One of the major benefits of ringi is that avoids the possibility of anyone being marked as “personally responsible” for a decision. Where responsibility can be diffused, potentially embarrassing “loss of face” can be avoided. No fingers can be pointed.
“Delays in making even simple decisions can become almost unbearable at times,” said a fast-moving American executive who works with a worldwide hotel chain. “Everybody has to be involved with everything,” he continued. “It takes forever. As far as I am concerned, this is without a doubt the very hardest part of working for a Japanese company. You feel as if you can never get a decision on anything, large or small.”
“By the time the decision finally does come through,” added another, “I have usually lost interest in whatever it was and am on to something else. Interminable delays are deflating to one’s sense of energy and drive.”
If you try to hurry the process, it does more than harm than good. The Japanese do not like pressure. Obviously, frustrated Westerners will be itching to know what is going on as the silence goes into weeks or months. You submit a proposal or an inquiry. Nothing happens. Who is holding it up? What is happening? Did the message ever get through?
If the decision you are impatient for relates to a new idea, perhaps something you have initiated, you can count on a really long delay. If, on the other hand, the company is merely talking about some refinement of an idea they have already agreed to in principle, then it may take considerably less time to come up with a reply.
But you can take it for granted that you will rarely get quick action unless, as one veteran of the business world put it, ‘You have gold that is $7.00 on the open market and are willing to sell it for $6.00. Then you will get action without delay.” You may occasionally encounter Japanese who will try to foreshorten their normal time as a concession to Western impatience. But you don’t count on it.
In writing this book, I asked a number of businessmen who work well with Japanese colleagues what they consider to be the single biggest factor in their success. In every single case the first attribute mentioned was “patience, patience, and still more patience.” They all agreed: “if you lose your patience or lose your cool, you are likely to find yourself empty-handed.”
Although the ringi system is undoubtedly slow, no one can complain afterwards. Harmony is served, factionalism and power struggles are at least minimized—if not eliminated—for once the process has reached a certain stage, no one feels he can “buck the tide.” So, he goes along with it and initials it. After that, he is effectively silenced. Direct opposition is rarely effective among the Japanese. One achieves more with them through the kind of persuasion and negotiating-one might say “lobbying”—that is sanctioned and made broadly possible through nemawashi.
Actually, the length of delay before achieving the ultimate goal may not be as great as it sometimes appears when compared with Western systems. Where the Western “top-down” approach to decision—making is used, the original plan or agreement is frequently made relatively quickly at the top in the board room. However, delays of weeks or months may subsequently follow while staffs and workers are first apprised of the decisions and then persuaded to give their cooperative support. Both steps are necessary before a plan can actually get moving with any momentum. When lower levels have not participated in making the decision, misunderstandings, snags, balks, or other delays frequently occur.
In Japan, in contrast, once the decision is finally and actually arrived at, all relevant staff members understand it thoroughly. They are familiar with its various ramifications. During the talking stages, they will have pretty well mastered the “what-when-how” of their own responsibilities vis-à-vis the project in question. So, although it may take a long time to arrive at the decision, once approval has been given they can put it into practice rapidly and smoothly. The final time difference between the two systems, therefore, may not be as far apart as it can sometimes seem. 感谢您阅读《Ideas 》一文，出国留学网(liuxue86.com)编辑部希望本文能帮助到您。
