International MBA Program
DuaneThomas' Internship Web Journal
DuaneThomas
IMBA Class of 2007
Michelin in Tokyo, Japan
duane_thomas@moore.sc.edu
5th Journal Entry - Week 8:
One of the more infamous aspects of doing business in Japan is the practice of going out drinking after work. Many of the books written and research done about doing business in Japan report that if you want to really understand what is going on in the office and what your co-workers are really thinking, come along for drinks after-hours.
The reason for this (according to the textbooks on Japanese culture) is that the Japanese have the concept of tatemae ('public face') and honne ('true face') . In order to preserve harmony at the office, Japanese tend to exhibit tatemae, almost never rocking the boat or disagreeing with company or departmental policies. However, it is during after-hours (and several drinks) that it becomes acceptable to show one's honne and candidly discuss developments and news at the office. During this time, it's even permissible for employees to air one's opinion around their supervisor. Supervisors are often careful to go out drinking with their subordinates every now and again to help keep their finger on the pulse of the company.
Also, Japan does not have the same social stigma about public drunkenness as the West, so it's a perfectly common and acceptable sight to see (and smell!) the trains in Tokyo stuffed with REALLY drunken salarymen returning from work very late each evening.
This is
why it's interesting to me that I haven't seen much after-hours interaction at Michelin
Japan. Both my time in my current department and the time spent working part-time in
purchasing is alike on this respect - it is a rare occasion that we would go out after hours
(though my supervisor and I would go on a once-weekly or bi-weekly basis). I've talked
with a couple of folks about this, and my conclusion is simply that Michelin is run in a much more
Western manner than a traditional Japanese company.
This works great for me, since I am not a frequent drinker and am perfectly happy not going out all the time. But I do wonder what level of honest feedback managers here get when employees are asked to give feedback in a non-traditional manner. Seeing how everyone here seems to be used to working in a more Western style, I imagine it's not so much of a problem.
4th Journal Entry - Week 7:
So I haven't talked too much yet about my impressions of working here. Where to start? It's probably best to give examples of things that I've noticed during my time here rather than try and narrate any comprehensive (and most likely, erroneous) missive on "how it is to work in Japan." I'll start with location first.
The area in which I work is called Iidabashi, which is part of the Chiyoda ward, which is one of the 23 wards that make up the mega city of Tokyo. Chiyoda is one of the more lightly-populated wards in Tokyo, but this is because it is very much a business area that turns into a ghost town (as close to a ghost town as you can get in crowded Tokyo) on the weekends and holidays.
I work in a multi-floor office building, and my floor is laid out as a traditional Japanese style open-plan office. This layout is characterized by managers having assigned offices, with their attached staff grouped directly outside. The driving idea behind such a setup is accessibility and ease of communication. Though I do occasionally miss having my own private office, I've seen firsthand how the open-plan layout really facilitates communication in a department. Working hours here are from about 9:30am - 6:00pm. Just like in every other company, there are the folks who work regular 10-12 hour days, but I was surprised to see this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. I've heard a couple of managers here talk about the importance of having a balanced life, and it's nice to see that the company allows its employees to do their work and go home. So that Japanese tradition of staying late to look busy until the boss leaves is not necessary here!
One of the main challenges I face is that my Japanese, while not bad, is not good enough to understand informal peripheral conversations. I do better when people are speaking directly to me. So I tend to understand anywhere between about 30-70% of what is being said around me at any time. This means that I am not able to participate in conversations around the workplace as fully as I normally would, and as a consequence, I tend to keep to myself. Normally, I am a pretty outgoing and talkative guy (you may have already guessed this by the length and frequency of my journal entries), so honestly this change has been a little difficult. But one good side effect is that this experience is teaching me how to be patient and listen better, which is nice. Plus I think that the fact that I tend to come off more reticent than I actually am also works in my favor, since (warning: generalization ahead) Japanese people on the whole tend take a much longer time to warm to new people than most Westerners I know.
This is why I enjoy going out to lunch with my coworkers daily, since I've found this to be the best time to get to know everyone better. The actual sitting down and eating part goes pretty quickly, since restaurants here are fairly reasonably priced and so rely on turning tables quickly. The nice part after lunch is that we usually go to a coffee shop and spend the rest of the time chatting, which was absolutely shocking to me when I first saw my coworkers doing this - what about the famous slavish dedication to the job that I had heard about when learning about Japan? It's still there - it's just been tempered with a more European outlook of doing business.
3rd Journal Entry - Week 6:
The
director of marketing here has been great about putting me on projects that allow me to both hone
the skills already learned at the Moore School, and to develop a deeper understanding of how an OE
Marketing department operates.
You remember my mentioning about long term planning in my previous post - well now I'm working on mapping out the process of how we create our mid-term business plan. This is really challenging the flowcharting skills learned from Malhotra's Operations Management class. I'm even learning about a couple different formats of flowcharting other than the basic type that we're all familiar with; one style for process communication, another for process management, and one for process improvement. It's also interesting to learn more about the differences between mapping a process from an internal and external standpoint. I know all of this sounds about as fascinating as a snail race, but it's actually an EXCELLENT way to get a fundamental understanding of how we do business every day.
