Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

・ It is almost like a philosophical dilemma. Which is better? Safe and stable life as a slave or risky and uncertain future as a free person? Most of the senior people in Japanese companies are those who were brought up by the school that taught them safe and stable life as a slave was better. As a result, they are comfortable with the traditional company-driven career development. By following the career path provided by their companies, they thought they could live a safe and stabile life.

・ On the other hand, younger people know that their generations can never have the same level of safety and stability as their seniors due to the declining Japanese society. So, they have been brought up by the school that teach them they should take care of their own career. Many young Japanese people today do not plan to stay in the same company for a long time any more.

・ As the older people are trying to cling to their already non-guaranteed jobs while young people are trying to quit at will, more and more Japanese companies are falling into serious people management issues.

・ In the old days, when the speed of business was much slower with much less global competition before the digital age, Japanese companies had a lot of time to develop young people and they had no intention to fire them as they could not. So Japanese companies hired many young people, developed them as company-loyalists and generalists who were expected to work for the company till the end of their career in return for stability the company could provide them. However, given the speed of business today and the harsh economic environment in Japan as well as the digitalization era, it is highly questionable if this traditional company-driven career development producing a bunch of generalists with no transferrable professional skills has any value moving forward in Japan.

・ The best career development practice in Western global companies is that they focus on high potential talent who are individually very professional in their respective field. And they try to broaden their knowledge and skills by assigning them to other fields. But the assignment is decided based on the mutual agreement in a career dialogue.

・ In the West, the relationship between the company and an employee is more 50/50 than in Japan where the company is like Shogunate and an employee like a loyal samurai retainer. This cultural mindset is posing a big challenge when a Japanese company tries to change its career development practice. Even if the company starts internal job postings, it is often the boss/manager who decides whether or not the employee can apply. As many Japanese people are worried that their bosses may take their applications as their willingness to leave the current team or their personal wish to leave their bosses, they hesitate to apply. Unless their bosses are really supportive and understanding, the two-way career dialogue will not happen.

・ In order to be attractive for the young workforce, Japanese cooperations need to provide more freedom and encouragement for employee initiated career planning. For example, companies have to provide a save environment for people looking for new challenges in different departments. This starts from preventing them looking bad, because they leave the current department. Also, as they have to learn a lot of new things in their new position, a solid onboarding needs to be established.

・ Obviously, the reality of the Japanese society has changed dramatically. No more guarantee for a life long employment and sufficient retirement allowance. Those who are independent-minded and skilled professionals are fine as they can survive and thrive in this new reality. But the majority of the senior people in big Japanese companies are problematic elite people who have no transferrable skills, yet have pretty high salary and also have big ego/self-esteem regarding their status. They are the ones that need a lot of help as they too need to build their own career however old they may get. But their fear often makes them feel like denying the reality and going back to the good old comfortable sense of stability. Then they just try to maintain the status quo of their companies so that they themselves will not have to change. If they prevail like this, Japanese companies can never succeed to bring about transformation. So this huge number of problematic elite people need to get support so that they can change their obsolete mindset and start taking the ownership of their own individual career moving forward. Companies should send them the message more clearly, invest more in their mindset change and keep encouraging them to drive their own career if they do not want to be construction workers in their 80’s.