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Rudlin Consulting is the European Representative of the Chicago-based firm Japan Intercultural Consulting, offering cross cultural awareness and communications training and HR consulting to Japanese firms across Europe.
Rudlin Consulting also provides Japanese business support, including helping UK-based companies with their Japan market entry and communications with their Japanese partners and subsidiaries and Japan-based companies with their European subsidiaries' communication, strategy and human resources.
Rudlin Consulting has specific experience and expertise in information and telecommunication technologies, both in terms of their use for corporate intercultural communications and their development in various markets.
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In defence of Monozukuri - letter in the Financial Times
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 Posted by Rudlin Consulting on: Saturday 30 May @ 10:03:08
Letter from Pernille Rudlin published in the Financial Times, May 28th.
Sir, Contrary to your leader writer (“Factory Flaw”, May 26) I believe Japan would be well advised to stick to monozukuri (“making things”). A healthy society needs a variety of jobs for its population to achieve self-fulfilment in work. We cannot all live by knowledge work alone.
It does seem that there is something rather unsatisfying to the human soul about living off the profits made from trading in complex financial instruments or house prices. Witness all those articles in the Financial Times over the past few months describing how now redundant City workers are flocking to cookery courses, sailing, starting their own vineyards and so on.
The leader writer’s view that manufacturing jobs only require “obedient high-school graduates” and that these jobs are not “professional, varied and lucrative” is not supported by the fact that so many manufacturers at the moment, Japanese and otherwise, are trying to negotiate wage cuts or reduce work time, rather than lay off their core staff.
It costs a lot of money to train key factory workers, as they are (thanks to Japanese management influence) required to be multi-skilled, computer literate, excellent problem solvers and understand complex logistical requirements. Manufacturers do not want to have to go through the expense of finding and training a fresh batch of people once the economy picks up.
It is true that these jobs are not as lucrative as those “triple the national average” salaries that politicians, journalists and bankers seem to feel they are entitled to. But given what is happening to the media, banking and politics at the moment, at least people in industry can feel glad that they have a job, and it is a job that society values.
Pernille Rudlin,
European Representative,
Japan Intercultural Consulting,
Surrey, UK
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When telepathy is not enough
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Posted by Rudlin Consulting on: Wednesday 27 May @ 23:10:42
It seems that the only opportunity for new business at the moment, for those of us who supply services to Japanese companies, is the continuing wave of Japanese acquisitions. Faced with a saturated, aging market at home and good companies going cheaply overseas, it's no wonder Japanese companies see acquisitions abroad as a way to revitalize and grow.
Western companies are in the mood to accept new Asian owners, too. Weary of the destruction brought about by Anglo-Saxon capitalism, there is plenty of debate going on in Western business circles as to whether it might not be time for a more long-term, stakeholder-oriented - rather than short-term, shareholder-oriented – way of running companies.
We have, of course, been here before. Japan's economic success in the 1980s was attributed to Japanese values - lifetime employment, group orientation, taking the long-term view, striving for growth rather than profit and so on. But then in the 1990s those same values were blamed for Japan's economic failure. The debate as to whether an alternative to the current form of capitalism is truly needed – and whether Confucian capitalism is the best alternative - will no doubt continue.
While the discussion rumbles on, Japanese companies that have acquired overseas companies face the question of how or how not to adapt their distinctive corporate values and cultures.
Regardless of what path is chosen, many Japanese companies have failed to use a vital tool – internal communications. Case in point: A participant at a seminar I gave at a British company that had been acquired two months earlier by a Japanese company carne up to me afterwards, on the verge of tears, to say thank you.
Apparently I was the first person to talk to her team since the acquisition who was able to explain at a deeper level what was going on. The team members felt they had been left in the dark.
Another participant at a different company mentioned to me that the local operation had only found out a vital piece of news about their company through a U.K. trade magazine.
I have lost count of the number of times Europeans working for Japanese companies have complained to me about information being withheld. When I ask them if they had asked Japanese colleagues for this information, it often transpires that they had not, that they expected to be told.
Many Japanese companies do not have internal communications departments. One director of corporate affairs told me that he could find no counterpart at the new owner's Japan headquarters.
There is an assumption that Japanese employees will pick up corporate strategy and culture through time-honored methods such as ishin denshin, or telepathy. While this assumption cannot, of course, be made for employees who do not work in Japan or who do not speak Japanese, there nevertheless seems to be a fear that translating even innocuous internal documents into English will cause vital secrets to be leaked.
Deliberately leaving it up to employees to work out values and strategies for themselves is itself a corporate value. Once I got used to this, I rather liked it, as it means employees are treated as mature adults. Paradoxically, however, if Japanese companies want to preserve this value as they globalize, it has to be explicitly communicated.
This article originally appeared in the March 30th edition of Nikkei Weekly.
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