Doing Business
With Japan
from a speech presented at Radford University
by Jerie Powell (jepowell@intecs.com)
"Thank you very
much for coming. I know you have better things to do. Please forgive me if
my presentation doesn't meet your expectations but to the extent possible,
I'll do my best."
Wait. Let me start all over again.
"I am delighted to have you here. I am eager to tell you how
successful I've been with the Japanese. By the time I finish, you'll be so
fired up that you'll be on the next plane to Japan. You'll sweep them with
your Yankee spirit and come back with a pocketful of purchase
orders!"
What a difference! My first greeting is self-effacing and apologetic while
my second greeting is full of confidence and optimism. Well, you guessed
it. I had a Japanese hat on for the first and an American hat for the
second.
So the cultural divide is ever persistent, but the good news is that it's
getting narrower and shallower. It will never disappear completely because
most of us tend to stay within our cultural boundaries. With my Japanese
hat on, I wasn't apologizing in the way you thought. I might have thought
my presentation was a pretty good one. Why apologize? It's cultural
conditioning. I am expected to apologize.
On the other hand, with my American hat on, I might not have been as self
confident as I sounded. I probably had my fingers crossed about my
presentation. Being an American, I was supposed to be positive, dynamic
and assertive -- no matter what. It's what my American culture expects.
So, an American "me" and a Japanese "me" have a
different speaking style.
While there are rebels among us, most of us are more comfortable with our
own heritage, history and culture. We are uncomfortable and feel
threatened in the face of different cultural expectations. This sense of
comfort has a powerful effect on relationships between the Americans and
the Japanese. Especially in business. For the Japanese, business is about
people and relationships, win-win relationships built on mutual trust. Of
course, business involves selling and buying and making money. But for the
Japanese, good business follows mutual trust, not vice versa. Friendship
comes before money talk. And mutual trust usually results from comfort
levels they achieve with each other. Politically incorrect or not, let's
face it. It's more difficult to feel comfortable with people who don't
look like us or talk like us.
I'm sure you've heard numerous instances of American and Japanese people
having a hard time in understanding each other. They misunderstand, get
frustrated, and blame each other for nothing or often for something silly.
I have my share of true-life stories. I'll tell you one. It's a case of a
problem created by the Japanese propensity to apologize for no reason and
the American propensity to explain away mistakes without apologizing.
A friend of mine works for a thriving high tech company in Northern
Virginia. A dynamic American woman heads up the company. They sell
software programs involving operating systems for big companies doing
worldwide banking and insurance work. More than half of their revenues
comes from overseas. Their number one customer is Japan. Their business
with Japan is a real "success" story but during earlier years,
they weren't doing well. That's when they hired my friend.
He is a Chinese American, born in mainland China. He has lived in Japan
for six years or so and worked for a couple of major Japanese
multinationals. The problem he found at the Virginia company was about
cultural communication. All the letters they received from their Japanese
customer always started with apologies -- "We are sorry but...."
"We are sorry to bother you but we're having problems with your
software. We deeply appreciate your help. It could be our fault, etc.
etc.," to make sure that the American side wouldn't feel bad. In this
situation, the American customer would have said: "Your software is
not working. We request that you fix it right away." This is a polite
way of saying "Your software is no good. Come and fix it. Or
else...." And probably, this is also what the Japanese customer had
in mind. But no, Japanese are not supposed to talk like that. If they did,
it's a disgrace! The Japanese people are like President Clinton. Making
people feel good is their duty!
Now how did the Virginia supplier respond? When they received one of those
"we are sorry but..." letter, they would respond telling them to
do several things to fix the problem. To them, the letters were somewhat
strange and even exasperating. "Get to the fact. Let's get down to
business. Let's talk turkey." Fine with the Americans, but not with
the Japanese. They took the Japanese customer's apologies literally. They
thought their software was fine but the problem was something the Japanese
customer was doing. They carefully explained what to do for the problem
but gave no apologies. To the Japanese customer, this was yet another
example of American arrogance and poor customer service. My friend has
changed that. Now he uses "I'm sorry" all over the place. He
goes to Japan frequently to keep his customer happy. Occasionally, he
takes along his American colleagues. When they get back to the hotel, he
gets teasing from his colleagues about the number of bows he made and the
number of apologies he gave. They've never seen him do that back home!
My friend's story is more amusing than serious. But the consequence of
misreading each other can be deadly in every relationship. In business, it
could mean losing a million dollar sale. Business is so competitive
nowadays. It's quite easy to find another supplier who is more in sync
with Japanese ways.
