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Episode Transcript
Lisa: So Yuji, thank you so much for coming on the Leadermorphosis podcast.
Yuji: Thank you too. It’s my pleasure to be on your show.
Lisa: So I thought we could start maybe by, if you could give us a bit of a picture of the landscape of the new ways of working movement in Japan from your experience. You know, what does it look like at the moment?
Yuji: Okay then, maybe I can start from sharing the past like three years, what has been happening in Japan because there were two big milestones in these three years. One was the first one was when the book, Reinventing Organizations Japanese edition came out in Japan. That was in January in 2018, so it’s almost three years. And the second milestone was when Frederic Laloux himself came to visit Japan and had an event and a retreat program. Those were two major milestones we’ve had in these three years.
And before going into detail, I need to mention that there were a lot of movements or theories or whatever beforehand that the book came out. There’s a lot of good practices and gurus or masters in Japan who have been doing a lot of work, but having the book Reinventing Organizations and the concepts like the word “teal organization” gave kind of a direction and foundation to have a good discussion and sharing the knowledge in the Japanese community.
So these two events, having the book and having Frederic Laloux visiting Japan, were very good events. And the first one, when the book came out in 2018, it was so surprising that, first of all, hardly no one knew about the word “teal organization” beforehand. And you have this big book of teal organization, and the title of the book is also “Teal Organization” itself in Japanese. So you have a thick book, you have the word no one knows, “teal organization,” but once that book was published, it made such a sensation that so many people shared that on social media and had a lot of study groups or communities and so on.
So that was pretty much just the beginning of a new way of organizations when the book came out. And after that, that’s going to be three years. And after having that book and having a lot of discussions and practices in the world, the second milestone was the time Frederic Laloux himself came to Japan. And that was very meaningful in several ways.
One was that the community in Japan was able to feel or see or hear from Frederic himself and have this shared experience that we can hear or learn from Frederic himself. And having the common experience in the community was a very good milestone for the community. And also, having different communities trying to practice in Japan, trying to achieve the same goal but in different communities, but having the big event in Japan—that was a very good time to connect the communities inside Japan too. So that was also a very good event for what we had in Japan.
And also, when Frederic Laloux came to Japan, he had a two-day retreat program, and there were like 20 or less members. I was there too, and that was also very, very meaningful experience. For one, maybe you are aware that Frederic Laloux himself, his purpose is more shifted to issues on climate change and not like organizations or leadership. So he mentioned at the beginning that that might be his last opportunity to give kind of a workshop on organizations or management, not only in Japan but maybe in his career. So he was very passionate to share as much as possible in limited time, so that was a very pleasant experience to have those two days with his passion, his will to share everything.
And also, another meaningful moment after the retreat was that—I wasn’t there—but the planning or the management team had a reflection with Frederic Laloux, and he mentioned at the end of the reflection that the source of the teal movement in Japan won’t be himself but would be passed to a person, Kensho Kamara. He is the person who wrote the postscript in the book. So he passed the source of Japan to a different person, and that was a very meaningful time. And Kensho was already famous as the leader of the teal movement; he wrote the postscript, and he was the one who initiated the book to come into Japan. But after having that ritual, it seems that he himself has a deeper awareness that he is the source of this movement, and I could see that he really senses the tension or sometimes the pain that the movement has. So it’s more like he’s having really the source role in Japan. So that was a very meaningful time. So that’s one year ago. So those were the two big events we had for these three years.
Lisa: Wow, thank you for sharing. There’s lots of things I’d like to unpack in what you just shared. I guess one is it’s really interesting that you pick up on this idea of source. I know you and I have a mutual friend, Tom Nixon, who introduced me to source some years ago, and it’s been interesting to see Frederic weave in the idea of source from Peter Koenig’s work into the illustrated version of Reinventing Organizations. And here’s an example in practice of him very intentionally passing, handing over the source of the teal movement in Japan to—is Kensho his name? So that’s really interesting, and I’m curious to know, like, how has that—so that was a year ago—how does that role, how does he embody that role now, and what influence does that have on the community and the movement?
