The Cultural Origins of Japanese Business Management

this webinar was originally planned for global mba students when the corona outbroke our students asked for more learning opportunities so today i will not do a traditional mba type of webinar i plan to step out from traditional mba take a deep dive into japanese art and come back to management at the end sorry i should have moved my size these are the topics that i intend to cover we will be talking about shrines we will be talking about jomo era this is stone age in japan and pottery we will be talking about japanese festivals sumo sumo wrestling martial arts the essence of japanese arts and finally the implication for western and japanese management now my students have asked me what are these i hope you are seeing two pictures one the white one on the left and a red one on the right people in japan i i think you are familiar but people overseas do you know what they are some people say it's a gate yes it's a gate in japanese we call torii where does this gate lead lead you two yes they lead you to shrines and if you go through the gate the main building would appear the left one is fujisan higashiguchi so both are shrines now it is said that these buildings were established one thousand one thousand five hundred years ago but can we go beyond 1500 years can you imagine what was at the these places three thousand years ago five thousand years ago the the shrine on the left has fujisan uh mount fuji behind the shrine kuma kumano kayatama shrine on the right has a large rock behind the building so three thousand years ago five thousand years ago our ancestors ancestors worshiped these places because it was mount fuji because it was a giant rock and in japan i will talk about german people today but our ancestors worshiped nature the mountains the rock the sun the wind the rivers the tree and nature's will to grow as gods we call it kamisama in japan now have you ever seen the photo of these potteries before these are they were built long time ago let me um just give you a little bit of explanation of jomo german period is 14 000 years 1 000 years before christ this is a time in japanese pre-history where people did a hunter gather a culture but they reached a considerable degree of sedentism and cultural complexity jomon means codemarked and this was named by american jurist edward mosey who discovered the sheds of pottery german in world history is in the middle to late stone age now let me go back to one of the pottery um the pottery on the right why is there so much decoration what do you think because the pottery were used for storage and cooking why would our ancestor put so much decoration my interpretation is that you know our ancestors were artists themselves so it was not just you know uh functional beauty but it was more of artistic beauty as well this is the kind of house that jomon people lived i'm talking about 16 000 years ago to 3 000 years ago and on the right you will see a calendar of german people so depending on the season they fished they looked for uh crabs they looked at uh wild vegetables and they hunted animals so this was like a typical life in the german period now um i would come back to a modern japan these pictures are scenes from nara park has anyone been to another park before there are many deers and deers are not afraid of human now my question is why i don't think you see many places where deer and humans live together um deers and humans coexist at nara park deers being an animal they have not changed their behavior so it is humans who have accepted to live with the together with deer now if i go back to our ancestors german people they regarded their surrounding as hara this is nature and they took good care of the surrounding because hara the nature was the source of their food and energy japan is unique in that natural forest remains around shrines and temples even in the middle of the city like tokyo and kyoto and i think this is another tradition of co-existence seen in japan now i'd like to introduce a japanese anime that reflect coexistence um maybe you have seen these uh movies uh princess mononoke and nausika these are movies made by mr hayao miyazaki who is from the studio ghibli and what he emphasizing in these movies are the importance of co-existence between human and nature we human have to use nature in order to live we need food we need material we need wood we need energy but on the other hand uh nature needs balance if we cut down too much trees nature cannot sustain itself and this is a big question i think posed to us today um i will move into festivals um festivals played an important part in german's life people held them to express gratitude to the surroundings nature and kami gods as well as to create a rhythm in their daily life gods in japan are not like the only god in some religion we say there is 8 million gods in japan so it can be anything it can be the rock it can be the water it can be the tree it can be the flower when i say god or kami please regard it as a japanese kind of god thank you these are places where our ancestor held festivals um the picture on the left is uh a tabata stone circle about a one hour west of tokyo the oval of the stone circle heads uh directly to mount fuji and the sun ray on the winter solstice falls on hirugadake which is the highest peak nearby so jomon people had a keen sense to select a very special place to hold the festivals the picture on the right is a map of japan and from east to west i just like to point out some important places not only for german people but for japanese people today the kashima shrine tokyo mount fuji ise mount surugi and takachiho shrine they all fall under one straight line this line is uh a sun sunrise on a summer solstice so uh what i like to say is our ancestor german people were very sophisticated people who understand stood nature as well as astronomy now uh let me move into festivals i have put three pictures of festivals the top one is a tree festival at suvat taisha they cut the tree uh from the forest they moved the tree from the forest into the shrine over the the river and they would make that