Episode #396: Working Through Others Who Are Not Working

The chain of command is a well established military leadership given. I have three stripes, you have none, so do what I say or else. In the post war period, this leadership idea was transposed across to Civvy street by returning soldiers. This worked like a charm and only started to peter out with the pushback against the Vietnam War, when all authority began to be challenged. Modern leaders are currently enamoured with concepts like the “servant leader”. The leader serves the team as an enabler for staff success. Dominant authority is out and a vague negotiated power equilibrium has replaced it. Delegation, responsibility, accountability, mistake handling and punishment are all swirling around in this fog of the new order.

Japan makes the whole construct even more interesting by having built up a legal perspective on staff issues that favours the worker against the company. Judges, also do not see company staff non-performance of duties as necessarily career ending. Add into the mix the fact that in the last 20 years, the number of people aged between 15 and 34 has halved. The bad news is that it is going to halve again over the next forty years. Young people will be in high demand, regardless of how useless they are. We complain today about millennium entitlement. That will be nothing compared to what is coming. Smaller families means more single child households. The Boomer generation will be spoiling their grandchildren on an industrial scale. Scarce resource spoilt brats will be entering society and business. I can hardly wait.

The Universities here in Japan will be taking anyone with a pulse, because they are going to be bleeding red ink all over the place. Does anyone remember the Tandai system of two year colleges? They have all disappeared or morphed into four year schools to survive. Diabolical entrance exams will linger for the most elite schools in Japan, but for the rest it is a race to the bottom of academic standards to keep the doors open. Passing academic classes at a Japanese University has been a joke. If you turn up to class, the chances are pretty good you will be passed. A rather low bar compared to what is happening at varsity in the rest of the advanced world.

So dealing with undereducated, spoilt, entitled lay abouts are our collective future when hiring staff. Even now, between 30%-35% of staff into their third to fourth year of employ are bailing out and heading for the exists, seeking supposed greener pastures. Covid-19 may have put a temporary dampener on this exodus for the moment, but if that is your staff retention strategy, then the future looks bleak for you.

Business is so complex today. The hero boss who can do every part of the business process has become a distant memory. Even if we could do it, should we? The boss should be concentrating on those activities that only the boss can do and should be pushing everything else down to subordinates. Now that is the theory. The reality is most bosses in Japan are doing too much. They don’t trust the delegation system because they have been burnt before. Actually, that is not quite true – they don’t have a delegation system. A dumping of the work system yes, but an intelligent, best practice delegation system, well no. Probably a good time to revisit how that works for all the bosses out there, because they are going to need it.

If we can’t unleash hell as bosses and we have to gain willing cooperation to get the youth engaged, what do we need to do? Communication skills are going to be at a premium. The whole modern apparatus of leadership rests on persuasion power, rather than raw position power. Do bosses know what these young people want? That would be a good starting point. “What is in it for me” is a tried and true motivator across time and geography. Once upon a time that was focused on what the boss wanted but times have changed. Bosses need to spend time with young people, individually, to understand them better. Yes, they may be spoilt little brats, but these are the cards you are dealt, so learn how to play them.

Either master new approaches or suffer is the stark contrast. A large mindset shift is needed to embrace this brave new world. Those bosses who can make the transformation will stay and the others won’t. Companies in a life and death struggle with competitors for recruiting and retaining talent, won’t tolerate troglodyte bosses who cannot move with the times. Here are seven new boss rules for dealing with these taxing tyros.

1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation
2. Try honestly to see things from their point of view
3. Find out what they want
4. Ask questions rather than giving direct orders
5. Don’t criticise them
6. Make them happy to do the task you suggest
7. Let them feel the idea is theirs

None of these are difficult to understand. The perspective shift is the biggie, so let’s start there.