96: Tim Schlanghecke, Country Director Flavour, Symrise Japan

<p>Tim Schlanghecke is the Country Director for Flavour of Symrise in Japan. Mr. Schlanghecke has been in Japan ever since he graduated University from his home country, Germany. He says that he is not able to compare Japanese workplace and management to Germany since he did not work much in Germany. Mr. Schlanghecke says that his first venture was a small brewery that he started in the Japanese countryside, where people did not speak much English. He moved around Japan quite a lot in his early years in Japan, he spent some time in Fukuoka, Hokkaido, Mishima, Shizuoka, Yamagata and the spent some time in the Kansai area before coming to Tokyo. As someone who was passionate about breweries, the natural inclination for Mr. Schlanghecke was to go to the Japanese countryside to work there. The businesses plateaued at one point and then Mr. Schlanghecke decided to move to Tokyo to start his own consulting business, in his expertise niche which was consulting breweries.</p> <p> </p> <p>Since Mr. Schlanghecke is in a unique industry, Mr. Story asked Mr. Schlanghecke if it was challenging to convince Japanese board members and junior staff that they should come work for his smaller organization and not a larger, more stable, typical Japanese firm. Mr. Schlanghecke says he is passionate about his work and that translates outward and a lot of the time he hopes people see it and join him because of that passion. Japan works differently than other countries, resistance to change is one example of one thing that is different in Japan. Mr. Schlanghecke says that this is almost a philosophical topic as the resistance to change is deeply embedded in Japanese culture and it goes back hundreds of years. Japan’s work culture has achieved astronomical things, the amount of total wealth that Japan has generated and the distribution of wealth in Japan has improved phenomenally over the years. Though Mr. Schlanghecke suspects that what worked in the past will not be the same way to be successful in the future. He believes though that w