Episode #62: Middle Management Madness

Why 70/20/10 Doesn’t Work in Japan

Senior leaders must work through people and the key leverage group are Middle Managers. Doing more, faster, better with less, screams out for delegation. Putting aside the issue of basic delegation nous on the part of the leaders, the capability of the delegatees to pick up the shield and spear, makes or breaks organisations.

Middle Managers are the corporate glue. Market and system noise are filtered, sorted, nuanced and passed up to senior leaders. They must also amplify the key direction and messages to everyone below. Well, in theory this is the case - what about the practice?

Middle Managers in Japan are tutored by their sempai – their seniors. The seniors themselves were similarly tutored. Looking at the postwar period there are distinct periods of managerial mis-development. The military officers returning from the war came back to a devastated economy and were placed in leadership positions in the rebuilt companies. The 1960s and 1970s saw Japan overtake the major European economies one by one. This was built off disciplined hard work and almost feudal sacrifice of family. For those in large companies, lifetime employment meant unquestioning dedication was expected. “Tough love” was meted out by the officer corps, now turned corporate managers. Leadership was top down, mainly barking out orders and berating subordinates.

The bursting of the bubble in the late 1980s left a corporate hangover with important side effects. Marketing and training budgets were slashed as companies struggled to survive. Thirty-somethings in the 1990s became the “lost patrol” – they moved up the ranks, based on age and seniority. Unfortunately, by the time the training faucet got turned on again, it went to their younger hopefuls. The sempai missed out and the content of their inherited tutor curriculum became frozen in time. The postwar system emphasised hard skills but had little clue about how to develop civilians. Today, in their fifties and in senior roles, many senior leaders have not been challenged by a new management idea in twenty years. By the way, the psychological and values gap between this senior generation and the millennials now entering the workforce is vast, measurable in light years.

The Lehman Shock left a renewed legacy of instability. Lifetime employment suffered collateral damage. The demise of Yamaichi Securities put the loyal and diligent on the street, a hammer blow to the traditional worker/company compact. Post-Lehman, training again took some intense blows and so sempai-led OJT (On The Job Training) has remained the central pillar of Middle Management education in Japan. OJT’s philosophical and practical roots stretch unbroken to the pre-1945 Imperial Officer Academies. Want to confirm this? Ask yourself why there is still no equivalent in Japan of the West’s major business schools, churning out the best and the brightest Middle Managers?

We are left with generations of undereducated managers, channeling their passed-use-by-date unreconstructed sempai. They are all swirling around a tight whirlpool, out of context and out of touch with contemporary corporate needs. This is the critical reason why dated theories like the 70/20/10 model for learning and development are irrelevant here in Japan. Both the 20% from the sempai and the 10% component from training simply fail to deliver.

Corporate training in Japan is almost 100% ineffective. Old Japan loves lecture and Japanese trainers just love to talk. There is plenty of one-way traffic around the “What” and “How” but little or nothing around the “Why”. “Distributed Intelligence” – using the full experience and smarts power of the group - is rarely utilized.

If you were hoping for a post-training performance pick-up, then good luck! Daily, battalions of corporate trainees troop back to their desks and resume hostilities, without making any changes to how they do their job. Einstein noted that we can define insanity as “continuing to do the same things in the same way, but expecting a different outcome”. We must all be mad!

Until OJT is re-ordered off a properly educated baseline and the training delivered actually leads to behavior change, then there will be no progress. Middle Managers will continue to squander their key role. They will fail to communicate in ways that trigger enthusiasm, inspiration, empowerment, and confidence. High levels of engagement will never be achieved. Critically, engagement is the magic spring from which flows innovation, commitment and motivation in teams.

The male, greying Corporate Boardroom can continue to pontificate from on high but actual workplace change is delivered by Middle Managers. Hands up who wants better Middle Management in Japan?