Episode #75: War Declared On Soft Skills In Japan

Have you enjoyed a hanami or cherry blossom flower viewing party this year. One of the great Japanese traditions I have to say. Today we are talking about when the system fails you, what do you do? Creativity isn’t part of the Japanese education system and how to think is being replaced with how to do. We need innovation though and we need creative people. Today we are going to look at what we need to be doing, given the government has dismantled liberal arts curriculums in favour of hard skills. How do we get ideas from our teams so we can win the battle for innovation in business.

The number of Japanese farmers shrank fifty six percent since nineteen ninety five to one point eight two million. Their average age rose to sixty seven from fifty nine in the period since nineteen ninety five. To cope with the issue the Agriculture Ministry adopted a “smart agriculture” policy in two thousand and fourteen to promote robotics and information technology to boost farm productivity. Machinery maker Kubota developed self driving tractors that cost eleven million yen or around one hundred thousand dollars. They also sell pesticide spraying drones to automate some of the field work. The smart agriculture market is expected to grow by fourteen percent to fourteen point seven billion yen or one hundred and thirty million dollars, this year and double in the next five years according to the Yano Research Institute.

In other news, US food company Just and Japanese meat producer Toriyama Chikusan Shokuhin have forged a partnership for the development of lab grown wagyu beef, with the aim of distributing it globally.Just will culture cells taken from Akagi brand wagyu cows in order to v=create the same quality as real Akagi beef. The US Food and Drug Adminstration and the Agriculture Department have agreed to jointly introduce regulations on lab grown meat in anticipation of its expected commercialization.

Finally, in two thousand and sixteen social security expenditures including public pensions, medical insurance and other benefits reached one hundred and sixteen point nine trillion yen or over one trillion dollars. I wonder how much a trillion dollars is? Too many zeros. Anyway, it's a lot. In twenty twenty five all of the post war baby boomers will be seventy five or older, further pushing up the cost of social security benefits. Expenditures are expected to hit one hundred and ninety trillion yen or one point seventy two trillion dollars. The population of over sixty five year olds will peak in twenty forty two at thirty nine million.

This is episode number seventy five and we are talking about War Declared On Soft Skills In Japan Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.The road to innovation in Japan has been a long one. The “yutori” or relaxed education experiment started in the late 1980s didn’t last very long. The idea was that the focus on rote memorization needed to be changed to include more emphasis on creative thinking. School days were reduced to five from six days a week. Homework burdens were lightened. The idea was a good one, yet as soon as Japan started to sink in international rankings for tests that favour rote memorization skills, the Japanese establishment panicked and threw the whole experiment straight out the window.

Fast forward to 2015, when then Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura told Japanese universities to take “active steps to abolish (social science and humanities departments) or convert them to serve areas that better meet society’s needs”. There was no wiggle room on interpreting the message – he clearly said do what we say or we will cut your funding. Japanese universities were weak in the face of the new policy position of the Japanese government and meekly complied.

The justification was that this was needed “in light of the decrease of the university age population, the demand for human resources and the function of national universities”. Abenomics declares that the role of national universities is to produce “human resources that match the needs of society by accurately grasping changes in industrial structure and employment needs”. Abe himself declared in 2014 in his OECD speech that “rather than deepening academic research that is highly theoretical, we will conduct more practical vocational education that better anticipates the needs of society”.

This was pretty curious stuff coming from Abe’s Cabinet. A couple of years ago, for the first time, we started to hear from our clients about their interest in having more liberal arts aspects to their company in-house education programmes. They told us they need people who can think, can articulate their thoughts and they are looking to encourage more diversity of views. They wanted to encourage innovation as a direct result of this effort.

Was this another part of the political thrust to the right under Abe? Was the objective to create a technocrat population of docile people who can toe the line and follow orders? The Japan Times noted, “Without exception, totalitarian states invariably reject knowledge in the humanities and states that reject such knowledge always become totalitarian”. Was this a Sputnik moment for Abe, when his answer to Japan falling behind was to ape the America of the 1950s and stress mathematics and science subjects, to produce more engineers to solve Japan’s problems?

The vocational relevancy of Abe’s attack on “soft skill” subjects is in serious doubt. Companies we deal with are stressing the development of people who can communicate, think, share ideas and be creative. The Japanese industry peak body, the Keidanren, was at complete odds with the Abe Cabinet over just what are relevant vocational skills. Then Keidanren Chairman Sadayuki Sakakibara, from Toray, made this point, “Some media reported that the business community is seeking work-ready human resources, not students in the humanities, but this is not the case”. He also noted that Japanese business people desire the “exact opposite”. They want students who can solve problems based on “ideas encompassing the different fields” of science and humanities.

The Science Council of Japan at the time weighed in as well backing the importance of the humanities. In cooperation with the natural sciences they are there to solve “contemporary problems domestically as well as internationally. So what does this all mean?

Are we setting ourselves up for failure? The population of students is set to decline by one third from 650,000 students in 2018 to 480,000 in 2031. Abe was correct to identify the critical importance of a diminishing human resource for business, but his antidote seems completely at variance with what business needs in Japan.

As many companies make the move overseas, technical abilities are needed but dealing with diversity as a leader becomes even more critical for the success of the enterprise. It is well recognised that soft skills are the keys to successfully leading an international business. The supply of humanities graduates will disappear in line with government policy. Therefore, the pressure on companies to compensate becomes much greater. Companies however are not liberal arts colleges where students have the luxury of time, to sit around thinking and pontificating on philosophical matters.

What can be done within companies to encourage more out of the box thinking? Creating a safe environment for idea generation would be a good start. Most brainstorming methodologies used in Japan in firms tend to kill ideas at the generation stage by critiquing them as they emerge. Better to allow a thousand flowers to bloom, to get out as many ideas as possible, before any cutting is done.

Bosses constantly yelling orders to their staff, need to ease up on that and instead ask questions. These will get their staff thinking rather than just doing. Inviting staff ideas on what needs to be done, as well as how to do it makes a lot of sense if your want to create a creative environment.

The hardest thing in Japan will be how to deal with errors and mistakes. This whole country is a mistake free zone. Understanding that the innovation process is messy is a good staring point. Expecting that people won’t do new things perfectly from the start is also a necessary shift in thinking. Some “yutori” injection is needed inside companies to encourage people to step outside their comfort zone.

If you haven’t started looking at these issues now would be a good time to start. The educational system will continue to put forth robots, who will be passive and wait for instructions. It will be like a nation of Siris and Alexas will be produced, hanging around to be told what to do.

Start with some regular brainstorming activities for the teams. These creative muscles need regular than infrequent exercising. Instead of beanbags and electronic games, give the team something concrete and interesting to work on. Also implement the results because this is highly motivating and where most companies fail. Get those great ideas off the paper stuck to the walls and get them into plans with names, dates, and measures attached to them.