Japan's Top Business Interviews Podcast By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan

Laurent Depus, President of Natixis Japan Securities, the Japanese branch of French bank corporation Natixis, has been working in Japan for over 30 years. Originally from Belgium, he aimed to become an English and Spanish interpreter but changed his career course when he joined Chase Manhattan Bank in Luxemburg as a trader. After experiencing various management positions in the financial sector, Mr. Depus joined Natixis in 2014.

Mr. Depus observes successful organizations need to establish three main pillars. First is to have a profitable business model. Second is to have regulated governance. Third is to have a strong company culture.

During his time at SMBC Trust Bank, he built these three pillars for the company from the ground up. He especially notes the challenge he had of creating a strong company culture in the complex Japanese workplace. Although very hierarchical, Mr. Depus observes that the Japanese decision-making process is more participatory than the west. He explains how vital it is to establish trust within one's team to ensure everyone is moving towards the same direction. This is a challenge especially in a non-confrontational culture like Japan where people may seemingly agree with the boss but silently resist. Additionally, Japanese staff may be wary of foreign managers as they are seen as short-term workers who will move onto another position in 2-3 years. In navigating such challenges and winning trust, Mr. Depus emphasizes the importance of being genuine, honest and transparent. He says, "I think once people have realized that you are honest and genuine, the ice will crack. Trust will be generated. And once you have trust, mistakes can be made. You can make mistakes and your staff can make mistakes. But there's no hard feelings because there is trust, like in any…family." Mr. Depus adds that when there is trust, more people come forward with new ideas, creating a momentum for creative innovation.

Mr. Depus advises newcomers of Japan to be prepared, detail-oriented, and honest in order to gain trust. He explains, "in the Benelux where I'm from, I would only get a transaction when I had the best price. [But in Japan], once the relationship is created, it's usually more than just a simple, pure business, [but a] product-oriented relationship."

Vijay Deol originally came to Japan to teach English in rural Kyoto before starting at en world, a global recruiting company where he now serves as Regional Director.

During his first 8 years, Mr. Deol worked his way up to Sales Director ast enworld before becoming President of a British multinational recruitment firm. As the sole employee in Japan, Mr. Deol grew the firm to about 30 staff by the time he left in 2017, to make return to en world.

He currently leads en world Japan, Australia and Singapore, managing approximately 350 employees.

Mr. Deol constantly puts en world's vision of nyuushago shuukatsu, Enabling Success, to practice in order to effectively lead a large and diverse team. He emphasizes the importance of hiring the right talent, continuous improvement and active listening.

For example, Mr. Deol admits his own mistakes in company meetings to encourage his staff to be more creative without fearing failure. To understand and address the different demands and expectations of his staff, Mr. Deol holds one-on-one sessions, live engagement surveys and provides opportunities for career development.

They have successfully launched LinkedIn Learning for their staff to take free online course. Mr. Deol stays updated on trends in the industry by looking at investor relations reports from competitors to use as a benchmark for en world. He also points out the importance of understanding the various priorities his staff have in order to offer suitable incentive and maintain engagement.

For his younger, millennial and generation Z staff, Mr. Deol explains, "I think, [their] highest priorities are, [the] opportunity to learn, develop, and work in an independent and flexible way." This, in turn, leads to greater motivation, satisfaction and retention for the company.

Robert Heldt, founder and President of Custom Media, an award-winning bilingual media agency, originally started his career in the Maladives in the hospitality industry. Founded in 2008, Custom Media company had a rough start following the Lehman shock, but picked up soon after launching the bilingual lifestyle travel magazine WITHIM and BCCJ Acumen, the British Chamber of Commerce magazine, which recently celebrated its 10th year anniversary.

Additionally, they help create ACC Journal of the American Chamber of Commerce, The Canadian of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, INTOUCH of Tokyo American Club and Mansion Global, a luxury real estate magazine.

In 2013, the company won the prestigious British Business Award for their success.

Starting as a close-knit team of just 3-5 staff, Mr. Heldt talks about the difficulties of recruiting and retaining a multicultural group of people in today's Japanese workforce.

