Episode #1: Yasuaki Mori, Ex-CEO of Infineon Technologies Japan

Yasuaki Mori is a European, Asia and North American technology growth executive in the disruptive mobility, automotive, IIoT and cyber security markets.

He has grown businesses from $200 to $700M and scaled organization from 100 to 200+ people, developed go-to market strategies and rebuilt, converted, strengthened organizations in sales, marketing, channel, system/application engineering, product quality, HR, finance. marcom, logistics and government affairs.

He is a multi-lingual & multi-cultural executive (French, Japanese, English) with professional networks in Europe, US and Asia.

Summary Points:

Joint venture sales are tough because both parties are in the same market with a focus on synergies but occasionally you end up in a competitive situation. When the joint venture parties are from different cultures, e.g. Japanese and German, you need trust and understanding, however both are exercised differently in the different countries. For example, in Japan, harmony is exercised through Honne (real truth) and Tatemae (façade), but in Germany it is exercised by people giving their true opinion, so it can be tough for employees and clients to deal with.

We used to have meetings where only the leadership spoke. After the earthquake and tsunami in Northern Japan several years ago, we held daily meetings in order to keep operations moving, and as things calmed down, we cut the meetings down to once a week and then once a month. However, when we tried to cut the meetings out altogether, the employees asked for it to be kept on as a standard part of our procedures. It become a town hall meeting where people, not just the leadership contributed.

Unofficial communication in Japan is superb and it would be good to be able to tap into that to make it more corporate and help shake off the communication silos.

Middle management is what tends to the blockage point, not because they wanted to block things, but because we as senior management were not paying enough attention to what feedback they were giving about our discussions about strategy etc. What a strategy means for senior management has a totally different meaning for the lower ranks and middle management needs to be engaged and coached on how to spread the message.

Push out as much information as possible unless it is strictly confidential, since unless you tell people what and why things are happening in understandable terms, it is never effective.

Japanese employees traditionally ask their bosses for instructions, but I think its better to know what your value is in the company, and where you are adding value to the whole chain of the company, then you should know what you need to do – then you don`t need to ask your boss about what you should do. And by adding value to yourself, you are making yourself more valuable to the external market.

Japan still works from a top-down method whereas foreign companies work in a matrix.

Executives are expensive with limited time frames like 3-4 years, and because they have to get used to Japan at the beginning and settle their families, and then towards the end of their term, they need to look for a job back home, they are really only effective for 1-2 years so that is one of the problems you face by sending a novice to Japan.

A good element of Japan is limited corporate greed in comparison to other countries. Honesty is a key strength in Japan that is a good foundation to help build a business on. Although I`m not sure how it equates to taking more risk for innovation.

Big data and good data analytics can relieve many efficiency and quality problems but there is limited understanding in traditional management style Japanese companies of how to use AI because it is not just about technology, its about organizational change. Japan is very weak in terms of making deliberate organizational change to suit the technology. There is a reluctance to go digital because the Gemba (factory floor) is so strong, but people are getting older and there are fewer and fewer workers so digitization needs to happen. But this needs fast decisions and these are not a strength of traditional corporate Japanese cultures.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

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Yasuaki Mori, Ex-CEO of Infineon Technologies Japan, helped grow global revenues six fold, short of a billion dollars, during his 17 year career with Infineon Technologies. In this interview he talks about the difficulties of running a joint venture in Japan, the challenges of managing expat and local staff, how to improve the communication within the company and much more. He has the proven track record to talk about the realty of doing business in Japan at a very high level.