Yuji: For the community, not very many people might know that that ritual took place, so it’s not a very obvious thing. It’s not hidden or something, but he won’t speak out for this or explain about that. But what I see from Kensho himself is that he really is having the kind of pain or maybe frustration. Recently, I think this might happen not only in Japan but other places, but the concept of teal organization is so inspiring and fascinating that people understand that in a very not deep way, only like the practices or the how-to and so on. And as the word “teal organization” becomes more popular, there starts to emerge misunderstandings or misleading or not the proper way of consulting service or something. So that’s not what he wants to see as a teal movement, and I can feel that he feels pains or frustration as the source. So I think it does make a difference that really, from my point of view, emerged in himself after the passing of the source.
Lisa: That’s interesting. It’s almost like it’s more personal to him, like it’s more embodied, how teal organization is used or misused as a concept. It’s interesting also what you say about—because of course, as you say, there have been many movements and different gurus and masters in Japan. And also, I guess, you could say in the East generally, it’s not that Frederic’s book was sort of published into a vacuum. So I’m curious, like, from previous movements or principles or practices that have emerged, particularly in Japan, what were some of the foundations or themes that meant that when Reinventing Organizations came out, it resonated with people?
Yuji: What do you mean? What should I answer?
Lisa: I guess I’m thinking about, like, if I use another example, like in Latin America, you know, many people are familiar with Ricardo Semler and Semco back in the 80s. You know, so for them, Reinventing Organizations was also not new, and there have been different movements like that around the world as well. And there’s kind of common themes there of, you know, pushing down authority to the people who do the work, are on the front line, things like that. And I’m interested in what some of these pre-existing principles or new ways of working were.
Yuji: I might answer from a different perspective about your question. I was thinking what I could share in this podcast to inspire the people who are listening and maybe not very familiar with the Japanese practices that are there. If I roughly group like three kinds of groups of practitioners going on in Japan right now:
The first group might be the very new emerging small teams that are very inspired by the new ways of work, including of course teal organization and so on. So basically, they’re small teams, small companies established very recently, mainly like startups and so on. So there’s so many of these examples here, and that’s the first group.
The second group might be the companies that are seen as the leading companies of the teal movement in Japan. There’s not very many, but basically, they were established 15 or 20 years ago, mainly in the IT industry, mainly based in Tokyo, having like 100 to several hundred members. And they’re pretty much seen as the leading companies of the teal movement. And they seem to have the common path, common history that they mainly used to have kind of a hierarchical orange paradigm, and then had to change to a new way of organization, and that happened to resonate with the teal movement. So they didn’t intend to become a teal organization, but it happens that it resonated and related. And those companies are really working to also contribute to the movement itself, so not only participating but to expand or accelerate the movement itself. That’s kind of a second group. There’s like not very many, like 10 or 15 of those kinds of groups.
And the third group I think was some kind of an answer to your question, is that looking inside Japan, there are so many companies that run in their original ways, mainly not based in Tokyo, maybe like in manufacturing or food companies or car dealers or whatever that has been trying to adapt to their local community and their industry, and to treat their employees and to contribute to the local community and so on. And as Frederic wrote in the book, they didn’t know each other; they just tried by themselves to figure out a better way to run their organization and treat their employees and the environment and grow their business. So there’s so many of them in Japan. So people who have been working on these new ways of working are used to look very much about those third groups that traditionally have a lot of efforts and their unique ways of running organizations. So I think that’s pretty much the wide view I can see in the Japanese community right now.
Lisa: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I guess that maybe brings us on to a topic that I’m really interested to dig into, which is to look at some of the cultural differences that you see between Japan and maybe some of the more Western philosophies or paradigms of ways of working or ways of being together, and the implications that has on new ways of working, especially as organizations become more global. Because I think it’s really interesting—we can’t assume that our office in the US, you know, introducing teal there is going to be the same as introducing teal in Japan, for example. So I’m really curious to see what are your thoughts about that. How would you distinguish the cultural differences?
