A friend who does much business in Japan emailed me (just hours before the tsunami struck) to say: “I'm in Japan on business again and thinking how much Japanese business needs some creative thinking.”
He continues: “After many years of coming here, I really feel as if the country is reverting to type as an insular, protected society. With due respect to the Japanese, they need to break out of this.”
That’s my sense too. I have been visiting Japan to work with companies there over a thirty year period and have worked with Japanese companies outside of their home market for several years longer than that.
It seems to be something of a mystery as to why the Japanese should be so effective in obtaining continuous incremental innovation, yet so ineffective in developing real breakthroughs.
Of course, the former has a highly systematic approach behind it which really works, a key part of which is a process called nemawashi. Literally, nemawashi means “preparing the roots”, being an metaphor from rice-growing. Preparing the roots so that the plant shall grow strong.
In organisations, nemawashi means building support for a project by gaining feedback (and buy-in) from all the key players ahead of a decision-making meeting. Of course, it is designed to maintain harmony and build consensus.
And therein lies the problem. The more radical, disruptive, out-of-the-box a new idea is, the more certain it is not to survive the process of nemawashi. It’s so deeply ingrained in the culture that breaking away from it would be really hard to bring about.
A possible way forward is to get away from the highly disciplined Japanese workplace, and to create a temporary climate where collaborative wishing and dreaming can take place without the intrusion of nemawashi.
He continues: “After many years of coming here, I really feel as if the country is reverting to type as an insular, protected society. With due respect to the Japanese, they need to break out of this.”
That’s my sense too. I have been visiting Japan to work with companies there over a thirty year period and have worked with Japanese companies outside of their home market for several years longer than that.
It seems to be something of a mystery as to why the Japanese should be so effective in obtaining continuous incremental innovation, yet so ineffective in developing real breakthroughs.
Of course, the former has a highly systematic approach behind it which really works, a key part of which is a process called nemawashi. Literally, nemawashi means “preparing the roots”, being an metaphor from rice-growing. Preparing the roots so that the plant shall grow strong.
In organisations, nemawashi means building support for a project by gaining feedback (and buy-in) from all the key players ahead of a decision-making meeting. Of course, it is designed to maintain harmony and build consensus.
And therein lies the problem. The more radical, disruptive, out-of-the-box a new idea is, the more certain it is not to survive the process of nemawashi. It’s so deeply ingrained in the culture that breaking away from it would be really hard to bring about.
A possible way forward is to get away from the highly disciplined Japanese workplace, and to create a temporary climate where collaborative wishing and dreaming can take place without the intrusion of nemawashi.
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