5 out of 5 stars!
Reviewed by Dr. George Simons at diversophy.com
Longtime and well published expert on Japanese business practice, Diana Rowland has set out to present her intercultural savvy in short electronic bundles, effective because of their ability to engage us in concrete situations, stories to analyze and learn from, where cultural norms, if not in conflict, at least bring us up short and obfuscate and often frustrate our best intentions and our ability to produce results.
In this first Kindle book, Rowland presents five basic priorities in Japanese business. In narrative settings, she looks at how they show up in practice, allows us to see them from the Japanese perspective, and helps us determine the behavioral imperatives that we need to observe in response in order to develop adequate cultural agility.
It is unrealistic to assume that business people and others thrust into working across cultures, even if they"ve studied the tip sheets, will be able to fully manage situations emotionally as well as understanding what might be going on. Rowland is very helpful in this regard as she offers suggestions about how to work with one's self as well as with the others. For example, when talking about what feels like a compulsive pursuit of structure in a Japanese context, she suggests, "if you're a person who doesn't like structure, imagine it's a game. All games have rules and if you're not willing to follow the rules you can't play." The others, like ourselves, have learned and developed their culture over a lifetime. We can't become each other, but it's possible to engage effectively, employing a sense of gamification and improvisational theater. After all, we learn just about everything in life by acting until it becomes a part of ourselves. Rowland frequently offers tips, but unlike the ubiquitous tip sheets and travel guides, hers are drawn from experiential narratives, whose reading allows us to see the point of the tip and how to insert it.
We all have resources that frequently go unused when we don't have a clue that they might be applicable to the situation in which we find ourselves. Most of us have an aesthetic sense that we can call into play if we realize that it is needed. For example, when our inclination is to "just do it", our Japanese counterparts may expect to have it done with ritual grace, "in the right way" to "make the motion look beautiful." Knowing when and how to influence change in such circumstances is not easy, though Rowland gives occasional advice about when and how this can be done as well as the risks it may entail.
Most of those who seek the advice in this book will not be speakers of Japanese. However, Rowland anchors a variety of behavioral attitudes and imperatives with the appropriate Japanese word to remind us of the weight of the cultural experience and the story line beneath a specific way of thinking or doing things.
While I am an intermediate Kindle reader, this e-book helped me to discover why that is so. When I go to my Kindle library there are half a dozen unfinished reads that feel endless, and so I seem to dabble into them as the occasion offers itself. Rowland's decision to launch digestibly-sized explorations into Japanese business culture motivated me to both read and learn more effectively. I look forward to her subsequent offerings in this series, as well as recommend her segmented approach to those who have valuable lessons to teach but seemed hooked on producing 300+ pages in hardcovers that cost upwards of $/€/£90.00.
