Читать книгу Business Guide to Japan - Boye Lafayette De Mente - Страница 11

THE ROLE OF GROUPTHINK

GEORGE ORWELL must have had some familiarity with Confucianism or Japanese culture when he wrote 1984. One of the Japanese cultural factors that remind me of Orwell’s book is called shudan ishiki (shuu-dahn ee-she-kee), an old term which means something like “groupthink.”

Shudan ishiki remains an important ingredient in the Japanese way of managing, especially in larger companies and despite its now obvious shortcomings. There is a slow but gradual movement in corporate Japan to allow individual thinking and initiative, but it is still in its early stages of development and generally is not pervasive enough to significantly change the way one has to deal with companies.

The groupthink concept that continues to prevail in most Japanese companies makes it imperative that virtually all decisions be made by consensus—a factor that dramatically increases the time it takes to reach decisions. The larger the group involved, the longer it can take for consensus to be achieved.

The obvious advantage of shudan ishiki is that once consensus is reached within a section or department, the wholehearted support and effort of the group helps to ensure that the task has a much better chance of being accomplished efficiently and quickly.

However, there is a downside to the groupthink mentality. It is still common for companies, and especially for government agencies, to look at and treat employees as material assets rather than as individuals. Among other things, larger companies and government offices typically switch white-collar workers from one section or department to another every two or three years.

The purpose of this rotation system is to provide employees with experience in all of the key sections and departments so they will have a good overview of the entire operation as they move up in rank and responsibility. On the surface, the system has merit, but in any particular section or department it means that a significant percentage of the members are newcomers with little or no knowledge of the work to be done.

The thinking behind this training method, obviously, is that experienced individuals in each of the sections and departments will train and supervise the newcomers and “carry” them until they learn the ropes.

Foreigners dealing with a Japanese company should be cautious about getting stuck with a section member who is new in the group, is not totally familiar with its work, and may have no clout at all.

The custom of transferring personnel from one job to another without regard for the skills involved—and for putting the newest and greenest personnel out in front to handle walk-in visitors or callers—adds to the amount of time and sometimes the confusion involved in contacting and dealing with firms—and is another reason why it is important to have the name of a responsible person in a company before calling or visiting. By immediately giving the name of the individual you wish to contact, you may be able to avoid getting caught up in the mushy outer wall of the Japanese company.

The effects of groupthink go well beyond regarding the company as a single organism made up of virtually identical parts that are interchangeable. It is also responsible for the way the Japanese structure themselves in groups and act together as teams and factions.

And there is, of course, another positive side to the shudan ishiki syndrome. The ingrained ability of the Japanese to work in groups with extraordinary efficiency is one of their primary economic assets. An analogy I like to use is that the Japanese team behaves like a highly trained military squad, while their foreign counterparts tend to behave like a bunch of weekend warriors.