I’ve worked for a Japanese manufacturing company for a number of years and I’ve had to lean, understand, and accommodate, the differences of how meetings are conducted and decisions reached. The Japanese meeting is primarily a vehicle for sharing information and acknowledging formal buy in to usually predetermined decisions. If you’re expecting a more American style meeting where issues are defined, solicitations and brainstorming encourage, and after much group discussions a decision reached, you’ll find yourself confused and frustrated. You’ll leave the meeting saying, “Why it was already determined what to do, why even have the meeting?”
That doesn’t mean that those critical processes aren’t taking place. They’re taking place prior to the meeting via many different channels. With the Japanese, the leader or driver of the project will spend a great deal of time prior to the meeting discussing the issues and his favored solution(s) one-on-one with those involved. This may be stopping by their desk for a chat or having lunch together for a quick discussion. If the subject is sensitive or if there is a specific person that is opposed to the favored solution then more indirect tactics may be required such as meeting after work for a few drinks or a golf outing. It may require several chats or meetings to get unofficial agreement to a workable solution and can take some time. After this pre-processing the actual meeting is simply a rubber stamp. One key to this is that Japanese tend to avoid direct confrontations and those situation that may cause them.
The Japanese process works well and in fact may be better then how Americans often approach issues that need a group decision. Americans don’t try to avoid direct confrontation and will have open meetings on controversal subjects. Perhaps if more pre-processing were done, meetings could be shorter much less involved.
The problems occur when there is a break down in communications between Japanese and American associates resulting in the Japanese pre-processing being invisible to their American counterparts. If, as an American, you don’t understand what is happening behind the scenes and make an effort to become aware and a part of the pre-processing it can become frustrating.
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