Silence can be powerful in business in Japan. I once visited a branch of the organization, having heard that one of the female staff was having trouble with her much older male boss. I asked her how I could help. She didn’t answer immediately, so I sat there waiting. Five minutes, 20 minutes, 40 minutes, and an hour went by with me just sitting there, silent, patiently waiting for her answer. In the end, she told me she couldn’t share her problem with me and that was that. I have been here for 37 years and am now used to doing business here. I didn’t feel any time pressure in that meeting and that is how we should approach meetings with Japanese buyers.
So what do you think, could you sit for five minutes in a business meeting in Japan, in stone-cold silence?
Your Japanese counterparts don’t have any trouble with it. Silence is golden here because everyone takes partnering very seriously. We need to learn not to be in a rush. Silence, however, creates tension in the meeting room. We need to look at that tension element differently from now on.
We see tension as a good thing in business, because this is how we get things done. There is a tension between scaling up and preserving oxygen, otherwise known as, “cash flow.” I have this issue all of the time. I want to grow my company, but I don’t want outside investors, so bootstrapping is required. That means the process is going to be slower than getting the cash in the door and diluting the ownership. You may be having the same issue, so you can recognize the tension it creates.
There is tension between time, cost and quality. These three inputs cannibalize each other constantly. If we go for the higher quality, there will be cost and time to market considerations. If we reduce the cost, then the quality threshold may not satisfy our buyers. If we go for speed, we may need to pay more for production machinery or overtime and that impacts the cost equation.
Now given that tension is a constant in business, you would think we would all be masters of dealing with it and so tension in business in Japan wouldn’t particularly throw us off balance. This is usually not the case, though, and you may need a better strategy for dealing with it. It can seem a bit mysterious, so let me help you understand what you’re dealing with.
Western culture favours the quick, agile business “backflip with pike” manoeuvre to maximize market opportunity. We like the snappy rejoinder; the quick wit; the sharp, off-the-cuff comment. We view these attributes as indicators of intelligence and articulation. We are constantly hustling, making things happen, pushing the envelope, forcing the issue. Japanese businesses are not particularly keen on any of these things and don’t look at our efforts in favour, so I recommend you revise your approach in order to be successful.
You really notice the temporal dynamic in meetings between foreigners and the Japanese. The visiting businessperson feels pressure to come back with a deal and the Japanese feel this first meeting is the start of many more before an agreement is possible. This is a basic negotiating mistake when trying to do deals in Japan. Instead of thinking about the sale, switch gears and start thinking about re-orders. How can you form a trusted partnership with this Japanese company and benefit from the lifetime value of the customer?
If you think about it this way, then getting on a plane and coming here numerous times is an acceptable commitment of time and money, because the time frame is “forever.” If you change your thinking at the start, you can do a lot better.
The meeting room in Japan often has the sole Western businessperson seated across from a phalanx of buyers, a seeming rent-a-crowd of hangers-on, from the other side. “Why are there so many people in this meeting?” “Who is the decision-maker?” and other similar irrelevant thoughts may race through your mind. Actually, unless it is a founder-led company, there is usually no one decision-maker and there will be a collective decision made sometime later.
In the depths of the discussion, the foreigner asks a question. Silence. Not your average garden variety silence, but profound silence. With so many people in the room, you would think someone could answer this question. The rapid pace of commerce in the West cannot tolerate this breakdown in communication. So more words are added to the question, and to no avail because the silence continues.
Western bluster and confidence can rapidly wither and sheer confusion sets in. Your internal conversation may sound like, “What on earth is going on here, I asked a simple question but I am not getting any answers, only silence? What should I do?”
We need to understand that the people on the other side of the table are deferring to each other as to who should answer the question. There will be hierarchies in play, as the more senior people are the ones who should be speaking. Divisional responsibilities may be confused and as yet not clarified, so it is not clear who should speak.
A lot of effort will be going on to consider what to say. A quick answer may be seen as flippant and not well considered. Concern about “face” will be on edge, in case the answer doesn’t sufficiently measure up or is deemed incorrect or trespasses on another division’s range of responsibilities and is blurted out with no prior consultation.
How long should you wait for an answer to your question? The answer is for as long as it takes. Once you understand the decision-making process is more complex in Japan, you can adjust your time frames and take the time pressure off the table. The silence-induced tension can be a bit more bearable.
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