Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

・ Japan in general is very risk averse. Recent example even on government level is the Covid management where Japan started very late with vaccinations. Vaccination was delayed because the government wanted to see the success in other countries first. This was justified by conducting additional tests on Japanese before releasing the approval. Another example was the late evacuation of Japanese citizens from Afghanistan.

・ It is very common to play the waiting game, everybody is staying back or hiding behind sometimes artificial procedures because no one wants to be responsible. Without questioning the value of audits, sometimes audit procedures are overdone just for ‚mitigating‘ responsibility away. In extreme situations, audits are just tick-marking procedures without reflecting the initial purpose of avoiding or detecting failures in some processes like failures within a supply chain, etc. Further examples are disaster drills. While it is very important to prepare for disasters, the drills are also used to mitigate in case something happens, like "we performed all required drills“. This is related to so called tatewari (縦割り, stove-piped) structures within companies and organizations.

・ Risk adversity goes so far that people do not pursue a career because of fearing the increasing responsibility. Even in education, there are examples that very talented teaches declined to become the principal of a school although the teachers would be a perfect fit for the role.

・ A major reason for being reluctant taking risks is the way of penalizing in case of failure. Penalty and damage is very often very personal, Japan is known that in case of failure company responsibles are expected to apologize in public and to take besides embarrassment also personal damage like demotion or salary cuts. There is also a sort of Japanese cancel culture, when some public personality did something wrong, the person will be removed or they retire by themselves for a certain time.

・ Real risk management is rare in Japan but also in other cultures as well. In particular in IT, risk management and implementing contingency plans are considered as low priority task. The importance of contingency planning became very visible during the big Tohoku earthquake in 2011 and organizations realized how difficult it is to create plans who are complete enough and still executable.

・ Japanese are very good in risk management on small scale or small groups but not on large scale or for large organizations, because - again - nobody want to take responsibility. It is also common to hide the responsibilities behind big smoke or clouds by avoiding clear appointmets, statements, etc. Then, some time later, the smoke disappears without identifying the responsible persons or institutions.

・ Non-Japanese are in general more open to take risks. For companies it might be worth to consder mixed teams to increase openess for taking risks and therefore to increase the ooverall performance.

・ In case someone is made responsible for some failure, the right apology is an important part in Japanese culture to close the issues. As an example, in 2006 a boy was killed in an elevator due to malfunction of the elevator. The incident drew a lot of media attention and in press conferences the Swiss manufacturer did not state an accepted apology and claimed that the maintenance company has to take responsibility for the malfunction. The missing proper apology contributed to the fact that the company lost their complete business in Japan. It is important to provide a proper heartfelt apology and to express personal suffering in an appropriate way. In Japan, apology and responsibility can be separated, in other countries an apology often is considered as confession of responsibility. Apology is part of the Japanese culture and education. On positive side, a proper apology can help to close an issue and refresh business relationships.