04-28-2002, 05:45 AM
TOKYO CONFIDENTIAL
Hard times call for demonic behavior
By MICHAEL HOFFMAN
Da Capo (May 1)
Are you capable of tongue-lashing a subordinate? Harassing a laggard? Sacrificing personal popularity for corporate results? Firing an employee with no obvious future elsewhere? No? Then there's no place for you in these times.
Tokyo Confidential surveys popular vernacular magazines -- often "salacious, libelous and utterly unreliable" -- to discover what the Japanese are "really thinking."
Every salaryman, even the least ambitious, in the normal course of office life eventually becomes somebody's boss. It will not do, says Da Capo, to be a "boss in name only."
Amiable people make good cocktail party hosts, but Japan's economy is no cocktail party, it's a shipwreck, and sturdier qualities than amiability are called for. Does the word "demon" conjure up negative images? Too bad, says Da Capo. Because what's needed right now are "demon bosses."
What does it mean to be a "demon boss"? Seven things, writes businessman and author Kazumi Sometani -- none of them pleasant. The name of his personnel training firm is I Will, and the title of his book is "If the Boss Isn't a Demon, Subordinates Won't Produce." It has sold 500,000 copies. Evidently, the devil is a compelling role model.
The snarling, snapping boss went out of fashion in the complacent eighties. Jobs were secure, growth seemed assured -- why strain? The driven "company man" became the butt of satire. To be respected, a boss had to be human. Cautiously at first, then more daringly, he exposed his softer side.
Now he must re-don his armor. Point 1 of Sometani's seven-point prescription for demonhood: Don't let your subordinates get away with "small things." Greetings, for instance. Insist on a spirited reply to your "Good morning," a crisp "Hai!" in response to an order. Sullen manners breed indifferent work. "An employee who can't extend a proper greeting," says Sometani, "can't work properly."
Point 2: Discriminate among your underlings. Praise the good, slight the bad. You'd be surprised, he says -- one-third of the bad ones improve under such conditions.
Point 3: Never give up. If you can't fire employees the firm would be better off without, don't just resign yourself to their continued unproductive presence. Harry them until they produce.
Point 4: An order is an order. If the subordinate doesn't like it, tough luck.
Point 5: It's OK to take your subordinates out drinking, but even under the influence of merry intoxication, don't lapse into equality. Submission is a habit easily lost. Make sure it isn't.
Point 6: Cut meetings. A clear, forthright, firm boss doesn't need them.
Point 7: Be a nagging mother to your younger staff. Issue instructions like, "Eat breakfast. Scan the newspaper before coming to work. Read such-and-such a book. Be in bed by midnight." Otherwise, says Sometani, people come in bleary-eyed and uninformed, and nothing gets done until after lunch.
All very well, and if human beings were horses, this would be the way to ride them. However, notes Tokyo Managers' Union Secretary Kiyotsugu Shitara in a separate Da Capo piece, there are two kinds of "demon bosses." There is the boss who takes his job to heart and insists that his subordinates do the same; and there is the out-and-out bully. Sometani's system seems likely to turn the former into the latter.
Shitara founded the union in 1993 for managerial-class employees who cannot join labor unions. It usually has 100 cases on hand of office workers claiming unjust dismissal. Its way of handling them is interesting and original.
It turns victims seeking advice into counselors dispensing it. A fired employee helpless to confront his own company often finds himself quite capable of confronting another company on someone else's behalf. His own bitter experience sharpens his insight, and the negotiating skills he gains might give him the courage to challenge his own firing. Failing that, they will at least make him a more confident job-hunter; possibly even, once rehired, a "demon boss" -- hopefully of the first type.
Hard times call for demonic behavior
By MICHAEL HOFFMAN
Da Capo (May 1)
Are you capable of tongue-lashing a subordinate? Harassing a laggard? Sacrificing personal popularity for corporate results? Firing an employee with no obvious future elsewhere? No? Then there's no place for you in these times.
Tokyo Confidential surveys popular vernacular magazines -- often "salacious, libelous and utterly unreliable" -- to discover what the Japanese are "really thinking."
Every salaryman, even the least ambitious, in the normal course of office life eventually becomes somebody's boss. It will not do, says Da Capo, to be a "boss in name only."
Amiable people make good cocktail party hosts, but Japan's economy is no cocktail party, it's a shipwreck, and sturdier qualities than amiability are called for. Does the word "demon" conjure up negative images? Too bad, says Da Capo. Because what's needed right now are "demon bosses."
What does it mean to be a "demon boss"? Seven things, writes businessman and author Kazumi Sometani -- none of them pleasant. The name of his personnel training firm is I Will, and the title of his book is "If the Boss Isn't a Demon, Subordinates Won't Produce." It has sold 500,000 copies. Evidently, the devil is a compelling role model.
The snarling, snapping boss went out of fashion in the complacent eighties. Jobs were secure, growth seemed assured -- why strain? The driven "company man" became the butt of satire. To be respected, a boss had to be human. Cautiously at first, then more daringly, he exposed his softer side.
Now he must re-don his armor. Point 1 of Sometani's seven-point prescription for demonhood: Don't let your subordinates get away with "small things." Greetings, for instance. Insist on a spirited reply to your "Good morning," a crisp "Hai!" in response to an order. Sullen manners breed indifferent work. "An employee who can't extend a proper greeting," says Sometani, "can't work properly."
Point 2: Discriminate among your underlings. Praise the good, slight the bad. You'd be surprised, he says -- one-third of the bad ones improve under such conditions.
Point 3: Never give up. If you can't fire employees the firm would be better off without, don't just resign yourself to their continued unproductive presence. Harry them until they produce.
Point 4: An order is an order. If the subordinate doesn't like it, tough luck.
Point 5: It's OK to take your subordinates out drinking, but even under the influence of merry intoxication, don't lapse into equality. Submission is a habit easily lost. Make sure it isn't.
Point 6: Cut meetings. A clear, forthright, firm boss doesn't need them.
Point 7: Be a nagging mother to your younger staff. Issue instructions like, "Eat breakfast. Scan the newspaper before coming to work. Read such-and-such a book. Be in bed by midnight." Otherwise, says Sometani, people come in bleary-eyed and uninformed, and nothing gets done until after lunch.
All very well, and if human beings were horses, this would be the way to ride them. However, notes Tokyo Managers' Union Secretary Kiyotsugu Shitara in a separate Da Capo piece, there are two kinds of "demon bosses." There is the boss who takes his job to heart and insists that his subordinates do the same; and there is the out-and-out bully. Sometani's system seems likely to turn the former into the latter.
Shitara founded the union in 1993 for managerial-class employees who cannot join labor unions. It usually has 100 cases on hand of office workers claiming unjust dismissal. Its way of handling them is interesting and original.
It turns victims seeking advice into counselors dispensing it. A fired employee helpless to confront his own company often finds himself quite capable of confronting another company on someone else's behalf. His own bitter experience sharpens his insight, and the negotiating skills he gains might give him the courage to challenge his own firing. Failing that, they will at least make him a more confident job-hunter; possibly even, once rehired, a "demon boss" -- hopefully of the first type.