Whats your style?

While reading the book ‘Made in Japan Akio Morita and Sony’ I found something interesting. Probably it might sound clichéd, but there are vast differences between the Japanese and the American styles of management.

In Japan, working for an organization is (or at least was) supposed to be your religion, your faith, your second home. Your workplace is supposed to be your extended family where all junior and senior members live like a happy family. In times of crisis, everyone works hard for the company. There need not be any compulsion or seduction for the commitment. It comes naturally. Probably that’s the reason why Japan came out from being the most devastated country post world war to one of the richest.

They believe in hierarchies, just the way one believes in levels in the family tree. The seniors are shown respect, and class differences are done away with. Rather, there are no castes or classes in Japan, as per the Sony founder. The people share the resources (these were in short supply post world war), and come together, working up to 16-18 hours per day, only to bring their country up to its former glory. He says that executives did not have a private space, and they managed collectively.

Akio Morita says that doing business in America was quite a different scenario. There was hardly anything similar. He cites two examples to state his surprise. In the first, one person would not perform in spite of repeated trainings and incentives. He had not even thought of firing him, because it was a rarity in Japan, where lifetime employment was a commonplace. The second example is at the opposite side. A consistent performer, having received lots of perks left Sony to join a competitor, because it offered a salary he could not refuse. But he (Morita terms him as the traitor!) did have the audacity to meet him later and show him around at a fair. This was a major deviation from the Japanese style of management.

So workers are affected by market conditions in America, while the keiretsus bear the brunt in Japan. The risk has to be passed somewhere!

This observation puts me into another line of thought. What are we Indians good at? Termed as ‘basically lazy’, do we Indians measure up to the Japanese principals of camaraderie or results oriented American style? Perhaps neither. We prefer following the ‘middle path’ as advocated by Buddha.

So what is our style? Post independence, we made good friends with Russia, since our leaders were more comfortable with the socialist kind of attitude. Democracy was installed, and we made a mockery of it, with a majority of the population not even functionally literate. With the rise of America as the new superpower and the Collapse of Russia, we had to support American style, pop, pizzas (I think someone told me pizza is Italian!), colas and all commodities flooding the Indian markets. Globalization is the new keyword, and every Tom and his neighbor embrace it, for that is in vogue. Our PSUs are abodes of lethargy and inefficiency, food is a constant problem, and agriculture has taken a backseat.

So what philosophy do we follow? We follow whatever it suits our taste, our culture, our caste, our upbringing, our environment. Looking at anything outside our comfort zone is dangerous. At the end of the day, we are all happy because life mein sab chalta hai!!