So what to do? Bow and apologize? No. Unless you are comfortable doing
that. If you force yourself to do something you are not comfortable with,
and unless you have superb acting skills, you are likely to come across as
a person who is not sincere and cannot be trusted. That's worse than
making mistakes. There are many things the Japanese like about the
Americans. They admire American openness so long as it doesn't become
blunt and uncivil. They admire American optimism so long as it doesn't
turn into arrogance or self-aggrandizement. If you don't want to be
bothered with all those "how-to" books and seminars, just be
sensitive, sensible, and warm. Be a sincere human being. These qualities
are universal, and you'll be forgiven for your foreign sins!
But before you head for Japan, I want you to do two things. First, ask
yourself if you really like the Japanese people. If you don't, don't go.
If you insist on going, you'd better make sure that you have a
one-of-the-kind product. Second, be sure to look at the world map. Not to
see where Japan is but to compare the size of Japan to that of North
America. The reason for this is, many peculiar behaviors you'll meet in
Japan can be traced to their geography.
Now I want to turn to the larger picture. Earlier I talked about the
cultural divide. But I also mentioned that it was getting blurred. More
Japanese are becoming more Americanized. More Americans are becoming more
Japanized. And the entire world is becoming more globalized. Globalization
is no longer a theory. It's here. Businesses all over the world are
driving it. They are operating in a global economy. In cyberspace, we are
seeing one big global village. No national boundaries, just a horde of
wired people cruising along the information highway.
Last year I attended a CyberJapan conference. It was at the Library of
Congress. Several speakers represented academia, government and industry
from the U.S. and Japan. It's just amazing what each side is doing with
the Internet. Telemedicine, distance learning, electronic commerce are
only a few examples. It was quite interesting to hear them discuss
cultural differences. How will this affect the Internet? We have a
revolutionary technology. When I e-mail to a friend at the Japanese
Embassy, located only about 10 minutes from my apartment, my message first
goes to their server in Japan before getting to his desktop in Washington.
This whole process occurs at the speed of light. It's just amazing!
No doubt, the U.S. and Japan will compete in the arena of the 21st century
but they will compete differently. The competition is not going to be
about how many American cars have been sold or not sold in Japan, or how
much tobacco Virginia farmers have sold or not sold in Japan. Or, how many
Japanese supercomputers have been sold or not sold in the U.S. These
statistics will be less important for tracking trade activities in the
globalized world, especially in the developed countries like the U.S.,
Japan, and Western Europe. The reason is that the economies of these
advanced countries are becoming knowledge-based. It's brain power they
compete for, and cooperation will be essential because creating new
technologies is expensive. It's technology exchange that counts. Not
technology transfer. So they will compete and cooperate when necessary or
at the same time. No longer are selling and manufacturing the only things
they do in each other's country. They are now locating R&D operations
in each other's country and other parts of the world, to keep close to the
brain power.
In this type of knowledge-based economy, our top international traders are
universities featuring great MBA and cutting edge technology programs. We
have known for a long time that the most marketable product for Japan is
American higher education. Before my son became a lawyer, he was majoring
in a combined program of Computer Science and Business Administration at
the U. Penn's Wharton School. Although he transferred out of the program
to go to law school, I regularly get Wharton Alumni Magazine. When I read
it, I know why globalization is taking hold. This school is globalizing
the minds of young people from all over the world. These students are
sharing new ideas and exploring new technologies. Just imagine the
personal and business networks they are building. It's awesome. Future
businesses will emerge from these person to person contacts.
Here are a few examples:
1. I'm sure you have heard of Megatrend author John Naisbitt. His company,
Megatrends, Ltd. has 57 joint ventures in 42 countries. It has only 4
employees. It's small but it is a multinational company! He uses his
personal connections extensively. Unlike Mr. Iacocca, he needs no
government help.
2. Only a few days ago, I learned about a brand new company called
SonicSound. It was started by a group of young entrepreneurs with a bunch
of high tech gadgets in one room. They are creating new sounds of music
for the Internet. Their target? Global audience!
3. Another case of a personal contact and networking leading to
international business. One evening, the president of the Golden Gate
University was at a reception. There he started a conversation with a
Malaysian banker. Shortly after, he was invited to investigate setting up
a professional MBA program in Kuala Lumpur. This president at the time had
no particular interest in expanding overseas. To his credit, he followed
up the lead and was able to establish a lucrative foreign revenue source
for his school.
So this is my closing comment: Go to the local sushi bar. A person sitting
next to you may turn out to be a Japanese banker like Unoki-san here or if
not a banker, someone like Yano-san who can open up golden opportunities.
Good luck!
Jerie Powell is
marketing program manager for INTECS International, Inc., headquartered in
Alexandria, VA. She first presented this speech at Radford University
Business Assistance Center in August, 1997. She can be reached at tel:
703-916-8888 ext. 104, fax: 703-916-8908, or e-mail: jepowell@intecs.com.
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What a difference! My first greeting is self-effacing and apologetic while
my second greeting is full of confidence and optimism. Well, you guessed
it. I had a Japanese hat on for the first and an American hat for the
second.