tree stand so this is a this is a festival held every seven years and there are so many visitors uh coming to suwa nagano the right festival is about our festival our dancing in the obon period of tukshma and it is known for a beautiful dancing the picture on the bottom it's a portable shrine held by uh men uh to kind of move the gods from the mountain to the rice field or from the rice field to the ocean um my question to you is why do people get so excited at festivals wha uh why do visitors go see major festivals like the suva festival or the obon festival and what element of human are stimulated through festivals i like to talk about chinese character i i'm sorry for those who are not familiar with chinese character but um this is a festival in chinese character and i like to explain how what what it means in chinese character some character is made of combination of smaller parts and the festival is made from three parts the parts on the left is offering to to the gods the right is represents people and in the center part on the bottom is stands for alta or shrine so the meaning of festival in in chinese character is people bring offering to gods in front of the altar or shrine so thank you for those who answered you know what what what fascinates people in in festival but i think the answer is in this chinese character now um let me ask a question to you how you view human beings and i made three triangles from the left are we a material existence or the the model in the middle we are a material existence but also a mindful existence the third model is we are material mindful but also a spiritual existence festivals were created as a special occasion and in japan we typically invite gods praise them through shinto prayers or for dance music sake sake japanese alcohol and food to them people were rejuvenated not only because they worked together to hold the festival but because of the their time spent praying serving and feeling spiritually connected to the gods as festivals were people's occasion to refuel the emotional and spiritual energy people would also recognize and appreciate their connectedness with ancestors and elderly people in the community so if we can touch some kind of spirituality we are able to jump time and space and that is what we do in these festivals um i have been talking about japan but if we look globally pilgrimage is very popular today this is an example of uh pilgrims in the camino de santiago people walking from france all the way to north west spain people would walk 800 kilometers over 40 days but the reason people walk is the field or connects with their soul and spirit that's what uh most people who walked 800 my kilometers will say i'd like to move into sumo wrestling um maybe you have seen it on tv maybe you have seen it in the kurama stadium but did you know sumo wrestling was also an act to please the gods at the shrines and the reason why i'm i'm telling this is if you go to traditional shrines there are many sumo rings in the shrines for example taisha that i mentioned where we cut down the trees move it and replant it they have a a beautiful sumo wrestling ring in suwataisha and um in some reason a sumo wrestler would take sumo only by himself and what he is doing is he is taking playing a sumo match with the gods the rule is this sumo wrestler must rules or addis tai uh the reason is he is to please the god for a good agriculture harvest on that year now um allow me to share my experience in aikido aikido is a martial art that i have been practicing 35 years and i'll try to touch the essence of japanese art there is some slides but let me share my experience with my master when you start practicing initially we focus on the form form or mechanics that is how to move your right hand how to move your left hand how to move your right arm you might not be able to see my right arm right foot or how to move your left foot so so basically we are trying to understand the technique um if you can start throwing people aikido is like judo so we throw people um your master will ask you what are you thinking obviously you are thinking to throw your opponent but that's not a sufficient answer and eventually the kind of practice i went through is i am trying to throw four opponents at the same time so i have four opponents attacking you at the simultaneously now what is um unique about martial art is um you cannot beat your master although you you have more power or you have more strength i was a captain of aikido club uh when i was in university so i'm in my 20s practicing maybe six times a day but i get easily thrown by a 70 year old or 80 year old master i don't think this would happen in sports like boxing or wrestling so i like to share with you what what is behind some of the japanese art this is a framework that we learn in japanese art from left to right it goes d and the focus is initially the form or the mechanics in the shoe stage in the host stage it goes to the mind and the this stage uh it goes to soul and spirit in martial arts you are typically white belt when you are in the shoe stage you become a black belt when you get to a hostage and you become a master if you can feel or understand the soul and spirit let me kind of move on now um let me ask you a question that my master asked me many times what is the best or the strongest mode in martial arts can you be strongest when you are in a fighting mode with you know a full adrenaline you know or are you strong where you are in a neutral mode without any strong emotion or are you strong when you are thankful to the opponent the answer is the third mode the gratitude mode so um my question is why are we stronger when we show gratitude to our opponent um i i talked about human abuse before but if we combine the two framework hardy on the bottom when you reach the master stage typically you have a very holistic view about humans and as a consequence you can connect with a larger people larger ancestor and you become stronger now um we talked about japanese art we talked about sumo we talked about aikido now what is this implication for business if you understand spirituality if you under uh