MANY CULTURES ALL IN ONE PLACE!
It’s been a manic week and next week it’s going to be really exciting, when we welcome our colleagues from offices around the world to thebigword headquarters in Leeds. Next week sees the start of our workshop week and Annual Conference, which culminates in our Awards Ceremony dinner. Throughout the week there are a number of workshops covering all the aspects of our business, we will also be taking this opportunity to share our future plans with our people.
I’d like to mention in particular one of our workshops, the Cross Cultural Activity Programme, which in the past has really made a difference to people’s perspective. At this workshop, the attendees meet in our car park when they arrive and we then walk them back into the building, where they will see that the reception has been converted to a Japanese style reception - even down to the details of footwear that they are requested to change into!
During the workshop the two presenters -one British and the other Japanese- will give a brief life story from their childhood to where they are today. During the storytelling, they will demonstrate the huge cultural differences between them. For example, I cried for my Mummy for the first five years at school, the teachers constantly tried to comfort me and on many occasions, they would even sit me on their knee and give me a cuddle. In Japan this behaviour would not be acceptable and in some of the more formal regions the children, some as young as five, would be expected to arrive in the classroom 30 minutes before the teacher, where they would be split up into different groups and be given the task of cleaning the classroom, then each morning a team would be selected as the winner.
Teamwork and responsibility are very important in the Japanese culture and even if one of your team members has made a mistake (despite it not being your mistake), you would accept the responsibility and share the consequences of that mistake with your team members. This may sound very harsh, but unlike US and European law, the chance of being fired for your mistakes is very, very slim in Japan. Therefore, whilst you’re willing to apologise for your teams mistakes, you’ll still be confident that you have a job, unlike other parts of the world, where you can be dismissed immediately, or put through a painful disciplinary process.
Let’s be clear: we’re not trying to judge which is the best culture here, we are trying to demonstrate to our people that when dealing with colleagues and customers, it is important not to just speak their language, but to be empathetic with the culture that they come from. Our Japanese customers are the most demanding in the world and will not hesitate to complain if we don’t deliver 100 per cent however, provided that we show that we are sorry and strongly demonstrate how we are going to avoid this mistake ever occurring again and showing evidence of what processes we have put into place to prevent this, then they will always give us another chance.
The workshop concludes with a brief list of do’s and don’ts from members of our teams from around the world.
The best part of the week of course is the Award Ceremony. There are 18 finalists for the four awards, but what is really amazing is that more than 320 of our people received nominations from their colleagues, which I think says something wonderful about them all. I’ll let you know how we get on and I hope you all have a great week…
Larry
I’d like to mention in particular one of our workshops, the Cross Cultural Activity Programme, which in the past has really made a difference to people’s perspective. At this workshop, the attendees meet in our car park when they arrive and we then walk them back into the building, where they will see that the reception has been converted to a Japanese style reception - even down to the details of footwear that they are requested to change into!
During the workshop the two presenters -one British and the other Japanese- will give a brief life story from their childhood to where they are today. During the storytelling, they will demonstrate the huge cultural differences between them. For example, I cried for my Mummy for the first five years at school, the teachers constantly tried to comfort me and on many occasions, they would even sit me on their knee and give me a cuddle. In Japan this behaviour would not be acceptable and in some of the more formal regions the children, some as young as five, would be expected to arrive in the classroom 30 minutes before the teacher, where they would be split up into different groups and be given the task of cleaning the classroom, then each morning a team would be selected as the winner.
Teamwork and responsibility are very important in the Japanese culture and even if one of your team members has made a mistake (despite it not being your mistake), you would accept the responsibility and share the consequences of that mistake with your team members. This may sound very harsh, but unlike US and European law, the chance of being fired for your mistakes is very, very slim in Japan. Therefore, whilst you’re willing to apologise for your teams mistakes, you’ll still be confident that you have a job, unlike other parts of the world, where you can be dismissed immediately, or put through a painful disciplinary process.
Let’s be clear: we’re not trying to judge which is the best culture here, we are trying to demonstrate to our people that when dealing with colleagues and customers, it is important not to just speak their language, but to be empathetic with the culture that they come from. Our Japanese customers are the most demanding in the world and will not hesitate to complain if we don’t deliver 100 per cent however, provided that we show that we are sorry and strongly demonstrate how we are going to avoid this mistake ever occurring again and showing evidence of what processes we have put into place to prevent this, then they will always give us another chance.
The workshop concludes with a brief list of do’s and don’ts from members of our teams from around the world.
The best part of the week of course is the Award Ceremony. There are 18 finalists for the four awards, but what is really amazing is that more than 320 of our people received nominations from their colleagues, which I think says something wonderful about them all. I’ll let you know how we get on and I hope you all have a great week…
Larry
