Episode #96: Tim Schlanghecke, Country Director Flavour, Symrise Japan

Tim Schlanghecke is the Country Director for Flavour of Symrise in Japan. Mr. Schlanghecke has been in Japan ever since he graduated University from his home country, Germany. He says that he is not able to compare Japanese workplace and management to Germany since he did not work much in Germany. Mr. Schlanghecke says that his first venture was a small brewery that he started in the Japanese countryside, where people did not speak much English. He moved around Japan quite a lot in his early years in Japan, he spent some time in Fukuoka, Hokkaido, Mishima, Shizuoka, Yamagata and the spent some time in the Kansai area before coming to Tokyo. As someone who was passionate about breweries, the natural inclination for Mr. Schlanghecke was to go to the Japanese countryside to work there. The businesses plateaued at one point and then Mr. Schlanghecke decided to move to Tokyo to start his own consulting business, in his expertise niche which was consulting breweries.

Since Mr. Schlanghecke is in a unique industry, Mr. Story asked Mr. Schlanghecke if it was challenging to convince Japanese board members and junior staff that they should come work for his smaller organization and not a larger, more stable, typical Japanese firm. Mr. Schlanghecke says he is passionate about his work and that translates outward and a lot of the time he hopes people see it and join him because of that passion. Japan works differently than other countries, resistance to change is one example of one thing that is different in Japan. Mr. Schlanghecke says that this is almost a philosophical topic as the resistance to change is deeply embedded in Japanese culture and it goes back hundreds of years. Japan’s work culture has achieved astronomical things, the amount of total wealth that Japan has generated and the distribution of wealth in Japan has improved phenomenally over the years. Though Mr. Schlanghecke suspects that what worked in the past will not be the same way to be successful in the future. He believes though that we are at a turning point in society and industrialization and modern capitalism as we know it is likely not the way forward. He believes that for the world to be sustainable for future generations, we need to think about climate change, change our way of thinking about society and change the ways of working due to a changing demographic of an aging population. Though Japan has resisted change in the past, it may need to start slowly accepting it given the circumstances.

Mr. Schlanghecke’s advice to someone coming into Japan would be to listen first and don’t complain. He says a lot of the time people come in and make assumptions on the little knowledge of Japan they may have; he also encourages them to go into details and be more Japanese. Learning about Japan and the Japanese way takes time and patience and an in depth understanding of Japanese. Having been in Japan, Mr. Schlanghecke says that for a foreign company to work in Japan, they need to have 100% backing and support from their head office, all the successes he has seen have worked in this way. Though Mr. Schlanghecke speaks Japanese and he used to work in the Japanese language, he has recently shifted back to communicating in English. He states that the reason for this is that Japanese tends to have nuances and be misunderstood by the other party because of the subtleties, he feels English is a more direct language and people are better able to understand instructions if he speaks in English.