if you have a feeling of soul what can it do for business let me first start from a western view i'm not sure if you have had professor petersen at mit but he has been leading society for organizational learning and these are some of the famous book from his lab the fifth discipline from peter senge presents from peter sengei and co-authored by many many people at the mit synchronistic this is joseph jaworski's leadership journey that he shared with everyone and theory you is a new uh theory to bring social change um today i'm gonna touch the on theory you um i think you see a big u-shape uh on the right uh professor sharma defines that when we bring social change there are seven stages from the laptop downloading seeing sensing presencing at the bottom crystallizing prototyping and performing at the right end if you can look at the left diagram the yellow circle shows your focus the black circle shows your boundary so when we are in downloading basically you are thinking about yourself and you have a firm boundary between yourself and other people when we go to seeing our focus is close to someone else maybe customer if we go to sensing we are with the customer so you your focus is out from yourself and when we are in presenting we are thinking of every measure to help maybe a customer this is very similar that to the aikido practice that i did you know taking on four opponents at the same time now um let me give you an example just to uh make it easy i will bring a western car company and toyota motor into the picture i have had the opportunity to work with toyota for quite long time in in their global executive training let's say there was a customer complaint about a car a typical western company would receive a phone call hear a customer complaint and they would try to deal the case according to the manual and according to the manual there are things that they can do and they cannot do and they would reply based on the manual at toyota uh what what is emphasized is to go to the customer site so if the car broke down the leaders would typically go see the car and try to fix it and by doing that what toyota is asking its employees to do is to use their body use their feet and use their mind in a western car company typically typically a customer complaint is data so there is not much emotion into that complaint but if you ask your employees to go to the site which which we called genchigembutsu because you are facing your customer face-to-face typically emotions will be drawn to the customer and in that way toyota's say response to a customer complaint is very customer-centric now um i'd like to introduce another theory um this is from professor nonaka and professor takeuchi this is called the knowledge creating company they have studied how knowledge is created from an individual person to uh to a team and eventually to our organization what the they are saying is basically it starts from a tacit knowledge tacit knowledge is a knowledge that is in someone's hands or in someone's mind for example if a factory worker were attaching a door let's say to a car acid knowledge is without measuring they understand that the door is the right how to say fit to the machine or to the body explicit knowledge on the contrary is a numerical data or a verbal uh logic that can be shared explicitly so if i were to use the example of a door it's measuring the size it's measuring the weight and seeing the fit because of specifications professors nonaka and takeuchi said that knowledge can only be deepened if there is interaction between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge so basically they are saying with body and mind and head there should be an interaction going back and forth and this interaction is brought by people or teams or an organization so they are also kind of emphasizing the importance of face-to-face kind of gathering now the last management theory i'd like to introduce is about 300 year old companies in japan globalist professor takubo and nba alumni have researched 69 japanese sustainable companies they defined uh japanese sustainable companies jsc as companies uh that have 300 years old of history and they have sales of 5 billion yen today 5 billion yen is roughly 50 million u.s dollars what they found is that jsc have made significant contribution to their local communities um based on this they proposed ccvm a community coexistent value model michael porter of harvard business school have proposed creating shared values way but when i compare the two c c v m is much more i'll say uh committed much more uh long term view than creating shared value of michael porter they have also found that these companies have shinto artas within their properties and they participate heavily in local festivals so i talked about the three views on human but i hope that you come to see that japanese art and also these management theory are trying to move from the left model to the right model whether it's toyota it's business practice or whether it's theory you or whether it's knowledge creating company or longevity companies in japan now at globus we try to touch the essence of japanese art i don't have a class on japanese art in the mba but we try to touch theory you when when your body and mind aligns with according that is a path that you should choose azio kokorozashi i think georgia was mentioning about kokorozashi in the beginning we try to ask our students to seize these opportunities so this is my last slide um japanese art is influenced by the german period during which our ancestors found a way to coexist with nature japanese festivals give participants unity among themselves and with the gods kamisama this is why festivals are so enthusiastically received and passed on through tradition japanese art stressed the importance of moving from form body mind to soul and spirit we call this from shu to ha and 2d japanese management observes this notion of form for the mind soul and spirit i hope that knowledge creating company study of 300 year old company you are aware that they touch on the body mind and soul and spirit what i feel is leading western management theory is also