Episode #333: When Things Go Wrong Everyone Dives For Cover In Japan

Japan is a no mistake culture. This breeds timidity, resistance to change, lower levels of innovation, avoiding accountability and an aversion to responsibility. Fine, but what happens when mistakes actually occur? As the boss, you face a conspiracy amongst the team to keep anything damaging, embarrassing or lethal from you. If you discover one mistake, then you can probably guess that you never even heard about the other forty nine. The biggest nightmare for the boss is to uncover an issue when it is too late to fix it. As the boss, you have money and authority available to make things happen and resuscitate a catastrophe. Usually that becomes too little too late, because the crew hid it until it ballooned out of control.

I remember an incident which occurred with a client. It was a very small piece of business, but there was some dissatisfaction. The account manager was requested to bring the problem to my attention by the client’s staff member. My account manager at the time, told them that I didn’t speak Japanese, so there was no point contacting me directly. This was a blatant lie and untrue but the account manager had no problem swinging that one in order to hide his mistake.

It only came to light serendipitously, otherwise I still would be no wiser. I had to waste an entire day, travel down to Kansai and to apologise to the client. I assured the client manager that if he ever did that to me again, I would fire him on the spot. I explained that making mistakes is not ideal but that is how we learn and improve. Hiding mistakes though is an entirely different matter and totally unacceptable. I have the money and power to bail him out and I will do that immediately, but can only do that if I know about it.

Given that everyone is trained to hide problems, how should we proceed to understand the full scope of the issue. The staff will only reveal the absolute minimum amount of detail to the boss and try and smother the rest from sight. The boss needs tO apply this six step formula to get on top of the issue.

1. Define what is the problem

As I mentioned, you don’t automatically get offered up the full picture of what is going on, so you have to really concentrate on dragging it out of people, who are super reluctant to inform you of what is the real situation.

2. Next, look at what was the cause of the problem

This is where people really go into overtime to bamboozle the boss. Key information is hidden, timelines are blurred, responsibility is definitely the first casualty of trouble. Forensic skills and great patience are needed here. Detective style tactics like individual discussions with those involved are needed so the collusion capacity to hide stuff can be kept to a minimum.

3. What are the possible solutions

This is where we get on to the front foot and start moving things forward. Not everyone is willing to come with us though. I have noticed that those who have created the issue tend to disengage completely and give up. They have no appetite to be helpful finding solutions. This is a problem because often they are also the person with the best information and most knowledge of what is involved. So these people need to be assured a mistake is not fatal and must be convinced to help in the recovery process.

4. What is the best solution

Now we need to get even more brains involved. Those in the immediate vicinity of the train wreck may not have enough distance to weight up innovative alternatives. Get other departments or staff involved. At Dale Carnegie we have this really effective brainstorming methodology which eliminates bias based on age, gender, seniority, rank and aggression.

5. Who will be responsible for implementing the solution

By giving the people who created the problem the chance to restore themselves, through leading the solution component we have a useful way of moving forward. It shows trust and that we accept mistakes happen but do necessarily lead to elimination.

6. What is the timetable for implementation

We may have our own views on when we want this done and as the boss that is usually yesterday. It is best to get the people working on it to nominate the completion timetable. Of course in Japan, they will sandbag the schedule to build themselves as much protection as possible. Unless there is a specific need to get things done by a certain time, it is not a bad idea to go with their schedule. They have set it and now they own it.

Japan throws up many challenges for the leader. I speak, read and write Japanese, so my access to information is very high, compared to someone sent here on a three year assignment. Despite that advantage though I know that there are many problems happening in the background, which I will never be allowed to discover. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be vigilant and constantly checking on things. Japan is a very honest country. You can drop your wallet and someone will hand it in to the police and you get it back with nothing missing. Don’t imagine though that this type of honesty extends to owning up to mistakes in the workplace. That is an entirely different kettle of fish.