Yuji: That’s really the most exciting topic I would like to speak on with you today. And maybe I can start from my personal journey about how I came to this topic because that’s really related to what I see right now.
It’s been like four or five years ago I really came into this topic. And before that, I used to be one of the founding members of a tech startup. I was a board member and CEO at a tech startup, and we had funding from a Silicon Valley venture capital. So it was really in the orange-capital paradigm. And I loved that work; it was very exciting. But at some moment, when the company grew to like 30 people, I started to think that to grow the company, this organization should be in a hierarchical structure and also have some kind of command and control kind of management to grow the business. And I myself shifted the company into that kind of paradigm, and I do think that was the best answer I had, and I still think that was correct to grow the company. And the company is still running very well, so I think that was a great decision.
But unfortunately, I didn’t fit into that culture myself, and I couldn’t put my passion into that kind of work. So that’s why I resigned from the company and then started to figure out, to see what was the difference and how could I have achieved both the growth of the company and also having the more harmonious or free working styles and so on. And then I came to like Frederic Laloux’s book in English and holacracy and so on, and of course, a lot of works in Japan. But all those English works were so fascinating for me, so I just went into all those, and it was so inspiring.
But the moment I felt there are some points that I felt was different, and a very kind of subtle feeling that there might be something here different, and I couldn’t explain what that was. And having that kind of feeling, I had a chance to speak to like European people—I think it was in Greece—to explain how it is in Japan and what I feel. And having all those conversations with those Western culture people, I couldn’t explain everything that I felt was different. What I felt was different was something. That was a very meaningful moment that I realized that I need to dig into something in the culture that might be something deep inside. The practices or what we do might be very similar, but something deep inside might be different. So that was really my starting point to try to find out what is the difference between those subtle ones. So that’s been my three-four years, to become to understand what’s the difference.
Lisa: I remember when I first spoke to you, we were on a sort of group call, and you were sharing with us some of these distinctions that you’ve started to articulate. And I think you referenced this book “Geography of Thought.” So where are you in that journey? Could you share with us a couple of differences that you think might be interesting? Because as you say, I think many of our listeners are kind of from a Western experience.
Yuji: Maybe I’m not sure I could explain the difference between Western and Eastern, but mainly the difference between Japan and mainly North American or European. And Europeans, there’s a lot of difference, but what I feel in especially in Japan, that I think it’s referred a lot that as a culture, we have a very collective kind of mind compared to in the Western, it’s more like individual kind of culture.
And also, pretty much related to that, in Japan, we are very good at reading between the lines. Even though it’s not described or explained, we could like feel what could be better for someone else or for the group or for the community. And that would be a strong point, but of course, sometimes that becomes a weak point because we’re not good at describing job descriptions or defining exactly and so on. So that’s something, some weak points we do have, and that might become sometimes very tragic or something to end up in a pretty much of a failure.
And that kind of collectivity and individual mindset, and also having the definition-based movements or more like a relation or reading between the lines kind of movement is a very basic difference we have. And moreover, as I mentioned, digging more into the culture, what is the difference that causes that kind of difference, it’s more like that it seems that the basic perception we have of the world is pretty much different within the culture.
In the Japanese or maybe the Eastern culture, we perceive more of the world as a dynamic, moving environment. And in the Western culture, it’s more like the world could be perceived as a static world, and you could divide things and look into the tiniest atoms and so on to understand all the other world. So the way you perceive the world, how dynamic it is or how static it is, is pretty much the very core difference we have. And that might cause different ways of organizations when we put into practice.
Lisa: I wonder if it—do you think that makes it easier for companies in a Japanese culture to adapt to new ways of working?
Yuji: It really depends on the situation because for this like 50, 60, 70 years in Japan, we’ve been learning a lot from the Western culture, especially in the business world, like typically MBAs and so on. It’s been, we’ve learned a lot, and that’s been a great help to bring us to where we are right now in this environment. So a lot is Westernized in the working environment. So I think that was, that’s not something we need to blame or that wasn’t wrong or something, but that was a very good period for us.
