144: Peter Drucker, Leadership And Japan

<p>Peter Drucker has this great quote. “Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion and under performance.  Everything else requires leadership”.  That is a very profound and pithy observation by Drucker.  In this modern day and age, why do we still encounter these three horsemen of the apocalypse of organizational dis-function?  You would think we would be better organized by now.  Each horseman signals its own raft of challenges, magnified even further when operating in Japan. </p> <p> </p> <p>Friction is a tricky one in Japan for foreign bosses, because so often it is subterranean.  Power struggles, factions, proxies, turf, ego all come into play here but not so overtly that they are easy to spot.  Influence is achieved through access to key people and decisions, more often than over the bodies of enemies.  Apart from when bosses discipline subordinates, screaming abuse at colleagues isn’t acceptable in Japan.  The problem here is getting the issues out on the table for resolution, more than anything else. </p> <p> </p> <p>The age old remedy of out of office discussions is usually where the boss finds out what is really going on, as opposed to what was thought to be happening.  Presuming you are able to achieve such a worthy goal, that is only half the battle, now what do you do about it. </p> <p> </p> <p>The typical boss technique of getting two people in a room and then commanding them to sort it out may work in the West, but it won’t work here. Rather, we need to really dig out the issues and manage the resolution process.  In particular, we need to pay careful attention to those spurious “yes” statements, which in Japan indicate I heard you, but that doesn’t mean I agree with you. </p> <p> </p> <p>This ensures that the follow up is critically important to make sure that the solution is actually executed and everyone is doing what they said they would do. </p> <p> </p> <p>Confusion is usually the result of unclear processes and unclear communication.  The Japanese language is a