Communicating amongst different cultural nuances is another challenge. Yet he also points out that diversity gives them their creative edge. Mr. Heldt strives to lead with flexibility, patience and personal positivism to build better rapport with his staff.

He says, "you need to be a good listener…I [try] to nurture that style of work environment where everybody, no matter, [what] age or seniority in the organization can share their opinion, can share their idea...that really helps to get buy-in and engagement from the team."

He welcomes mistakes to be openly discussed and rewards hard work through incentives like career development opportunities. In doing so, he believes he is able to create a transparent and engaging team that feels a sense of purpose in working at Custom Media.

Generally speaking, compared to other nationalities, they are a bit more reluctant to state their opinions so you have to know that, and cater for that by asking for opinions and waiting. They do however speak amongst themselves, so another useful source of information is having fellow Japanese people who are willing to come and tell you the vibe of things going on.

I have found in Japan there are two extremes. People who do not speak English well, but want to speak English, and people who speak English perfectly well but would rather speak Japanese.

Employees always rate the company and their job satisfaction as very low in Japan, but that is a cultural bias, no matter whether you survey Japanese companies or foreign companies in Japan.

I tried to go out once a month with my direct reports and I expected my managers to do the same with their direct reports.

I always tried to hire people who were smarter than me, and then trusted their judgement.

We tried to share best practices, for example, instead of each division writing their own internal guidelines, we would come up with the best template and distribute it. Internally, I found this worked well, but externally with clients, I would sometimes run into the problem of the clients employees not taking it on, because it was not from their own rules.

My philosophy is you do not fire someone without a cause. You coach them, you involve HR, you come up with a plan and you give them time to implement it. If nothing changes, then you say maybe this is not the place for you. It is different to if they are not performing or they do something contrary to code of conduct. But in most cases, I found if someone was not fitting in, either because they could not get along with people, or they could not perform to the level required, if they had a sense of pride, then they would look for another position of their own accord.

I have generally found that Japanese are good at taking an idea from another country and rejigging it for the Japanese market, so that concept of kaizen.

Foreigners have a tendency is fill silence, but in Japan, it is important to not try and fill up and space, but use it as a pause to allow Japanese people to speak up. Another useful tactic is to ensure that someone is asking their opinion before the meeting. It is easier to get opinions outside the meeting.

If you have a situation where the company is not doing what you ask them to do, then it is a big problem, because Japanese will turn any organization into the Japanese model of not-for-profit, market share driven organization if they can. Profit is seen as inefficient, because you have to pay tax, and then give what is left to the shareholders, so it is better to expense it in hiring more people and having a larger organization.

Foreign companies that are successful in Japan are successful because they are not doing what everyone else is doing. A good mix of Japanese and foreign staff is necessary. You need a good mix of people who have experience in the market and people who come over with new ideas so that they can work with each other. Having a dialogue and coming up with the best approach is ideal. You shouldn't have too much of one or the other. If you have a completely American organization in Japan, it's not going to work. If you have a completely Japanese organization, it's just going to be like every other Japanese company. So, I think the advantage is having that mix.

The standard dress code is much more formal in Japan than many other countries, even including other Asian countries. Casual Friday, for example, is not a thing here in Japan.

I have had to make sure in meetings, as the boss, that I do not state my opinion first, because then there will just be silence and no one will be willing to speak up. While in other countries, you are free to question the boss, and even say to a certain extent that I do not agree with this, in Japan, it would be a disaster.

One thing that is excellent about Japan is the network of expats. You just need to ask the questions. You hear a big noise about how different Japan is, about how tough it is, but once you get here, and you ask questions of expats, and you experience things with an open mind as to why and how they are occurring, you can pick up simple things and start connecting the dots.

You have not come here to be comfortable. You have come here for the challenge, so throw yourself into it and learn and have fun. Remember you have come to Japan, Japan is not going to change for you, so you need to work out how to go with the flow of what cannot be changed in Japan but influence what you can influence in the patch of Japan that you are being entrusted with.