starting to touch on these elements today because we live in a corporate 19 situation it asks for social distance but i hope we do not forget the power and energy of body mind and soul and spirit so with that i'd like to end my part and i i will be happy to take uh questions um thank you very much for listening and um let me bring my colleague zach back on the stage i don't know you know zak you work with me i don't know if you kind of feel it but i'm trying to look at everyone in a holistic view not not just you know who they are in terms of things like nationality and gender in my view these are form you know and uh so so basically i try to understand my staff's mind if they show signs of souls and spirit i would like to you know have them release that part to do something unique so these are something i'm trying to do in an international context i don't know how successful i am yeah um we have about 50 people uh doing the global business at globus and i would say maybe 30 of them are international staff so we have more international employees than japanese as a consequence you know our communication is kind of mixed between english and japanese but i think i would say the perception is very wide compared to working only with japanese so um i don't know how successful i was today but basically we need to set the setting you need to show a framework you need to define what is success in order i i i think to bring you know results in the international team um i think young generation are more into maybe their iphones but um if they you know take part in festivals i think they would understand the power not only about you know people being together but also the special occasion to kind of feel the unity with gods or ancestors so there are festivals that are able to bring in young people and uh i hope uh you know young people can uh understand and you know the essence of japanese art that's my feeling but um i i i think um when we when i talk to my western friends or chinese or indian friends what they tell me is uh nakamura at least you have one percent of people still understanding the essence of japanese art this is much more than our society so i agree with you that uh young younger generation may not understand fully but if we have one percent i think it's much more than many societies so um how to spread from the one percent i think is a challenge and uh quite design i think you can also help us spread uh the spot yes i try that thank you very much thank you um thank you uh definitely uh for you for your question um i think sales and marketing is a very i'll say in a unique position because you need to understand your customers and in order to understand your customers as i showed in theory you you you need to be you know physically maybe you are not with them but your mind should be with the customer so in theory you at least we should be at the sensing stage so in that regard um you know um whether it's japanese or whether it's western uh i think we need to break our boundaries and we we need to think as a customer so in that regard i think sales and marketing are special it's much more harder for internal division to do theory u or to have a holistic view so i i think sales marketing or product development r d these are very good divisions uh where you know you can use theory you or the essence of japanese art um thank you roland to join in in lunchtime um i still practice aikido so i practice i plan to practice every other week in reality maybe i can only go once a month but but i do still practice i also go to the mountains quite quite a lot visiting you know jomon sacred places so that's how i try to recharge energy but as we get older i think the time of concentration gets shorter so um we we should also consider our age as well i'm not working as hard as when i was in my 30s thank you uh rex for you for your question um i am seeing your uh what you wrote on the chat um what he wrote on the chat uh i think it's basically true uh toyota's management is known known to be hands-on and hanzo means you know going to the field to understand the uh the root cause of the problem um now kovit 19 has caused uh has brought uh many uh new problems to to uh japanese company i i i think not only japanese company but companies worldwide we were not able to go outside some countries i think there was a lockdown in japan it was a request to stay at home so basically we were asked to run the business mostly from home or with a few members so this case no matter whether it's japanese or filipino or western i think there was no choice but to cope with the situation i am seeing more uh digital transformation than maybe the past three years during these three months so i have not had the chance to visit toyota because of this situation but i am hearing that they have made big strides in terms of conducting many uh services online rather than face to face so in that regard um i think this this time it was inevitable whether it's a japanese company or a western company to cope with the situation thank you lucinda this is a deep question um [Music] um it is said that japanese have two faces omote is a face that we show uh to especially to our bosses ura is a face that you show to your friends um in my generation played a big part meaning the boss had a strong power but today because of knowledge because of data because of you know rapid changes i think um you know the ura ura means a true or a candid communication is more important so i am seeing more changes in japanese style communication moving from omote uh you know um a good communication to a direct more candid type of communication so uh and young generation i i feel you know they don't bother to say good things to their boss so i'm thinking more candid communication will take place uh in in the future so and i think it's a good change thank you satoshi it's good to see you um yeah um basically you're asking how do we do shuhari in today's environment um i agree with you it's not easy to meet people um i have not had the chance to practice aikido for the last three months uh because of kovit 19 but there are things that we can do for example