But trying to figure out a new way that’s suitable that we don’t have a best practice somewhere, we need to try to dig in by ourselves—what is our culture, what are the tendencies or the attributes we have in our culture, and figure out from that point what could be the difference, and then try to put into practice that is suitable for ourselves. And that process takes a lot of time, takes a lot of self-understanding and understanding of the organization or the culture and so on.
So that brings me back to the subtle kind of difference I felt when I read Frederic Laloux’s book or holacracy or so on. Those methods or practices are so inspiring, what I could see, but if the foundation is different, we need to find the better ways by ourselves. And so that’s something I’ve been passionate about, to find out what could be a better way in Japan, not just like installing or copying what we could see outside of Japan, but trying to interpret or transform that into what is suitable for ourselves.
Lisa: Yeah, I think that’s a really key point, and it speaks to this tension that I have, which is that, you know, as I see it, a lot of the ills of the industrial era, you know, came from the West. And as you say, you know, the East copied a lot of these ideas, integrated a lot of these ideas. And you know, it would be reductive to say that that was all bad, as you say, like it has had some benefits. But now we can obviously see the impact that’s having on the planet and the climate and so on.
And so I feel sort of guilty about that, that, you know, as a European, as a Westerner, like, hey, you know, we sort of introduced these horrible ways of managing and working that are kind of soulless and mechanistic. And the East, in many ways, adopted them and reap the benefits of that, but also the disadvantages and the hurt of that. And now the irony is that the new ways of working movement, the latest kind of phase of it, is so much driven by the West, it seems again.
So we have, you know, Frederic himself, and we have, you know, Gary Hamel and people in the US and North America and Europe. And I find myself being approached by people in India or in China asking me to help them become teal or self-managed, and I feel really uncomfortable about that. Because in some ways, I think there are—yeah, I think every organization has to find its own way to, you know, find their version of some of these principles and practices. And I feel very uncomfortable about imposing anything. You know, it’s almost like reenacting colonialism if I’m not careful, like, “Here, let me tell you the way to do it.” And that’s not at all what I want.
But it’s super interesting to me to discover, you know, like I’m working with this Buddhist meditation trainings company, and we’re discovering, as I’m sort of talking about and sharing, my colleagues and I, some of the principles, people are saying, like, “Oh, that’s really, there’s a parallel with that in Buddhism because Buddha said this.” And you know, then we start to find a language and a culture and a worldview that is theirs, and then start to think about how can that connect to creating more self-managing teams and all of that. So it’s sort of this tension that I have, and I think that, you know, we should question and explore because, yeah, to me also I don’t think the future of work should be another Western paradigm or dominant paradigm of thought.
Yuji: And I was talking with Kensho, the source of that teal movement in Japan this morning, to discuss what I could share in this podcast today. And what we had in common was that we in Japan, we don’t need to feel that we are behind of something or like we are not up to date about the self-organization or the new ways, but we have different criteria. That what we try, what we see in our culture, or what we are trying to do in our culture might not be seen from the same viewpoint.
And what we have or what we have been growing or implementing in our culture is something that is different. And when in the previous time, when we were trying to install the Western ways, we try to have the same way, same lens, same viewpoints to—I won’t say copy—but try to do the same thing. But now trying to have the new way, it might be difficult for people from different cultures to see because we do not have the exact same criteria.
And that might be some points that I explained, that we are not good at defining or describing everything. We are good at feeling or sensing. So that might be something we are not good at—to explain what we are doing into words and translate into English. But I’m pretty sure that we have a lot of knowledge and practices and wisdoms that have been embedded from the practices we’ve got.
And I think that’s going to be our challenge—to try to describe that in words to be able to deliver that. And I think that’s going to be a very good starting point to learn from each other from different cultures. And to describe what we have in Japan, that has to be done by ourselves in Japan. So that’s going to be our challenge, to be able to describe what would be the core difference and how we could explain what we have here in Japan.
Lisa: I don’t know if this is a stupid question to ask given what you’ve just said, but is there—do you have the beginnings of something that you can describe or an example of something that’s becoming clear to you in terms of, you know, what it might look like in Japan, a teal organization, for example?
