or commissions to stimulate the greed button in order to punch out more results isn’t getting any traction. “Why aren’t they motivated by money like everyone else?”, the boss sighs.

It rarely happens, but if the new boss took a careful look at the salaries and bonuses of the managers, they would see that they are well paid and having had a big remuneration lunch, they are not interested in any desert. They would also realise that these managers know they can’t be fired easily, so threats fail to move them. They can see that they have been managers for many years but what they cannot see is that they were promoted on the basis of their age and seniority not their capacity. Just to compound the issue, they were never given any training on how to lead. All they have to go on is the example from their own bosses, who were also promoted on the basis of age and stage, rather than ability. A vicious circle of incompetence has been firmly welded into the body of the organization.

Doubts form. Maybe that handy interpreter is in league with the old guard, feeding information both ways, to control how much gets done. A double agent so to speak. The boss’s sense of isolation and powerlessness grows daily. This is not fun and worse, it is derailing a brilliant career. Time to slip the noose and get out. The new President arrives and round and round the merry-go-round we go again. Welcome to Japan!