Episode #288: What Is Sontaku?

Sontaku is a Japanese word which means to surmise or conjecture about someone else’s feelings or desires. It is often associated with another Japanese word omotenashi or superb levels of hospitality, for which Japan is rightly famous. Sontaku means supplying an omotenashi style high level service before the customer has realised they actually need that service – anticipating the customer, based on the host’s conjecture about what they might need.

Steve Jobs at Apple did that with the iPhone. We didn't realize we needed it when we were all happy with Nokia, Blackberry, etc., but now we can’t go back. Wayne Gretzky, the legendary ice hockey star made the same point, when he said “skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is now”. Gary Vaynerchuk from Vaynermedia is famous for understanding where our “digital attention” is heading before we understand it ourselves. All of these aspects have a sontaku or conjecture element to them.

What about leaders in Japan? There are many business challenges facing us here: the pandemic, currency movements, government regulations, North Korea threatening our security, supply chain issues, oil price fluctuations, China’s military control of the sea lanes to Japan, weak consumer spending, potential collapse of the welfare system in Japan due to the aging population, Government debt levels, etc.

Another biggie is staffing. Delivery companies can’t keep up with on-line retail purchase orders, soba restaurants can’t get young people to spend the many years required to learn the craft, speaking Chinese will help when we go to the convenience stores, because not enough Japanese want to work there. We know that farmers are aging but there are not enough successors in the pipeline. The construction industry is going to lose 1.28 million workers between now and 2025. In 2022 there were four times as many workers aged over 65 compared to those aged between 20 and 24. It is a physical job, that doesn’t age well. Overall the youth population up to the age of 35 is going to more than halve between now and 2060. Where are the new hires going to come from?

The dual aging and decline in the population is currently being addressed in two ways. One is moving businesses offshore or buying businesses in foreign climes, where there is a growing buyer base. The other is automation. We will replace people with robots and machinery of some sort to make up for the shortfall in workers. Driverless vehicles makes sense when you can’t hire enough drivers. Robot attachments to our limbs is a reality now, to help the aged go up stairs. The same idea applies to give workers the power needed to lift heavy items in factories and on building sites.

Leaders will not be automated any time soon because of all the soft skills needed. Are we going to be facing a major “sontaku deficit” though because our leaders in organisations are not anticipating what their workers will want? Basic economics tells us that a reducing supply of labour coupled with a rising demand, makes everything much more competitive and expensive.

Our global research, confirmed for Japan as well, was that the sense of feeling valued by your boss and the organization was absolutely critical for being highly engaged at work. Great, but how would you know that you are valued? It all comes down to the skill of the boss and how the boss communicates and interacts with you. This is where sontaku comes in. The boss anticipates your needs in your career and work before you realise it yourself. The leader is having the right type of career conversations, the correct discussions about what drives each staff’s individual motivations, the ability to do delegation correctly so it is seen as a career enhancer and not a punishment.

Are your leaders skating to where the puck is going to be or are they racing into the 20th century in leadership terms. Are they still working off the old playbook of worker low mobility, high loyalty, total sacrifice and obedience? If your senior leaders are the product of OJT (On The Job Training) alone, then get ready for disruption. Their own mediocre bosses were their role models coming up through the ranks. The current crop of younger leaders own best efforts to repeat that low standard in their own leadership will take your organisation nowhere in this new world of work. Today’s younger generation of leaders expect the sontaku to be applied to them, not the other way around. Brace for impact everyone, in this relentless war for talent we are about to crash!

We are entering the new day of ruthless competition to recruit and retain staff. Leader’s soft skills of getting willing cooperation, encouraging real innovation, fostering creativity, being excellent persuaders and having supreme people skills are the new minimum requirements. Technical knowledge isn’t disappearing anytime soon in terms of importance, but hard skills alone won’t be enough. If that is all you are providing to your teams, then watch your staff jump ship to your rivals who have skilled up their leaders in how to apply sontaku to their staff, as a recruit and retain strategy. The future is going to be painful for all of us.