Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

・ We discussed today to identify the key root cause issue which we would like to solve.

・ We believe that the root cause of many communication issues happening at Japanese companies is the fact that “many Japanese still do not speak up.”

・ Because of that, new ideas do not flow, decisions are slow, participants do not contribute so much and just sit through so many meetings without concrete actions. Also, the mutual trust and understanding between the company and individual employees is difficult to be attained.

・ There are several reasons why many Japanese still do not speak up.

• Lack of psychological safety: Fear of standing out, criticism, being wrong etc
• Unwillingness to disturb the harmony, hurt the feelings of anyone and challenge the wish of the boss or the customer.
• Lack of ability and/or confidence in forming and expressing one’s opinions in a clear logical manner.
• Hesitation triggered by Hierarchy mentality: “Not senior enough to speak up!”.
• Humbleness triggered by Perfectionist mentality: “Not good enough to speak up on this matter!”.

・ Also, we think the Japanese education system is largely responsible for this problem. There are two main streams of teachings in the Japanese education history. One is the traditional teaching of the way(道) to mastery which have made people humble and perfectionist. The other one is the teaching of good soldiering fostered by militarism and salaryman culture, which have made people obedient and the same.

・ The Japanese education hardly taught the Socratic method of teaching which apply probing questions to develop students’ critical thinking ability as in the West. As a result, many Japanese are good at receiving the info and executing the tasks, but not well-trained enough to critically review the info, form one’s opinion and speak up to discuss.

・ In the next meeting, we are going to explore to find some concrete solutions that Japanese companies can apply to help Japanese employees to speak up significantly more.