True Story 10.18
Corporate “developmental assignment” fails to attain its goals
The setting for this story
A corporation’s Japanese division sent a young manager, Haruto, to a sister division in New Jersey on a six-month “developmental assignment,” the goal of which was to help develop Haruto into a “global manager.” The Japanese and U.S. divisions had agreed on broad objectives. Haruto was assigned to Zachary, the U.S. division’s internal trainer. Haruto saw himself as “Zachary’s trainee.”
A story of misaligned minds24
Only a few weeks passed before Haruto complained of adjustment difficulties and stress, citing confusion and dissatisfaction. It soon became apparent that, even though the objectives had been agreed upon and even committed to writing, they were interpreted differently by the two sides.
Haruto and his Japanese bosses believed that learning is best accomplished through watching, listening, and talking with a wide range of people, thereby building relationships throughout the New Jersey division. Haruto also would absorb a comprehensive understanding of the division through immersion in a variety of work-related and social situations. This would be accomplished through a series of assignments with one work unit after another, thereby broadly and experientially acquainting Haruto with the U.S. division’s operational, administrative, and interpersonal contexts. Haruto had anticipated active guidance from his trainer regarding the process of carrying out each assignment. Haruto assumed that Zachary would be responsible for ensuring his successful learning.
Zachary believed that learning is best accomplished through active, hands-on completion of a series of discrete but associated tasks – such as mastering computer programs – that have measurable learning outcomes. To him, Haruto’s ideal of immersion-and-absorption was “passive” and thus a waste of time. Zachary viewed his role as setting assignments for each trainee and making introductions, then providing little or no support. He believed trainees learn best when using a do-it-yourself, trial-and-error approach that encourages self-reliant, autonomous skill-building. Zachary viewed trainers and trainees as near-equals. He expected each trainee to accept responsibility for ensuring the success of his or her own learning after having Zachary lay the groundwork and smooth the way.
This misalignment of mindsets and learning expectations wasn’t only stressful for Haruto; it caused a serious setback in his learning program, wasting his – and his trainer’s – highly paid time.
Haruto’s question
My hopes and intentions for these months as a trainee in the U.S. are being severely disappointed. What’s gone wrong?
Critique of story 10.18
Worldwide differences in how instruction is given and received don’t affect only educational institutions from preschools through Ph.D. programs. They also influence every situation in which someone is trying to help others learn – such as in the global corporate setting of this story.
Only a year or two earlier, Haruto had completed all his schooling in knowledge-focused Japanese institutions. As a result, he had become accustomed to regarding a teacher as not only an authoritative bearer of valuable knowledge but also as the senior member of a “senior–junior relationship” in which the junior member – in this case, Haruto – respects and even reveres the senior member, while the senior member actively demonstrates parent-like caring and active guidance for the junior. Haruto had assumed that Zachary would become the senior member of his new senior–junior relationship.
That definitely was not the way Zachary saw his role. If he saw himself as a “guide,” it was merely as the organizer of a series of hands-on learning experiences for Haruto. Sure, he would introduce Haruto to the right people, answer procedural questions, utter encouraging words, applaud the hoped-for successes, and handle the paperwork. But in Zachary’s view, Haruto was responsible for Haruto; Zachary had no patience for any sort of “hand-holding” relationship.
An equally subtle difference in how the two men, and their respective divisions, viewed the six-month assignment concerned how Haruto was expected to go about learning. On the Japanese side was the assumption that, to gain familiarity with the New Jersey division, Haruto would take a holistic/relational approach involving immersion in a succession of work units so that he could experientially absorb each one’s patterns and mindsets and begin building relationships with its members. Thus, he would gain a broadly contextualized appreciation of the division as a whole. On the U.S. side was the assumption that Haruto would gain familiarity with the division by taking an analytic approach involving completion of a series of discrete, hands-on, do-it-yourself skill-building opportunities.
Despite an explicit agreement between senior members of the Japan- and New Jersey-based divisions that even was committed to writing, a subtle mindset misalignment undermined this global corporation’s objective of preparing a promising young manager for global responsibilities.
For thought
An important fact amply demonstrated by this story is that, when negotiation or collaboration is occurring across cultural boundaries, explicit, even written, agreements are no guarantee that the matter is settled and everything will proceed smoothly. The problem is that, although the parties have been able to agree to the specific words in the text of their agreement, the culturally nuanced meanings that each side gives those words are rarely acknowledged. Why rarely acknowledged? Because the parties themselves are not fully aware of these nuanced meanings and, more importantly, not fully aware of the subtle differences between the two sides’ meanings.
With that observation in mind, what steps would have been required during the preplanning stage of Haruto’s developmental assignment in the U.S. to ensure that, when he arrived at the New Jersey division’s headquarters, the expectations of his Japanese bosses, his American supervisors and trainer, and Haruto’s personal expectations, would be closely aligned?
Related stories
Stories 1.10, 1.12, 7.02, and 7.10 describe other instances of corporate training that became complicated by cultural factors. Story 7.07 relates a successful senior–junior (“second parent”) relationship, although not in a corporate setting.
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Endnotes:
24 Grove et al., 26–28.
Full citations are available at misalignedminds.info/References.