Power to move

The current global recession is very good chance to change the bureaucratic asset in special. But many Japanese company mentality is just to follow the competitors.
Maybe the reason why the Japanese company want to follow the others is Japanese respects “Wa (spirit of harmony)” more than the uniqueness.

Here is original Japanese manga.

Visualization

“Visualization” is also one of buzz word in Japan recently.
Of course, “Visualization” is the important activity for any business improvement as basic, but too much. Some people believe any kind of problem can be solved by “Visualization”. Specially, in case of the new thing, which has many things including the target and the method has not fixed yet, we can not create everything by “Visualization”. (It is obvious, though..)
Historically, Japan economy has grown by “Kaizen” long time, it led this kind of mind.

Here is the original manga in Japanese.

Management by objectives

“The management by objectives” has been popular in Japanese big company since several years ago. However, this system does not fit to Japanese culture. So the pro forma management has spread. In many case, the object is just to evaluate, the managers want to set up the item which is only easy to measure. They spend very long time to set up the target and to evaluate the results. Sometimes it seems just the waste time.

Used to be, the Japanese management style gave the autonomy space for every employee instead of defining their clear mission. The employees need to think by themselves. That is why everyone thought wide items even those are beyond or outside their job. It was one of traditional Japanese company’s strength, such as QC ( quality circle). Because of the adoption of the management by objectives, Japan lost many things and became weak.

Here is original Japanese manga.

Logical discussion

Generally speaking, Japanese is not so good at logical discussion. Compared to before, it is getting better, though. One of the reason why Japanese skill on logical discussion is weaker than American is how much the training for debating in school age was. Recently, some school in Japan has started to have the debate class.
The traditional Japanese culture says “Silence is golden”. This is also one of the barriers to level up for the logical discussion.

Here is original manga in Japanese.

stock market collapse

The current global recession impact Japanese economy too.
It might be good turning point to rethink the direction for the future of human being.


Here is original manga in Japanese version. (Oct. 12. ‘2008)

Diversity

Compared to Silicon Valley, Japanese manufacturing company is very narrow diversity, almost only Japanese in Japan and very few female manager. Maybe that is why the pattern of thinking is also narrow. That used to be good when Japan aimed to get highest quality of hardware product in the world (no fluctuation quality) . However that era can not last forever. Diversity is one of most important factor to create new world.

Here is original Japanese manga.

Responsibility

Many people often use the word ”responsibility” in Japanese big company, but the meaning of “responsibility” is vague. Specially when someone failed to achieve the committed responsibility, almost nothing happen. No firing, no demotion. Just many complain.
One of the reason such vague situation in Japan, I guess, the job assignment is usually with only the responsibility but without the authority about the condition such as human resource, budget and priority of the results.

Original manga in Japanese is Here.

Monkeys supposed to stand on their own two feet

"Select a big tree for your shelter" or "If you need shelter, choose a big tree” is Japanese proverb ("Yoraba Taijyu no Kage"). Many Japanese originally has the mentality like this, specially it becomes stronger in this recession time. It is opposite mentality to Silicon Valley where every one has mentality of autonomy and self-sustainability. The big trees, which are big company employee or civil office, try to keep their established interest, and the other people who might used to be more independent want to become the part of the big trees. They fight each other. I always wish more Japanese become to be more autonomy.

The original Japanese manga is here.

* Kevin, thank you very much for English support and check.