Episode #252: Execute On My Shiny Idea, Now!

A genius idea springs into your head and off you go to share it with your staff member. Well share isn’t quite the right word. Actually, delegate is the right word because you want them to do something for you. The staff member is sitting there thinking , “I want no part of this” and the excuses start pouring forth. This is a simple thing – you are the boss and you want something done and they get paid to do what you need them to be doing. Or so it seems. Japan is an interesting place. It has quite a clear hierarchy established throughout the society in terms of wealth, position, rank, age and seniority. So why do staff ignore what the boss wants?

Well they won’t outright refuse all that often, although that can happen. They are usually more subtle than that. The societal reluctance to confront others, particularly those in positions of authority, run deep. Instead they will put your passion project on the back burner and then conduct a war of attrition around not doing it. You follow up and they haven’t done it yet. This is repeated until , as they expect, you get super busy and fully occupied with other stuff and you forget about it. Often the chances are good that the window for that project will have closed out if they can drag it out long enough. Their experience tells them that this works like a treat. The upside is very attractive and the downside is they have to do the project anyway.

So how can we get our staff to cooperate and do what we want. Threatening them won’t work. They know they can’t fired for a simple little thing like defying the boss. No court in Japan will back the boss against the employee in this type of case. The grounds for dismissal in Japan don’t include not doing the boss’s requested project. We have to take another route.

The first thing is to not bring your passion for the project to the staff member until you have set it up. What often happens though is that we are brimming with enthusiasm and want to get this genius idea going straight away. So without any word of warning we lob up at their workstation and start telling about our new shiny idea. We have it in mind, we see the outcomes, the benefits, the advantages, the cleverness of this idea.

What do they see? They see the piles of work they are struggling with already. The other items which they have prioritised and for which they are already working very long and hard. They need more work like a hole in the head and here you are, you eager beaver, all hot and ready to go. They may agree with your idea or they may not, but they care more about how they are going to add this burden to all the other burdens you have already given them.

So what should we have done? Firstly, cast your mind across what they are currently working on. If you are not sure then ask for an update on progress to apprise yourself of the lay of the land before you venture any further forth. If they are telling you they are maxed out or are occupied with a current urgent project, this helps to understand how to frame the injection of your own shiny new idea into the fray.

To get their involvement, reluctant or otherwise, we need to frame the idea in a way that they can see the necessity of putting this item higher up the priority list. We should be looking for getting them to tell us how to do it, rather than us firing off orders like broadsides in a naval battle.

We need to paint the picture, fill out the background, place them in the context as to why this is a really good idea and how helpful it is going to be to the business. Often our own personal enthusiasm for our idea trumps all of this and we just let all the detail spill out, unattended by any context, against which they can judge the importance of the project relative to all the other important projects they are working on at the moment.

There will also be the issue in Japan of their lack of knowledge, familiarity or experience with this issue. Being from Australia, this is no big deal because we Aussies figure we will work it out as we go along. Japanese don’t operate on that basis. They are perfectionism driven and they fear making mistakes. These two ideas work against taking on anything unfamiliar, exotic or shiny.

That means we have to be ensuring they get the idea we are going to help them with the bits they don't know about, even if we don’t know about them either. It is more a mental framework than a physical or logistical impossibility that we are facing. By taking responsibility for failure off them, they become more empowered to have a go.

We want them to do the work but we are not dumping the work on them and then just turning up at completion date looking for the goodies. We are going to be there, going along for the ride as well.

If we do all of these things, we can get the result we want. And we can get it without damaging the engagement, loyalty and commitment levels of the staff member. We just need to restrain our high engagement for the idea and get our brain working on how to sell this idea to the staff member.