Yuji: It’s going to be a challenge to explain in English, but I have a concept that I have been working on for this three years that we—I call it “jinen management.” Jinen is J-I-N-E-N, and this is an old way of saying “nature” in English. Recently we called it “shizen” as nature. And the difference between these two words is that the new “shizen,” the new word of saying nature, is what was started from I think the beginning of 19th century when we translated, I think it was English or Dutch, nature.
And when we translated and named the nature into “shizen,” the new word, it’s pretty much have the same meaning that, as I mentioned in the difference between the culture, that human is kind of separate from nature, that nature is something that we see. But when we use the word “jinen,” the old way of nature, we perceive that human beings are included or a part of the nature itself. So it’s pretty much related to the religion of the animism or so on, that the world is not separated.
And more, we could say that in the world using the old term “jinen,” it’s more like we do not perceive the world as dividing it into subjective and objective point of views. But it’s kind of like a Buddhism wisdom that you perceive the world as the whole, but you don’t perceive yourself as an individual; you are already included as the inside the whole as a whole. So that’s the, I think, a very key term that we could use to describe the difference, how we perceive the world and how we perceive yourself in the organizations.
And starting from that point, we could see that the way of management or organizations could be different, perceiving yourself as very naturally as a part of your organization or more like the community or the society or maybe the world. That you do not divide yourself from the outer world; you’re just really included as a part of the whole system. So starting from that point, we could describe the ways of management and the methods and the attitudes that would be suitable for those kind of organizations. And that’s something I’ve been working on for this like three years, to be able to describe more in words. It’s been a tough challenge, and it’s still not there yet, but this difference, the very basic perception of the world, might be the starting point to put into practice what is different in the management or the organizations.
So if I could add once more, I discussed this with Kensho, the source of teal. It’s that we don’t need to think, “Is this teal or not?” That’s not an important question because it doesn’t matter. It’s just that we want to find our kind of way, and it might happen to become some kind of close to what Frederic says in his book, but that’s not the point. We want to try to find out our own way that is suitable.
And there might be a lot of ways even in Japan; the way jinen management is something that I and my community is doing, but that’s not the only correct one. That’s the thing in Japan and also in the world. That’s only one option we have. So I would like to be more able to explain this in words, but that’s going to be a starting point. I would love to have feedbacks or questions or criticisms that that might not be good or something, but that conversation is gonna lead us as a whole to move on to more like new organizations and new ways. So that’s why we need to be able to express more in words.
Lisa: That’s interesting because I relate to that. I do a lot of trainings, and on the very first day, we start with talking about the kind of dominant paradigm. And I mean, we’ve done these trainings all over the world, and it seems to resonate with everyone. But I don’t know, it’d be interesting to hear what you think. But in terms of leadership or management, we summarize it as like a parent-child mindset or way of being, you know, that managers, in particular, see this dynamic of parent-child. And in whatever movement you’re interested in—teal or self-management or agile or whatever—it seems like what’s needed there is a more adult-adult dynamic way of relating, which is—and you use the word “attitude,” so I’m sort of interested in what the jinen attitude might be, or what might be useful in terms of making it work well.
Yuji: I think I have two different feelings or things that I’d like to talk about.
The first one is that it really resonates with what we feel, what I feel in our culture, to be a better part of a new way of working. It will not require, but it’s suitable to have more adult attitudes by yourself. And that would be one way. I do think it’s really important.
But on the other hand, I do feel that I don’t want to make it or define it as a requirement that you need to be an adult to be a part of a new way of working. And when we use like the concept of jinen management, it’s more like a forest or an ecosystem that emerges. The forest doesn’t have a commander or doesn’t have an adult, but there are some parts that are very young, very has a lot of childhood, and that kind of role is still a part of the ecosystem. And we need those kind of parts too in the whole forest. So we don’t want to reject or make it as a requirement to be an adult. So I have both ways of seeing that.
