Nemawashi - The Meetings Before the Meeting・Exploring Japanese Culture
This is on my mind today because I just had a meeting today and nemawashi is always a part of that to some degree. I don't currently work as a regular employee at any company at the moment, but even freelance employees get sucked into meetings sometimes. In Japan there are many many (many) meetings, so the chances of being sucked into one are higher than I'd like.
Anyway, Japan has an interesting concept called nemawashi (根回し), as I mentioned before. According to my dictionary it means "laying the groundwork", and I suppose that's a pretty good translation, but it does require some explanation. I like to call nemawashi "The meetings before the meeting", but maybe a better translation would be something like "gaining support before the meeting"
In the West, we like to just directly propose new ideas at meetings. The boss may ask for new ideas at a meeting or people at the meeting may just randomly pop them out. Everyone might shoot down the new idea if it's dumb or they might all discuss it if it has some merit.
Image by Joseph Mucira from Pixabay
In Japan, this would never do at all. It's way too direct and would make all kinds of bad feelings, potentially destroying the group harmony. Because of this, before we formally introduce any idea, we need to take that idea to everyone individually, propose it to them, and get their support.
I'm sure most of you are rolling your eyes at the idea and thinking it sounds crazy. I've heard it all. Most foreigners who are new to Japan react in a similar way when they discover nemawashi. It seems pointless or possibly political, like trying to gain enough support to ensure you can beat your rivals like on Surviver or in a political race. Well, let's try to look at it from the Japanese perspective.
The biggest thing is that if one is successful in their nemawashi, their proposal can't fail. This saves face of all involved at the meeting and preserves group harmony. This is a big thing. Another advantage is that the act of consulting with everyone individually can improve the idea without the risk of it being rejected. And as to that, if it's just a terrible idea and the big boss would never approve it, well, it can die a nice quiet death without any embarrassment and everyone involved can forget about it.
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay
But it's not all good. The bad side of this is the process can take a long, long time. Weeks. Months. If your company has ever dealt with a Japanese company, you know first hand how painfully slow their decision process can be. This necessity of getting agreement from everyone is responsible for the extreme slow pace of decisions in Japanese companies. There is the further negative of preventing change. Because ideas that don't get universal support in nemawashi die quietly, change at Japanese companies happens at a glacier's pace. The next time you wonder why things change so slowly in Japan, you might understand a bit of why.
So there we go. As you can see, there are good and bad sides to this idea. I don't mind it. As long as you know how to play the game and are sure to start playing it well in advance, it's not too bad. And maintaining the group harmony is a nice thing that we might learn a little from in the West.
Regardless of how you might think of it, it is a part of the culture and I don't think it's going to change any time soon, so if you ever deal with a Japanese company you should keep the idea of nemawashi in mind.
(title image made from this photo by Frantichek from Pixabay)
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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. |
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Nemawashi is very interesting to me, David. Partly because I'm interested in Japanese culture. Despite never visiting Japan or knowing any Japanese people. But mostly because I love the concept.
Coincidentally, I've been thinking about my workflows for articles. Which, in this context, I can consider to be a meeting of minds between my writing and my readers' views.
According to my dictionary (in this case, Google Translate), it means "making necessary arrangements". And I suppose that has a pretty similar meaning to "laying the groundwork". So in my context, I might call nemawashi "the posts before the post". But maybe a better translation would be something like "measuring interest before the article". Which I plan to do by posting Threads in preparation for an article that I have in mind.
I know it's a stretch to compare my ramblings with the mighty Japanese industry and commerce. But in my mind, I'll be thinking "nemawashi" as I write those threads.
That sounds like a good application of the idea, and is pretty close to the real thing. Are you finding Threads useful for research like that? Once upon a time I used Twitter for that purpose. I haven't really had much luck with Threads so far, but maybe it's gotten better since I tried.
It is very early days for my Threads experiment. So far I've had mixed results with engagement. But I'm still learning.
I think Threads would benefit from a stronger community focus. So for now, I'm trying to find the best tags. Anyway, I enjoy the learning process, and it's nice to be paid even small amounts.
Hello @dbooster
I will definitely keep this in mind and the whole concept sounds cool to me though, different strokes for different folks thanks for sharing such insightful piece, I learnt a lot from this😃
Glad you enjoyed it!
Yeah
Hmnnnn... as an itinerant writer I'm conflicted on this one. I regularly have 'Laying the Groundwork' meetings in my head with various characters b4 moving on to the main meeting... making the plot choices.
Sometimes a character has to die... always awkward, as silence decends and everyone looks into their coffee mugs, or at the ceiling until 'said dead character' clears his desk 😂
But to be more serious, in my last salary job I had to go to soooo many meetings, and i always thought
we're an environmental charity' what's all the fuss about... let's plant some trees or aquire, landscape, gas/vent and re-wild a 'past its used by date' landfill (as that was what the fundamental core activity of that charity did).But instead, we'd spend half a day/month outlining the progress on sites, and projects like the one i worked on, eat dubious food shipped in from a buffet catering business and drink coffee until the boardroom table was shaking because everyone had the jitters...Can you tell I'm not the biggest fan of meetings 😉😅
Tbf though, if I'd have had to guess anywhere in the world that would have meetings to organise the main meeting, it would have been Japan.
Great read, and thanks for the insight into japanese corporate culture.
I hope you're doing well m8.
Yeah, I hear you. I hate meetings. Well I shouldn't say hate. They can be useful, but when they are overdone they just become annoying, especially when much of what is in meetings could be handled quicker and more effectively with a memo passed around the office or a group email.
Yeah, i here where you're coming from m8.
I had to take minutes for meetings of at least 50 mettings in my last job that were completely unnecessarily.
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sounds err boring lol
Yeah, it can be very boring.
Nice post! Actually, I couldn't understand how to do the Nemawashi style either, even though I am Japanese. Hahaha.
I like to watch the actual tree Nemawashi techniques by gardeners though!
My image is that younger people are starting to be more direct in many things, so I wonder if nemawashi will start to fade away. What do you think?
I know nemawashi originally came from gardening, but I don't know how it works in there. I should look it up!
Original tree nemawashi technique is very cool to watch!
Yeah, I also feel that young people's style is a bit different from that of older people, but I noticed that young Japanese people also have their version of the nemawashi style. I don't think they actually care about the word "nemawashi" though.