Episode #219: Yes Boss, Whatever You Say

As leaders in Japan, one of our biggest fears is ignorance. We may come up with a genius idea that is actually rubbish. The age, stage and power hierarchy here ensures no one wants to stand out by “speaking truth to power”. Subordinates learn quickly that taking personal responsibility for anything is a risky business. Better to make it a group decision, so that the blame evaporates and never settles on any one person in particular. There are plenty of parents of success in Japan and also plenty of orphans, when it comes to failure.

Take a look at what happened with the original Olympic Stadium design for Tokyo for 2020. It was almost impossible to locate anyone who was responsible. The current excitement about the toxicity and design of the Toyosu site for the new fish and vegetable markets is another textbook case study where no one seems responsible.

So the odds are stacked up against anyone reporting potential bad news to a powerful boss. In the Japanese context, it is much better to be a “Yes Man” and blend in with the office shrubbery as much as possible. As the boss though, we need people around us who can speak back to us and tell us we are not considering all the negative ramifications of our genius decision.

This sounds simple in theory. However, if you have built a career on getting things done, despite everyone around you telling you it can’t be done and then you go and do it, your ego gets pretty puffed up.

You become a powerful advocate for your own opinion, you are ace at debate, you can wrangle with the best of them to get your way. Hasn’t that been your formula for your massive success so far? Why change what is working? This is especially true in Japan, where you have to push like crazy to get anything new introduced or to change anything to make it better.

Here is where we run into trouble of our own making. We have browbeaten the troops reporting to us to genuflect when the genius boss is speaking, to doff their caps to our cleverness, to tug their forelocks in submission to our superiority.

Like Katanozaka san though, sometimes we don’t have full command of the situation or enough facts about the gemba（現場）or the on-site reality, to really know everything needed to make the best decision. If the people around us don’t feel the trust to speak up, without being decimated by our forceful personalities, then we will keep on building our ladder higher and higher, better and better up against the wrong wall.

So, when we hear hesitation or see doubt or sense reluctance on the part of those reporting to us, let’s not opt for a preemptory nuclear harpoon strike to wipe out any possible resistance to “Our Word”. Instead, let’s bite our tongue, put on our best inscrutable poker face, shut up and listen to what they have to say. Let’s draw them out without riposte, without immediate evaluation, without issuing the death penalty to their idea. Let’s tell them: “Thank you. This is an important consideration and I want to give the idea sufficient time to mull it over”.

The first few times you do this, it will probably kill you. Fast paced people like speed of execution – no loose ends, nothing left hanging, no untidiness. They pile up the workload until it almost crushes them. They are so time poor they can hardly get through their most high priority tasks for each day. In this environment, taking additional time to listen to subordinates seems like a waste of valuable time. This is especially the case, when there are so many highly urgent items which need our attention.

Listening to others is a new skill for most bosses, so it will take time to bed it down. The key is to slooooow down. To give our 100% concentration to the person in front of us. To really listen to them for a change. To switch off all the white noise in our minds that is interfering with good communications. We need to hear this person, if we want to hear from the others. Everyone is watching like a hawk to see what happens.

We have built up a reputation of not listening, of being the bulldozer, of pushing through regardless and of being oblivious to dissenting opinions. This will not get turned around in a day. This is the work of months of effort. This must become the new behaviour change we need to install, if we want to draw on the full power of all the opinions at our disposal. Here is the real crunch point – we have to become more humble about the validity of our own judgment and experience. Got it boss?

Action Steps

1. Check to see if you have surrounded yourself with “yes” men and women?
2. Are you the last to hear about bad news?
3. Are you constantly in bulldozer mode, on every topic?
4. Don’t respond immediately when you hear something you disagree with from subordinates
5. Become more humble about the validity of our own judgment and experience