Lisa: I’m wondering, like, what if there are—because it sounds like there are cultural understandings or like there’s even language like “jinen”—there’s like a shorthand that perhaps in Japanese culture, people understand the essence of that, that maybe lends itself to this more ecosystem paradigm way of working. I’m curious about if there are things in Japanese culture that you think make it difficult, because I think in European culture, for example, it’s challenging that we tend to avoid conflict, for example, or it’s difficult for us to be more whole human beings. We’re very used to sort of only bringing parts of ourselves to work. You know, there’s all of these different cultural things that we almost have to unlearn. Or now I’m very conscious of the fact that I’m saying “have to” because you so beautifully talked about it doesn’t need to be a requirement, but it’s sort of not so suitable or it doesn’t work so well if those things—if we’re scared of those things, or you know, we’re driven more from ego. What are some of the challenges in a Japanese context, would you say?
Yuji: There, I feel a lot of difficulties in languages, not directly answering to your question, but in Japan, we do not have a word that suits “leadership” or “management” because we use it as it is—“leadership” and “management”—because we do not have a good word for that. And that quite led us to when we tried to install the Western way, we didn’t have the same concept as leadership, so we just try to learn what is said as leadership. And it became so natural in Japan too to use the word “leadership.”
But on the other hand, trying to, as I’ve been working for this three years, trying to find a new way as like in the jinen, to manage the organization as if it is a forest or ecosystem—how could we describe someone who is taking the initiative? It’s hard; it’s not something that we want to call “leadership,” but it of course includes a lot of aspects that what we call or what we require in leaders. So it’s really hard to describe that in our mother language. So it’s really a challenge to understand what we really want and to have the concept or have a clear understanding about the concept. It’s always very challenging.
Lisa: That’s interesting. I know my colleague, she was saying a similar thing in Russian, I think, that this word “leadership,” there’s not a direct translation in Russian either. So it’s really fascinating, the assumptions that I make about concepts that don’t exist in other languages or aren’t understood in the same way.
But it’s interesting what you say about people who take initiative or start initiatives. And in your jinen kind of model, I guess you could call it, what are some qualities that are useful for someone to develop perhaps, or strengthen, if they are willing to thrive in this kind of environment?
Yuji: Well, it comes to kind of the attitude the person has. I think the most important thing is to follow your own passion or enthusiasm, to not be answering to requirements or roles. But as you can see in the forest, everything is just—all the trees or animals are just trying to have their best to survive or to have their own children. And they don’t think about the forests or something, but everything starts from their individual passion. And as a system, as a conclusion, it has a good dynamic balance to emerge as a total.
So it gets pretty tough when you try to react to roles or expectations from others because that’s not the way I would like to see in that kind of management style. I would like to see it as much as possible that everyone starts from their own passion, maybe their own purpose, what they are moved by. And of course, there might be some conflicts or tensions that emerge if you have different passions or different directions to work on, but as you mentioned in the problems as the tension emerges—when the conflicts happen, problems are not seen as a kind of fact, but it’s perceived from someone who has different tension, different passions. So having their own direction or passion would be the very starting point to be for the person himself to be comfortable in these kind of environments too.
Lisa: That’s an interesting way of thinking about conflict. I’m feeling a little bit embarrassed that—I think in the West, I’ve spoken to a lot of Europeans, for example, about, you know, that I’m interested in exploring examples in other places in the world. And I mentioned that I had spoken to you in Japan, and I think people in the West perceived Japan as—people have said to me, like, “Oh, but it’s very hierarchical there, isn’t it, like very family-run businesses, a lot of those, and very polite and very formal. So surely it can’t work there.” Because I think this is like a preconception that people outside of Japan have perhaps, and I think I’ve been guilty of some version of that, so I feel a little bit embarrassed.
Yuji: And it’s true in some aspects, and I can’t deny everything about what they’ve said. But something I might add to what you’ve mentioned, it’s like the families. It’s a very strong tradition to have the families in Japan. It’s getting weaker, of course, than before, but the family, the concept of family, is very important in Japan.