today's presentation are based on some of the readings i did during the three months so i have tried to connect uh japanese festivals and uh with the essence of japanese art and a little bit of management today so in your case um i i think you should follow your interest and maybe we cannot do a lot of ha and re um i think we can do shoe we can learn the form or we can learn the technique so i would use this chance or time that we we have received because of kobit 19 and maybe do some studying so that when we are allowed to go out meet people you can do the hard part or the report thank you thank you for for your questions um let me try to answer using theory you um the traditional hierarchic management is only downloading so your bosses or directors will not understand what is happening in the field so i i think many or i would say most japanese organization have have to move from downloading to seeing and sensing you know presenting is not so easy so i i will not talk too much so much on presenting but at least if you stay and listen only to good stories you know companies cannot survive so we we need to go to our client side we need to think and act like our customers so in that regard um maybe theory u is something that is understandable uh to everyone so if i were you i would do a session every member reading a theory u-book and bring some examples of change in your organization in that way i think you can stimulate your organization to maybe move faster or comply with the changes in society so those are some of the things that i would recommend to you thank you um i had a chance to meet uh professor senge and otoshama in uh vermont in 2018 and uh basically peter professor senges master is a chinese zen master so he has learned from the east and what they have thought back in the 1990s were mit is known for system thinking or for using i.t and the the how to say what professor senge and professor sharma was thinking back then was if we continue on the path of western capitalism the ecological problems would be too big to handle and that's why they have moved more towards eastern philosophy or eastern thoughts and now they are leading this in a western context so a lot of sustainable movement uh in the let's say food industry in europe has come from professor senge or professor otshama's initiative so i think no matter whether it's from the west or east this kind of idea of coexistence with nature is important on either side of the world um i i'm on uh one of the government task force uh and but i am talking with them online right now um basically if it's a government task force in the past it was we were asked to go into the ministry uh so i i think you know the kobe 19 situation forces many organizations to change or to cope with the safety standards so um i i would say negotiations have changed because of the situation what is possible in in this situation is probably what we need to do now um even we are doing a task force online is there anything that we can do or for the government or for the industry those are those are something that uh me and my staff are thinking uh taking part in the task force so um i i think um it's inevitable that many discussions have gone online but what we need to think is how do we make contribution uh you know if you can use let's say the theory u framework uh can we think from sensing uh for example in my case if i worked at this ministry what would i want to do for the industry and uh because i'm in academia i'm trying to think what can globalists do for japan or for the industry so i think um you know the format of negotiation change but uh the way to contribute i think still remains the same um first of all um we don't teach these elements so much in school anymore um i i did not i did not learn you know the the heart of japanese art from my parents i i learned through my master in aikido so i think the best way is to practice some kind of japanese art and when you practice japanese art there's a lot of doing rather than thinking by using your body and mind you understand the philosophy so it's not a quick way but once you understand it's very deep and uh it energizes you so um eriksen if you like flowers flowers could be a way if you like to write uh calligraphy could be a way if you like to move your body uh maybe martial art would be a good way um i am surprised i go to the aikido headquarters from time to time but today there are many many uh american people there are many french people who are much better than me and i am surprised to see the internationalization of these arts so um if you liked you know uh some of some parts of my uh presentation today um i would recommend you to check it doesn't have to be japanese it could be indian it could be chinese it could be america as well but something deep that i i think that resonates not only with the form but something with your mind and soul and spirit you know the pilgrims uh that can also be one i think thank you um we have case studies for example of toyota we have case study of inner food or panasonic so through the successful japanese companies we touch these elements however things like theory you this is i would say um maybe beyond mba level so it is more used in executive education um some of what i uh introduced today uh may be used more in art school or through uh traditional you know japanese art so yes we touch these elements but maybe not to the full extent so if you want to do more um you know maybe after an mba go through exit go to executive education or experience these arts i i think in that way you could fully master them thank you um i am a japanese but my friends global globally have also we had this kind of discussion about what art can do and uh i believe uh there's a big part that art can play to energize people rejuvenate some spirit so uh no matter where you are joining from i hope we can spread the importance of art or body mind soul and spirit and i very much look forward to uh seeing you again at globis whether it's uh bottle or face to face thank you thank you very much for joining tonight

2022-02-04 12:09

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