Another assignment I have deals with improving and standardizing certain of our employee job descriptions and training. The goal behind this is to bring our processes in line with the rest of the company, which will improve the effectiveness of our training programs and help our employees with career planning. Right now, I'm collecting organization charts and job descriptions from our Asian businesses in an effort to understand the differences and similarities of how these units are structured & staffed across countries. The next step will be to analyze the data and offer suggestions for improvement.
Finally, I've been fortunate to take part in discussions about our strategy for managing opportunities in emerging markets around the world. Should we take advantage of an opportunity in an emerging foreign market by direct investment in that country? Or should we import product from offshore locations? What about local content regulations? Do tariffs make importing too costly? What are our competitors doing there? Being able to evaluate questions like these and weigh in on the considerations that go into such decision making really give a new relevance to the concepts and the cases we discussed in Dr. Kostova's and Dr. Woodward's international management & macroeconomics classes.
These projects should keep me busy for a while, so I think future journal entries will start talking more about my impressions and thoughts regarding working here.
2nd Journal Entry - Week 4:
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| I really enjoy walking to work everyday. |
My task was to update the data behind last year's plan with current information, and as the pair of new eyes in the department, propose new ways to analyze, present, and interpret the data. The marketing director liked some of my suggestions, and it was satisfying to see my recommendations in several of the charts and graphs that comprised the final presentation. During the data analysis and presentation process I was able to use many of the skills from the Decision Analysis (DA) class I took back in the first year core curriculum. So the pain that Dr. Philipoom doled out turned out to be quite useful. I was also able to do some linear and multiple regression analysis (also learned from DA) during my part-time stint in Purchasing, which was nice as well. Though I wonder if it's apt to put the words 'multiple regression' and 'nice' in the same sentence :)
Another part of the project was competitor analysis. Being able to learn how competitive analysis is done was quite interesting. I liken the process to a bird building a nest, since you must first collect lots of disparate wisps and scraps of information from many different locations and sources, both internal and external. The next step is to weave all those wisps and scraps of information together and build a convincing case for what it all means for the future.
Another good thing about this project was the opportunity to work closely with another member of the team. Up to this point, I had been doing quite a lot of learning about the company and reviewing departmental information, which can be a bit claustrophobic sometimes. It looks like from this point I'll be working more closely with various folks in the department, so I'm looking forward to that.
The director will be out all next week, but I should have plenty to keep me busy with the new tasks that he gave me. Looks like I'll have the opportunity to work on training, process mapping, and emerging markets opportunities. Stay tuned . . .
1st Journal Entry - Week 1:
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| My first day on the job! |
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before diving into the details of my internship, first let me introduce myself. My name is Duane C. Thomas, and I am currently a Japanese Track Moore School of Business IMBA candidate scheduled to graduate in May 2007. My concentrations are both Operations and Marketing. I'm in the Moore School to change my career path - I graduated Clemson University in 1998 with a concentration in International Management, but worked for the 6 years after graduation entirely in the United States. So it was time to do something to move my career in a more international direction. I picked Japan because I had some limited prior experience with the country and the language, liked both, and wanted to have an opportunity to live and work there. Also, most of my experience is in purchasing and supply management, and I would like to start branching out and start learning about and working in a different aspect of a company, namely marketing and sales.
So getting back to the present, I've just finished my first week as an intern in Michelin Japan. I'm now part of the OE (Original Equipment) Passenger Car / Light Truck Marketing organization for the Asia-Pacific region. OE is an abbreviation of OEM, which stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer. So what do we do? Our mission is to market, sell, design and manufacture passenger and light truck tires to automakers operating in the Asia/Oceania zone .
Let's take another break for some explanations. In the tire business, there are two general market segments; Replacement Tire (we call this RT), and Original Equipment (OE). Because of the mass quantities of tires the big automakers purchase, the OE market tends to be a lower-margin business than replacement. So with these lower margins, why is the OE market important? Well, Michelin believes that the OE market is the showcase for the characteristics in which the company excels - image, quality, innovation and technology. When customers drive a car fitted with Michelin tires as original equipment, they tend to like our tires and become loyal to the brand. This loyalty to the Michelin brand, in turn, generates sales for us on the replacement tire end. So to our way of thinking, OE fitments lead to downstream RT business, meaning both OE & RT are inexorably linked.
For the past week, my sole job has been to learn as much about the company as possible. To that end, I've had orientation meetings with all the people in the department, and they have given me a full education about the different functions that make up OE marketing. My co-workers have been very open and accommodating, even going so far as to take me around each floor of the office building and introduce me to all the members of the Michelin Japan team. As it's only been a week in the new position, I don't have much else to report, so I'll be back later with more impressions of the experience here.
Until then . . .