Nodding and smiling and saying yes does not necessarily mean they agree with you. You need to ask questions in such a way as to the answer might be negative, because if the answer can be given in the affirmative, then they will do so whether or not they actually are saying yes in the way Westerners understand it. Japanese have an extraordinary poker face and body language that is hard to read. So asking questions where the answer might be negative is vital if you are to find out if they are actually in agreeance and things will happen, or they are just saying that they hear what you are saying.

I want my employees to make mistakes, because that way you will learn. If you make the same mistake again, you are foolish. If you make the same mistake a third time, then please find a new job. Making mistakes is not frowned upon at all under my leadership, but the same mistake three times is not acceptable because it means you have not learned from it, and I cannot have someone on my team that cannot learn.

Silos are also something you need to watch out for in Japan, such as silos of individual work space, silos of job descriptions, because they have a drive for perfection and they are very used to not really knowing what other people are doing. The concept of helping each other with their jobs is not very common in Japan so it has been one of the challenges I have faced in Japan in getting my team to do multiple jobs and help each other with those tasks.

To drive improvement, I ask the team to point out what went wrong. They need to develop that awareness of when things are going well or going poorly, as well as if I tell them what went wrong, there is a chance they will not accept it and then our solution implementation is going to negatively impacted.

I work hard to build a one on one bond with my employees so trust is shown and more easily reciprocated. We also have no clocking in, clocking out machines, no walls, glass everywhere. It is a very specific and intentional approach towards creating trust. Trust does not come with telling someone that you trust them. Trust comes from actions and behavior and how you create the environment.

One thing I tell my team a lot is to keep your ego out of it. It is not about me being right or you being right or anyone being right. It is about the best solution for that problem in alignment with the company strategic priorities.

When a solution presented by a staff member shows a lack of alignment with the company strategic priorities, then I know I have a bigger problem, which is that they do not understand the strategic vision and this is a real issue. So I make sure that we constantly reaffirm the company strategic priorities in our meetings, our overarching value is "good for you, good for the company."

It is easy to digress and get distracted in life, in business. So you need to keep re-focussing on the priorities and a good way to do that is via constant reaffirmation of the overarching values and mission.

Businesses in Japan are always facing the dual issue of delivering 100% at the cost that the consumers want. It's a constant battle for all companies. This is one of the `Japan only` issues. In other countries, 90% delivery is fine.

The other part of leadership is the expat`s families. If they are not comfortable, if they are not enjoying the place, then the leader will not last long. It takes effort and the right mindset. It takes learning Japanese, even just a little bit, because extra effort in understanding Japan`s culture is very much respected overall by the Japanese.

As a leader, I learned to not compete on things I did not have expertise in. I had a financial background, not a technical background, so there was no use trying to convince technically strong employees on that front – I had to use financial data as facts in order to convince my employees to accept that things needed to change in order to grow on the global scale that I wanted.

While I accept there are differences in practices between cultures, I think the basics of people are the same. People are motivated to learn, to grow, to advance. Young people particularly, regardless of culture, are willing to challenge themselves and are not afraid to try and even fail.

We invested heavily in the company computer systems so that all staff can, at the touch of a button, contact any other member of our overseas team. So, apart from being conscious of time differences, there is no excuse for a lack of communication. We communicate, even at the Japanese headquarters, mainly in English and what I encourage the most is everyone just having a go, it can be horrible English with just a bunch of words together but there will always be someone in the meeting who can translate so it is vital that people gets a chance and just tries. Bit by bit, they will realise no one`s English in the company is perfect and that just trying to communicate is the key.

We never fire people for making a mistake, even if it is a big one because they tried, so they are not penalized and in fact we set up challenge systems within the company to recognize employees globally who met the challenge, made the contribution and tried.

We also bring managers to Japan and take Japanese managers to our other offices in India and China and Europe etc, so as many people as possible, can see first-hand how our business operates in different cultures. It is expensive to do this, but I see it as an investment in my people, in team building and in my company.

I think while money is important to people, they have bills to pay after all, but recognition in so far as being trusted to take on certain roles and responsibilities is a bigger motivating factor in my company.

