Episode #120: David Bennett, former President, Lenovo Japan

Mr. David Bennett has been in Japan for more than 10 years in total. He has lived in Japan throughout his student years, and came back after graduation on the JET program for two years before joining AMD, an American multinational semiconductor company in Tokyo. His first leadership role would be with Lenovo Japan and NEC. Currently, Mr. Bennett has moved on from Japan and has become the Chief Customer Office at Tenstorrent Inc in the US.

As the President of Lenovo Japan, and the CEO of NEC Personal Computers, which is a joint venture between Lenovo and NEC Corporation, Mr. Bennett led both a foreign and domestic company. Since the skillset required to lead a multinational company versus a traditional domestic company is different, he created a hybrid culture, blending the best of both worlds. He took certain parts of Japanese traditions and business approaches and fine-tuned them to make them more suitable for the organization. Additionally, the organization spent much time holding cultural and social events to increase employee engagement and cooperation.

To get innovation while managing two companies with different characteristics, the company would implement many initiatives such as holding contests and giving out awards. These activities pushed the team to feel they could be more open and try something new, and others will have their back. As a result, the company kicked off things that had never been done before in the PC industry, like the world's first Gaming PC Leasing Service, Sugu Game. Mr. Bennett accepts mistakes as long as the reasons behind them are rational and the intention was to benefit the business. Moreover, Lenovo has a concept called Fu Pan. This is similar to Kaizen which is a continuous process of reflection. After major sales activity, the team would go back and reflect on what went right, what didn't go well, and what can they learn. Mr. Bennett says through those meetings, people gained innovation and felt empowered to try new ideas and take risks.

To get employees further engaged, Mr. Bennett has several mantras he follows since becoming a leader. One of his mantras is “win together, lose together.” Although everyone understands the meaning of “win together”, he frequently got questioned, “why lose together? “ Mr. Bennett explains that it is easy to win together. But if something bad happens, he says it is important for everyone to take responsibility and figure out a solution. He is proud of helping to change the culture at Lenovo and NEC in a way that the team came together and started taking risks. Being explicit with the head office also helped him win the trust of the organization. However, Mr. Bennett notes the difficulty of ensuring his messaging permeates to the bottom of the company, past his direct reports. He insists, when you have a large organization, it is important to be consistent with your messaging.

On advice to newcomers wanting to lead in Japan, Mr. Bennet says the most important thing is to listen and understand what is working for the team and what you can learn from them. He says that in Japan, what people tell you about the business may not necessarily reflect the actual state it is in. Mr. Bennett further adds, one cannot completely change how the Japanese ecosystem works, nor how one’s partners, customers and the commercial buying behavior works. Hence, it is important to truly listen. Secondly, he advises to become familiar with the Japanese language. For Mr. Bennett, knowing Japanese has helped him gain quicker connection with his team. Therefore, the combination of understanding Japan, the Japanese language, and his management style and supportive approach helped create trust and engagement.

Mr. Bennett’s goal is to empower his employees and to make his team successful. To him, empowerment means everyone is facing the same direction. Mr. Bennett feels it is essential to inspire and empower people to work towards the same goals and encourage them to take risks. By doing so, he believes people will become further engaged and the organization will continue to grow.