Posted by Jeremiah on February 18, 2014
If you instinctively went for the axe – then it’s pretty likely that your attempts to negotiate any new plan or business in Japan will come to a grinding halt.
I know. I’ve had this happen to me several times until I finally learned the right way to go about it.
You see, any company is like a tree that is supported by it’s roots. The strength of each root is the conviction and determination of each of the company’s staff members.
You can’t just go over their heads and chop out a decision with the president and expect them to let go of their bedrock hard ways of doing things.
In Japan, even though people won’t openly disagree with you in meetings if you go for the hard sell – they still won’t agree with you either…
And in a society that prides itself on making decisions as a whole – if you don’t convince everyone on the merits of your plan before it comes up to that formal meeting – then you don’t stand a chance.
This is why drinking is so important to Japanese companies’ decision making process.
For example, every time Mr. Suzuki goes out for dinner with his coworkers he isn’t just having fun.
He is patiently winning them over to his way of thinking about his pet project. This is what is called, “digging at the roots”.
Over the course of half a year or more, he’ll go around and dig at each key member that he’ll need for this project… and little by little they will all begin to give way.
Then one day when his proposal finally comes up for formal discussion – the proverbial tree will fall without much more than a gust of wind.
And everybody will be on board without much need for any further discussion.
On one hand, this is what makes doing business in Japan a long drawn out process… on the other, that’s also exactly what has protected Japanese business from the rash decisions that crippled the US economy in 2008.
However, use it to your advantage and you’ll find that Japanese business people are more than willing to hear every little detail of what you’ve got to say.
– Jeremiah Magone
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