When I took over the company, and instigated the global expansion, I had to be very precise and transparent about my messages. I would send the messages in English and Japanese to the employees about where we were and where we wanted to go. I would outline the broad plan and then ask different groups into meetings to plan, plan, plan – down to the detailed plans. This was how I built ownership from the employees into the global plan, and changed the company culture from a One-King culture, top-down strong leadership style that my father used, to a style that was more suited to me and what I had learnt in the US

I think a problem in Japan is we ask people to choose a specialization at far too early an age. For example, once you go down a science path, you do not learn management or business skills, so we end up with highly skilled workers but only in their particular field, and that puts us at a competitive disadvantage because in many other Western countries, even if you major in science, you still get a liberal arts education, which basically teaches you the leadership and communication skills you need anyway.

In Japan, a well-mannered conversation is based on listening, to fully understand and make an in-depth comment. Feedback is only considered appropriate at work, feedback to people at your own level is considered aggressive. You need to be very careful giving feedback to Japanese people, listen carefully to what they are trying to do and the reasons they are doing that.

Personal relationships are key in Japan. Japanese have hospitality in their DNA, so show some interest in the culture and people will be more likely to engage with you. It helps build trust.

• Once you walk the talk over a given period of time as a leader, you gain trust, and then people will follow you, instead of just doing what you say. Then you start getting buy-in and ideas and you can work cross-functionally.

• On engagement surveys, if you are giving a very low score, then you should not be coming into the office. If you are not going to be part of the solution, then you should reconsider your career and job. Engagement scores however tend to coincide with big decisions, e.g. head count freezes has a negative impact on scores, but bonus time has a positive impact. It is also not helpful to compare countries against other countries. It is about trends and patterns and feedback. You are always going to get people who score low, but it is when you see big swings that you know there is an issue.

• I used to think that my job was to find a local leader to replace me once I moved on, but I have realized we are an international company and rotation is a better solution, so succession plans are not just country-based, they are global.

• While it may not be a fantastic analogy, chopping the tree down from the top takes a long time. If you wedge things in the tree all the way up, the tree will fall the way you want it to fall.

• The unwillingness to change in Japan is strong. We have long had an innovations/idea box and you can put your name on it or not, but we would offer prizes and that encouraged people to put their names on it. But then we received feedback that the idea then became the responsibility of the person who suggested it, and yet often it was not even about their own division. So we created a business development department that reported directly to the CEO, and they can then tackle any strategic ideas that need to be implemented cross-functionally. It was a great tool to get ideas out of heads and onto paper and then to receive quick feedback on that idea by a specialist department who was responsible for it.

• Employee meetings are held quarterly and they are mandatory to the extent I myself would walk the floor to see who was not in attendance. There would be various presentations but it was designed as a forum for communicating what needed to be communicated.

• I used to have a pizza lunch every 3 weeks with the newcomers where they would have to answer 5 questions and I would have to answer the same 5 questions honestly. It helped build trust and exposure. My door was always open. I would meet with anyone and everyone.

• Sharing personal stuff really helps brighten engagement. I do it because it is just me and how I am but especially in Japan, I realized it was seen as a really big deal. My view is you do not need to be a rock or some kind of impenetrable individual. You are a human, you have a family, you have a dog, you have issues, so its okay to relate to people and have them relate to you. You should not stop a weekend activity you have been enjoying for decades just because you are the CEO or whatever.

• I think it is important to be careful what you wish for because changing things that are inherent to a culture, even if they sometimes cause frustration, would fundamentally change the country. Manage the business with the environment you have. Use it to your advantage.

• Do not be brainwashed by some of the things you have been told about Japan either by foreigners who are new to the country or who have been there a long time. There are as many challenges in Japan as they are in any other countries. Focus on the good and where there are growth opportunities. Yes, it can be a flat market in general but pick your battles and look for areas you can innovate in. You need to think and you need to ask for help. Consultants can often give you insights into the market from a bigger picture and help you develop those plans, as well as point out where you can hit to grow your business, grow your career and grow your family. So be open-minded, draw your own conclusions and enjoy the ride.

President and Chief Executive Officer

Interbrand Japan

Previously Chief Strategy Officer Interbrand Serving to a wide range of clients on a broad set of management issue centered around brand while leading a strategy group.

Senior Manager at Kurt Salmon

Senior manager at global management consulting firm responsible for sales, project delivery and organization development