Saying yes and meaning no

I was doing some creativity training in Tokyo with a mixed group of Japanese and European expats, when one of the British expats, agitated, said: “The problem with you Japanese is that you never tell the truth…”

Needless to say, this did not go down well. I encouraged him to say some more about what he was thinking.

“Well, you guys have a hundred ways of saying yes when you mean no,” he blundered on.

In the break I said to him: “But don’t you know that we do too?”

He was unconvinced.

Here are some of them:

“I agree with you in principle.”
“I hear what you say.”
“That’s very interesting.”
“Yes…” with slight note of doubt.
“Ho, ho, ho – that’s a good one.”
“That’s such a brave idea.”
“That would be excellent…”
“Let’s appoint a task force.”
“We definitely need to think some more about this.”
“Yes, but…”

By the way, it’s not only the Japanese and the British who do this…

Do you have some favourites?

Mr Hotchkiss and the stapler

I asked a group of managers in Tokyo to name their personal favourite inventions. We got a diverse range of proposals from them. Then they asked me for mine.

The humble paper staple, together with its stapler, I said. Such a deceptively simple piece of engineering.

It overcame all the disadvantages of its celebrated predecessor, the paperclip. The great adman, David Ogilvy, exhorted us to abandon the paperclip in favour of the staple in his Confessions of an Advertising Man. I never travel without it.

But who invented it? I’d never known. Well, they told me in Tokyo, in Japan it’s called a Hotchkiss. Was Mr Hotchkiss by any chance the inventor?

Apparently not. He seems merely to have been the importer of the product to the land of the rising sun.

So who did invent it? This is not quite so simple a question as one might expect.

George W McGill patented an early version in the USA in 1866 and continued to develop his product through the 1880s. Meanwhile CH Gould, working in parallel with McGill, took out a patent in England in 1868. Rather like early mobile phones, these initial staplers were bulky and heavy.

The slim and elegant product that we know today was invented by another Englishman, John Munford. He sold it to his employer in the early twentieth century (at a low price) and never has been properly recognised for his work.

Saying “Yes” and meaning “No”

Working with a multinational company in Tokyo, I was training a group of managers in creative thinking and problem-solving. It was a mixed group of Japanese and expat Europeans.

One of the Europeans, a Brit, got irritated with his Japanese colleagues and announced: “The trouble with you guys is that you don’t tell the truth.”

Shocked silence in the room.

I encouraged the Brit to say some more about what he was thinking. “Well, you guys endlessly say ‘Yes’ when you mean ‘No’,” he blundered on. “It’s very confusing.”

In the break that followed, I took him aside. “Like you, I notice that our Japanese colleagues have multiple ways of doing this,” I said to him. “But haven’t you noticed that we do too?”

“Like what?”

“Well, a regular standby for us is ‘In principle I agree with you’. We know it means “No”, but do you suppose that everyone else knows that?”

Do you have some good yeses that mean no?