Fujiko Suda: Worklife

Hi Fuji,

Inter­est­ing note. That quote is so common-sense yet so uncom­mon in the real world that it bog­gles the mind.

I don’t quite under­stand why you sin­gle out ‘for­eign cap­i­tal’ firms though. When you say for­eign cap­i­tal, do you mean invest­ment com­pa­nies HQed out­side Japan (such as Car­lyle Group, Accel etc) or multi­na­tional non-Japanese firms in general?

I think there are sev­eral inter­na­tional firms that are doing well in Japan, and con­versely, many Japan­ese firms that are in fact not going well despite their cul­tural prox­im­ity etc.

So the argu­ment of trust can be sliced and diced both ways. I won­der if it is a mat­ter of cor­po­rate beliefs rather than national origin..

Shanx

Hi Shanx,

Thanks for vis­it­ing! Happy you com­mented! But I had bet­ter start pay­ing a log more atten­tions to gram­mat­i­cal and spelling errors if you are read­ing my entries!!

You are right about both inter­na­tional firms and local Japan­ese firms are not going well in Japan. I am assum­ing the peo­ple that read this blog will mostly be non-Japanese, and what I want to do is to point out to those peo­ple who wants to suc­ceed in Japan some of the pit falls in doing busi­ness in Japan. As you say, the basic prin­ci­pals are applic­a­ble anywhere.

Hello Fujiko,

I was hav­ing din­ner with a friend in Japan not too long ago, and they told me about a bad sit­u­a­tion with the spe­cial fab­ri­ca­tion of high qual­ity wooden doors and pan­el­ing by an Amer­i­can Com­pany for a Japan­ese Build­ing project.

The con­tract called for par­tial pay­ment, on a timed basis, along with deliv­ery of the doors on a par­tic­u­lar date needed for the project. The doors were not ready, and the Amer­i­can com­pany made an excuse. This delayed the project in Japan.

Still, they missed their sec­ond dead­line to deliver the doors. So the Japan­ese com­pany stopped pay­ment for the work until the doors were delivered.

The Amer­i­can com­pany pres­i­dent called the Japan­ese archi­tect and screamed at them and used bad lan­guage to them, com­plain­ing about the with­held money. Finally the Japan­ese com­pany paid more money, and after another long delay, they finally received the doors.

It was a very bad expe­ri­ence for the Japan­ese Com­pany and archi­tect who were try­ing to fol­low the Japan­ese government’s encour­age­ment to do busi­ness in America.

I felt bad about this, because I rec­og­nized that the Amer­i­can comany was try­ing to take advan­tage of the Japan­ese Cul­tural desire to avoid open con­flict. So he was act­ing like a bully, and not hon­estly. In Amer­ica, if some­one behaves like that to us, it doesn’t work, usu­ally. We would just angrily tell them to be quiet.

So when I read about what you say that Amer­i­can Com­pa­nies need­ing to act both hon­estly and with cul­tural sen­si­ti­tiv­ity, I strongly agree. Same is true for Japan­ese com­pa­nies oper­at­ing in the USA. The cost of bad busi­ness deal­ings is too high.

After the bad expe­ri­ence, my Japan­ese archi­tect friend would never do busi­ness with ANY Amer­i­can com­pany. That is too bad. This one rude com­pany helped ruin many busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties for other com­pa­nies as well.

Too often peo­ple feel busines is a war. I agree with your approach to make it a coop­er­a­tion and a healthy com­mu­nity of com­pet­ing prod­ucts and services.

Good luck with you work.

Sean

Hello Sean

Thank you for your visit and your comment!

I have had enough expe­ri­ence with delayed deliv­ery of imported inte­ri­ors prod­ucts out­side of Japan. As you point out, pay­ment for the goods is another mat­ter that becomes very sen­si­tive and dif­fi­cult in inter­na­tional busi­ness. With all these fac­tors, I am amazed inter­na­tional busi­ness goes well at all. My deep respect goes for suc­cess­ful inter­na­tional companies.