FINANCIAL TIMES - AUGUST 14 1986
"WHAT this mean?" The question stressed by an imperiously pointing finger, would have been intimidating in any circumstances. It seemed the more so to the judomen queuing outside their club's new dojo in Manchester, not least because the questioner was their high-grade Japanese instructor Akinori Hosaka.
Having walked past them towards the dojo door, he was now planted in front of it jangling his keys. He was plainly not going to let anyone in until he had a satisfactory answer.
Apprehensively his pupils shuffled closer to take a look. He was pointing at the freshly painted notice on the door. There was nothing unexpected about the painted letters. They read:
But underneath, someone either drunk or tired of life had penciled: "Ah so."
"What this mean?" the instructor demanded again.
After much exchanging of glances one brave pupil stepped forward and explained that certain English people made silly jokes about people from other countries. They pretended, for instance, that the French were always saying "Mon Dieu", Germans "Mein Gott" and Italians "Mama Mia." In the same way, he added, some Englishmen pretended that the Japanese always said "Ah so."
Mr. Hosaka pondered the explanation for some moments. Then "Ah so," he said, and opened the dojo door.
Although that incident occurred a good many years ago, it will probably strike a chord with readers involved in the management of multinational organisations. For they too will meet problems arising from what the jargon terms racial stereotyping.
In which case the said multinational managers may be relieved to hear of a procedure for overcoming such blocks to understanding between people of different racial and cultural backgrounds, which is being used by various world-wide groups including Sony and several other Japanese companies.
The procedure - called LIFO t.m., which stands for life orientations - was developed by the American psychologists Stuart Atkins and Allan Katcher.
Its object is to produce outline maps of the different "styles" which individuals characteristically adopt in their dealings with other people. The maps can then be used to promote better understanding of why relationships go wrong and what can be done to improve them.
The outlines are presented as charts with a minimum of written explanation couched in a very few standard terms. So the meaning of the maps can be appreciated and talked about with little risk of basic misunderstandings even by groups of people who do not share the same native language.*
The outlines are produced from a questionnaire on which people sketch their likely responses in 18 different sets of circumstances commonly arising at work. Behind the questions, however, lies a theory Dr. Katcher has about what most frequently causes people to run into trouble in their jobs.
He thinks that the usual reason is not that they lack certain important skills and abilities. While everyone has such weaknesses, almost all of us with any appreciable experience will have been able to neutralize them by developing more than compensating strengths in other directions. In Dr. Katcher's view, the most frequent reason why we have difficulties in working relationships is that we push these strengths too far, especially when we find ourselves in tight corners.
For instance, someone with the strength of decisiveness can easily slip when faced with a crisis into the weakness of being impulsive. A person who normally exudes encouraging self-confidence may switch it into stupefying arrogance, and so on.
Consequently the LIFO t.m. questionnaire is divided into two parts. The first asks people to indicate what would be their responses to the different circumstances if working life was going well. The second asks for their responses if things were going badly.
Into the first part, for example, the question might begin: "I feel most pleased with myself when I..."-and then offer four different ways of completing the statement. They would be: "act idealistically and with optimism."
"see an opportunity for leadership and go after it."
"look after my own interests and let others look after theirs."
"adjust myself to fit in with the rest of my group."
Whoever is completing the questionnaire awards four points to the item which best describes his or her most likely reaction, three to the next highest probability and so on down to the one point for the least likely. The counterpart question in the second part of the form would start with "In the face of failure I feel it is best to... -followed by:
"turn to others and count on them to figure out what should be done."
"fight for my rights and take what I really deserve."
"hold tight to what I have and keep a close eye on others."
"keep up a front and sell myself as well as possible."
*The questionnaires have been translated into the Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese and Spanish languages.
Allan Katcher claims that people's answers show firstly which of four particular styles they characteristically adopt in favourable conditions, and secondly how their styles change when all hell breaks loose.
Those awarding top marks to the first "answer" to each of the questions I've instances would tend mostly to use the Supporting/Giving style. People top scoring the second answers would primarily adopt the Controlling/Taking mode. Most points awarded to the third answers would denote Conserving/Holding. When the fourth answers scored most the dominant style would be Adapting/Dealing.
"You'd be surprised how something so apparently simple can help to improve working relations," says Anna Beck, human resource development manager at Sony UK. "Once they have the LIFO t.m. profiles in front of them, even people who've previously been at loggerheads will usually start not only to discuss their own shortcoming fairly freely but also to join in considering how they can better get on with their colleagues. Part of the reason, of course, is that they've been given a cooler language in which to talk about such things. I mean, it's easier to accept someone's saying you're too strong on controlling/taking than that you're downright bombastic."
"Mind you, nobody we've come across uses just one of the styles to the exclusion of all the others. It's just that they tend to emphasize a couple of them at normal times and switch to a different balance when things get difficult."
Although both Anna Beck and Allan Katcher stress that there is always a wide variety in the styles adopted among individuals from the same company let alone national culture, there are noticeable differences in the "average" styles associated with different countries."
In Britain it is evidently controlling/taking that dominates in good times with conserving/holding second. When problems arise, conserving/holding comes to the fore with controlling/taking giving ground to adapting/dealing.
In Japan supporting/giving is by far the strongest in normal circumstances, with conserving/holding next. In bad times, the order reverses.
But while these may be the tendencies of the Japanese on the average, they do not denote the never-changing management style of Mr. Hosaka. The only words to describe it do not even appear in the LIFO t.m. vocabulary. They are "Grabbing/Throwing." and the whole thing was over before normal mortals had time to tell the first process from the second.