Event Report: “Riding the Big Waves of Diversity — IRORI #2”
IRORI #2 “Riding the Big Waves of Diversity” went live on Saturday with over 110 tickets sold. This event was co-hosted by BARK and PlusOne. Here’s a recap :)
🙂Guests🙂
- Shin Murakami (Head of Linkedin Japan)
- Piotr Feliks Grzywacz (Pronoia Group, CEO)
- Rochelle Kopp (Japan Intercultural Consulting, CEO)
- Jon Su (PlusOne, CEO)
Enjoy exploring the differences
The event kicked off with the topic “what is important to work in global environments?”
Rochelle answer immediately answered “Admit cultural differences.” She emphasizes the importance of making the habit to think why others act how they do.
Piotr added that one must realize their bias. A good example from his experience to often get spoken to in English, even though Japanese is more comfortable speaking for him. Judging easily from how people look is one example of biases. “When working in diverse workplaces, you will be realizing every small bias you have” says Piotr. Proactively challenge in new environments.
He also mentioned about the ability to emphasize when encountering people that has different backgrounds or culture.
Jon shares that he feels “communications skills” are also needed in global workplaces. Always seeking the best way to deliver your message from the person you are talking to is another important point to keep in mind.
When the topic moved to how difficult it is to express “NO” in other cultures, we got many comments from the audience. Some were: “I totally feel this”, “I’m American but it’s still difficult to say NO”, “The NO word in Japanese already weaker than in English…” etc. (Might want to go deeper into this in the next article.)
Common Sense Does Not Exist
The topic moves to Shin’s career. After working in the Japanese IT scene for years, he chose to join Linkedin in his 40s. Didn’t anything make him scared? Here are some advice from Shin, if you are trying to take a big leap.
“Well I’d say I should have started English earlier”, he says. He emphasizes the importance of training pronunciation, which sometimes becomes a barrier when communicating in English.
He also recommends to “purposely meet with people you won’t otherwise meet.” He says that the faster you learn that common sense does not really exist anywhere, the better it would help you adapt to a new and diverse environment (especially if you have only worked domestically).
Japanese Strengths?
The next question was “what are some traits of Japanese people that could be useful in diverse workplaces?”
Rochelle shares that at her seminars, many foreign members that work in Japanese teams respect the ability to plan, execute, brush up outputs in high quality.
Piotr continues that, “the word Global originally comes from the latin word which means ‘absolute’ or ‘overall.’ The ability to be able to naturally think about the world as a whole (not just about expanding all around the globe but also about world peace, for example) is something Japanese people are especially good at. The idea of “wabi-sabi” is a special mindset which is difficult for people from the Western culture to understand.
He continues that skills to express the most slightest emotions could be seen especially well in Japanese women. A person that could express empathy, sympathy, approval, gratefulness… combined with language skills, Piotr says would be a valuable member in diverse teams.
What’s something you’ve learned through your career working global?
Jon, who has worked at Walt Disney Company says that working in such environments has taught him to naturally learn through small mistakes. This mindset is helping him smoothly communicate with his team at PlusOne.
Shin comments about the Linkedin culture and how he was amazed by the operation structure built to run a whole team around the world towards one vision.
Piotr reflects his experiences and tells that the value is to be able to get the experience you’d never do in your normal life, and to connect with people working with totally different standards.
Rochelle points out that if you work in global companies, you will have a better chance in working in projects in scale, which would you could learn a lot from.
The common understanding here was that the effort might be big, but it is definitely worth it.
Global Business vs Global Environment
Naturally we shifted to this topic. Most Japanese companies are actually “global”, but they do not have a “global environment”. What is this difference and why is this happening?
Piotr points out that there is a huge difference in operation systems and culture. For example, every country office of companies like Linkedin or Google has the same atmosphere regardless of the location/country. Shin agrees. “Linkedin is one of the companies that especially take care of culture. Anytime I go to other country offices, somehow there is this ‘home’ feeling.”
Shin continues: “Japanese IT companies might be the most domestic ones, because they only provide service locally. Manufacturers are more global, in a sense. They have deal with customers and branch offices around the world. Although traits of Japanese corporates are that most of the time they send Japanese people as local heads, whereas in foreign firms, it is more common to hire a local CEO. Global teams are organically connected, developing a framework keeps the entire team running.”
Piotr also adds the cultural differences between organization-focused Japanese companies and individual-focused foreign companies. In an meritocratic environment, each individual would be valued fairly based on results, meaning that it is technically impossible to be a “minority” in such environment. This was one interesting viewpoint from an expert in people development and HR.
The second half of the session was QA from the audiences.
Q1
Is there anything I should do as a student to adapt to these environments?
Shin: 1) Practice speaking English. 2) Try to find out what kind of career paths your role models have. Learning from the market is also something that would help in the future.
Q2
How does MBA help?
Jon: It helped building connections. The first customer, first investor, and the first team member all came from my network I developed during MBA. Also it is useful if you want to start your own business. I picked up basics of the business side, after experiencing the product side in my past career and was not confident about managing numbers.
Q3
Is specialization important too? Does education from university help?
Rochelle: My major was history in university. There I learned how to collect information and analyze. This skill surely turned out to be the basics of consulting businesses.
Piotr: I learned linguistics, psychology, management studies, marketing, counselling… and a lot more. But honestly I do not like school! I’ve challenged PhD twice, but both times I couldn’t finish. I found myself more interested in anti-disciplinary studies, which was an idea that did not exist in the academic world at that time. Find what you could be devoted to, and choose the path you could genuinely be excited about.
Q4
Taking the COVID-19 situation in mind, what would you do if you were about to start your career?
Shin: Job hunting must be difficult now. It was in my times too. I would choose working at a startup that has just fundraised. You don’t have to worry about money, and it would give you lots of opportunities to grow.
Rochelle: Try looking at the reaction towards COVID-19. That explicitly represents corporate culture. Choose a place that you could respect.
Piotr: I would stop looking for companies and start something on my own. There are lots of tools that we could utilize to start something new. Even if you fail, no worries because companies like Google would always want to hire entrepreneurs.
Jon: If I were you, I’d start a business. Find something you feel passionate about, and just do it.
Q5
What motivated you to start your own business?
Jon: I’ve been working in various places around the world and gone through many struggles. My mission is to solve intercultural difficulties through technology.
Wrapping up with live VR demo by PlusOne!
PlusOne provides a service called “Smart Tutor”, which is a VR English-learning program. Holo-sapiences (not Homo-sapiens!) guide you to various business situations to train your English.
While the demo was on, we’ve got many comments…
“Wow this conversation topic is so familiar. This is useful.”
“It’s cool that the AI counts how many words you spoke!”
“Seems mentally easier to make mistakes in VR”.
Missed the demo? Check this out: https://www.plusone.space/
The session was continued with closer discussion in small groups.
We still had people there after an hour. Glad that it inspired people!
I hope this article was useful to develop your future careers.
BARK is a non-profit organization that helps the next generation of dreamers and builders go bolder.
Contact us here! https://joinbark.org/
