Lucy Kellaway discussing the US bestseller Send by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe in the Financial Times displays British values of wanting a degree of formality and personalised context rather than brusque informality.
On the question of writing style, some of their strict rules coincide with my own prejudices, but I still disapprove on the grounds that e-mails should be allowed to be as different as the people who send them. They favour messages that begin with "Dear -" as do I.Here are some beginnings I like less, arranged in a crescendo of tastelessness: Hello, Hi, Hallo, Hullo, Hey, Hiya, Hey There. Someone who begins an e-mail "Hey There" is telling me something useful: I am not likely to get on with this person.
Much of the style that the authors like, I hate. They like exclamation marks, which I reject as they make one seem like either a teenager or a Tom Peters wannabe. They approve of messages written in the subject line, with EOM (end of message) after them. I don't. Getting these e-mails is like getting a parcel with nothing inside.
I have about the same hierarchy of preference for e-mail beginnings, and I preferred to be addressed as Ms Rudlin or Pernille Rudlin by anyone who doesn't know me but I know from asking American participants in my training that they find "Dear Ms... " too formal, almost worryingly distant, for e-mails. I would be interested to know other people's preferences, so please let me know by e-mailing me what your preference is (and your nationality/cultural background).
Contact details can be found on the Rudlin Consulting pages.
Victor Mallet in the Financial Times (subscription required) points out that the Asianisation of business will mean Westerners will have to get used to conference calls being in the middle of the night their time, rather than the middle of the night Asian time...
I am not blogging very frequently here as I feel I have more or less exhausted the subject, and should really get on with writing the book that this was meant to be research for - on remote communications and how to use them differently with different cultures. Also, my interest has moved on a bit, and I now blog more regularly at Plural Identities on more general cross cultural issues.
Also, I have had a lot of problems with spam on this version of Movable Type, which is why the comments section is closed. I would love to have comments from people, so if you do have something to say, please e-mail me and I will put your comments on this blog and respond to them if appropriate. You can find my details on the Contact page of the Rudlin Consulting website.
I'm usually pretty negative about English speakers relying on the phone to communicate with Japanese colleagues. It would seem Ryoji Chubachi , president of Sony may be trying to drop a hint on this to Sir Howard Stringer, Sony Chief Executive, too. According to the Financial Times Mudlark column last week, Chubachi said "there are three main ways to communicate - to meet in person, by video conference or phone. But the last is the worst - I am drunk at night [in Tokyo] when Howard calls me in the morning [from New York]." Chubachi was laughing when he said this.
An article in Business Week points out how very few Japanese and Koreans have company laptops or are able to use them to work from home, in contrast to other countries such as the US and UK.
The premium placed on face time in the office (apart from sales people, who are expected to be out of the office during working hours, I would add) means that workers worry that leaving before the boss, even if they are going to work from home makes them look like slackers. Trust is dependent on people sitting close by each other, able to see and hear what the other is doing.
As a result, there is little in place to control, measure and check people who do try to use laptops or work from home. Hence what appears to have been the leaping to assumptions and wrongful accusation of a Chinese engineer at a Japanese car parts company.
I agree with all the reasons given in the Japan Times as to why blogs in Japanese outstrip blogs in English and Chinese in number. And I also agree with Terrie's Take that it is a kind of therapy, in the absence of acceptance of counselling in Japan. I would also say that it is an indication of a nation of enthusiasts. Japanese people get very passionate about food, for example, so will blog about restaurants, growing vegetables, cooking etc far more than the Brits or Americans.
I also wonder if the survey they refer to includes mobile phone blogs, on sites such as Mahou no Island. That would certainly bump the figures up for Japan, also South Korea.