And it’s hard to explain in English, but as I mentioned, when we perceive ourselves not divided into subjective and objective viewpoints, being a member of a family and being yourself is not a conflict. It’s just the same circle in different sizes. So you’re not being pressured to follow the family’s order or something, but it’s very natural for yourself to express your own passion but also feel what would be better for the whole family. It’s not a conflict because we really sense that as the same thing.
And maybe it’s from a different perspective, like, for example, I think it was in the World Cup or something else, when the Japanese audience of the stadium, when they tidied up after themselves—
Lisa: Yes, exactly.
Yuji: So no one punishes that or no one gets angry if you don’t do that, but it’s so natural for ourselves to just clean up what we messed up. And that’s like sensing what could be better for the whole community. And no one just orders that, but that’s very natural. That’s pretty much the same when we sense what could be better for the family or maybe for the community.
And of course, sometimes it might be pressuring or pushing people to do what they won’t like to do. Of course, that happens, so I can understand that you could sense that as a hierarchical something. But it’s not always that way when you perceive yourself as a part of the whole community. So it has both aspects too.
Lisa: That’s interesting, the example you share, because it’s so often the example I use when I’m talking to people about self-organizing, is that, you know, if you say we’re all responsible for taking out the trash, you know, don’t be surprised when the trash doesn’t get taken out. That so often happens, and maybe that just doesn’t happen in Japanese companies then; it’s not such a—
Yuji: Of course it happens. It’s not always so, but we have the common experience or the sense that it’s very natural to contribute to the community or what could be better at that moment, at that place.
Lisa: I feel like there’s so many more things I would like to ask. Maybe we have to have a follow-up conversation when you’ve kind of refined further this idea that you’re working on. But I guess a question I have now is about what advice you would give listeners. Because you’ve shared some beautiful insights, I think, into a different way of approaching, exploring new ways of working. You’ve talked about, you know, starting with understanding what is your view of the world, how do you see the world, and sort of getting a shared understanding of that. And then you’ve also talked about starting with your passion and what moves you and what your energy is sort of moving you towards. So what advice would you give listeners about how to find their own way as an organization, as a community, to, you know, find their version of a teal organization or a self-organization, or whatever it is that they want to aspire to?
Yuji: I don’t have any right answers for that, but just based on my journey for these three or four years, it was a very kind of unlearning process of what we’ve been learning from the Western culture and what we have. And it happened to be the Japanese culture or the tradition or the ancient wisdom we have in Japan. When I get in touch with those kind of wisdom, then I feel I can sense what I do not have right now in my organization or in the typical management right now. So it was a very good lens to see the reality I’m facing right now.
And the subtle feeling I felt was kind of the first clue I had to start feeling what is different and what is not connected to the deep wisdom I or we have. So trying to figure out from your own culture or what originated wisdom or culture or those kind of—I think there must be something that gives you a kind of question mark or a “what is this” or “it doesn’t feel comfortable” or something like that. So I think that’s going to be a very good starting point to figure out what could be unlearned throughout the reality you’re facing right now.
Lisa: Yeah, that’s really interesting because I think I talk about unlearning all the time with companies that I’m working with in the West as well. So I think we’re unlearning our own—I was going to say stupid ideas. They’re not stupid; they had some benefits. But I think, yeah, things that we’ve introduced that have taken us away from, I think, the essence of what it means to be human and what it means to be with and work with other human beings. Is there anything else that you haven’t shared yet that you would really like listeners to hear?
Yuji: It’s more like an invitation or a request that, for me personally, I would love to have more conversations like this, to of course share what I could say from my point of view in my culture. But what we did today, like what we feel different, is the point we could start learning from each other. So I think having this kind of conversation more would be very supportive and useful for both of us. So I’d love to have more experiences or any chances to explore more differences with other cultures. And any opportunities for those will be very, very glad and thankful for me too.
Lisa: Thank you so much, Yuji. This has been a fascinating conversation, and I’m looking forward to further conversations with you and seeing what emerges from your continued exploration into jinen management.
Yuji: Thank you, Lisa. It was my pleasure to be on your show.
