Turning weakness into strength – English Capability and Diversity Awareness are the key to future success

Turning weakness into strength – English Capability and Diversity Awareness are the key to future success

– Blog by Steve Hwang

I was recently asked to participate the management and leadership development training class, an internal training curriculum with that Seagate uses to develop new managers and future company leaders. I shared some thoughts on my learning experience of management, my own leadership style, strength and weakness of different managerial approach.

During Q&A session, I was asked by one of participant, who is Japanese American and 1st line manager, to compare the weakness and strength of business practice and management style between the West and the East, and of my opinion on the rise and fall of Japanese economy growth.

Here it was my opinion-let me know what you think:

When I came to USA in 1987, that was a booming time for Japanese economy and for automobile, consumer electronics, semi-conductor in particular. American had seen that Japanese companies was gaining the market sharing globally through the high quality and low cost of products being made in Japan. Japan was well position to become world #1 economic power -house and to own many properties, equities in USA, that included Pebble Beach Property, a landmark of most beautiful costal land in California, USA as well as the many tall buildings and big companies.

The strength of the East:

It was well documented how Japan had overtook USA and become the most powerful economy entity in 1970 –1980. They had cut costs, improved overall efficiency, productivity and quality to gain overall business competitiveness. It was also clearly demonstrated that Japanese were intelligent, well educated, and totally loyal, dedicated to companies, works and jobs. Many employees worked from morning to midnight, missed family activities, spent little or no time with kids, and gave personal health and life to the success of the company.

I thought that I would list the strength of East that contributed to the success of Japanese economy in 1970-80.

Strengths are:

1. Education 2. Discipline 3. Hardworking 4. Dedication 5. Go by the rule and book 6. Loyalty

In the fall of 1990, I arrived in Silicon Valley, California. The economic power of Japan has allowed Japanese companies to extend their influence and visibility in the birthplace of high technology industry. To continue to economic expansion, Japanese companies had invested and took over dozens of companies in Hard Disc Drive, Personal Computer, and other industries. If you were driving around the Silicon Valley, you can see the company logos, like SONY, Mitsubishi, KAO, JVC, Cannon, Hitachi, Toshiba, Kubota, Yamaha, Japan Energy, Tosoh, MKE, Asahi, Toyo Kohn, Fuji, Showa, Sanyo, ALPS…and many Japanese conglomerates, around every corner of R&D and manufacturing buildings. Many technical professionals, me included, were learning Japanese, instructed to learn of operational excellence from Japanese business practice and were looking forward to working in a Japanese company.

In the Hard Disc Media business I was involving in, two Japanese companies, Hitachi Metal Technology and Akashi (American company was bought by Kubota group in 1989) were the most admired and highly respected companies among 6 recording media companies in Silicon Valley.

When I was interviewed by Akashi in 1991 for an engineer position, I learned that the president and majority of the management team were all Japanese from parent company, Kubota, who had very little or no knowledge of recording media technology. During the interview, the Japanese manager, through interpreter, asked the question and conducted interview in such way that it was so ineffective and took an hour longer to complete a simple interview. I also learned that President of Akashi, who was a Japanese but educated in USA for advanced degree, could speak fluently English, however, he would conduct all meeting in Japanese and relied on translator to communicate message to employees in English.

Few years later when I was assigned to off shore production transfer role and responsibility, I’d found that the same Japanese business practice, such as conducting business in Japanese language, operating in a silo environment with mostly Japanese management and local employees for engineers, technicians and operators, were alsohappening in Singapore, Philippine, and Malaysia.

The weakness of East

This business practice mentioned above in an oversea Japanese company had two flaws

1. Lack of English communication skill to local employees, to suppliers, and to customers - The communication and translation from English to Japanese, then Japanese back to English, was ineffective, nor productive. Furthermore, it created interpersonal barrier among the employees, management team, customers, suppliers and others. An ineffective and slow-pace communication could probably work in a production-oriented environment in 70 or 80’ but will certainly fail in the innovative, fast pace R&D environment in the 21st century.

2. Lack of diversity awareness and ability to manage diverse workforce – A leadership and management structure with singular race (Japanese) and gender (male) discussed above created many shortcomings that included poor moral, lack of performance, and low motivation. In a global business environment, how to hire and manage diversed employees are the most important lesson and competitive advantage for a person and company that want to be successful.

Even though there are many attributes to the cause of “ Loss of 20 years since 1990” to the Japanese economy, in my opinion that the lack of English skill and diversity awareness is one of most significant factor.

How to turn our weakness into strength?

1. Improve English language skill – In current education system in Taiwan, English is most popular and the mandatory class from elementary school to 4-year university. However, the English language skill that is practical and useful in business communication is not getting much progress for past 20 years.

From my experience of learning English language, the best and most effective way to improve English skill is to take TOEFL (Test Of English as a Foreign Language). TOEFL provides a practical way for us to practice reading, listening and writing, and a motivation to measure self of English comprehension capability through the improvement of TOEFL score (a person who can achieve 550-600 score is capable of conducing any business with English). In addition, practice makes perfect. If we want to improve English skill, we need to take every opportunity to read, listen, write and speak English. In the beginning, it will be difficult because of fear of embarrassment and discomfort. But as long as we won’t stop and are persistent in practicing English, the fear will soon disappear and the comfort level is surely increasing and we won’t avoid or delete English e-mails when we see them.

2. Train and improve diversity awareness- The diversity awareness is to make us aware of that the variety of skill, view, experience and perspective which arise from difference in race, gender, culture, religion, and other characteristics, exists in our daily life. It’s important to know that a successful individual and future leaders have to be actively promoting community, comfort with difference and know how to respect, motivate, value and manage diverseworkforce and how to build a successful life and career through diversity practice.

Please forward this blog of improving English skill and diversity awareness to your friends, colleges and family members. So we can all make continued improvement and prepare us for the better and brighter tomorrow.

Thank you,