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Comment by krick | Hacker News Reader

I can imagine what you mean, but since I am not in Japan, it would be interesting why you feel that way.

long and slow consensus building that weighs existing stakeholder's opinions heavily vs doing "the right thing" from the outset. So you move slowly and end up having very annoying conversations and compromises instead of just pushing something through. And the formal process is just a formality anyways, so then anyone not in the informal chatter just gets to experience the capriciousness anyways

The sort of consensus building ultimately involves having to do stuff to make people's opinions feel taken care of, even if their concerns are outright wrong. And you end up having to make some awkward deals.

Like with all this "Japanese business culture" stuff though, I feel like it's pretty universal in some degrees or another everywhere. Who's out there just doing things without getting _any_ form of backchannel checking first? Who wants to be surprised at random announcements from people you're working with? Apart from Musk types.

But of course some people are very comfortable just ripping the band aid off and putting people in awkward spots, because "of course" they have the right opinion and plan already.

Why context matters in judging whether some practice is good or not.

Move fast and break stuff didn't work out much better though.

Yeah sure, I feel like back channeling stuff is generally just the respectful thing to do, so I'm not on the side of the debate I'm expanding upon in most cases.

Just that lacking context one really can't make that many blanket statements.

Not only respectful. Also it ensures that all different aspects of a decision is considered before making the decision. If not aligned with all parties, we would miss important flaws in the plan. It is just a sensible thing to do.

> If not aligned with all parties, we would miss important flaws in the plan.

I think the difficult cases come when people's interests aren't aligned. If you're coordinating with a vendor to basically detangle yourself from their vendor-specific tooling to be able to move away from them, at some level it doesn't really make sense to read them in on that.

There are degrees to this, and I think you can argue both sides here (so ultimately it's a question of what you want to do), but parties are rarely neutral. So the tough discussions come from ones where one party is going to be losing out on something.

You have more than 2 choices

But it does work much better, why do you think it didn't?

Yeah, Japanese economy has been quite stagnant since the bubble collapse in 1990. Pretending that their model works is ridiculous.

Peter Drucker has an interesting analysis of the "American" -vs- "Japanese" styles of decision-making + alignment, presenting a complementary perspective: https://www.joaomordomo.com/files/books/ebooks/Peter%20Druck...

IMHO the only correct way to measure the effectiveness of decision making is from the quality of executed outcomes. It is somewhat nonsensical to sever decisions from execution, and claim that decisions have been made rapidly if the decision doesn't lend itself to crisp execution. Without that, decisions are merely intentions.

Who cares if they’re wrong? The point is respect for their opinions and feelings since you’ll have to work with them for twenty years. If you respect them, you get to do what you want to do and they won’t fuck with you or shoot down your proposal.

To be clear this is Japan we’re talking about with the twenty years part. The same thing applies in the US but on smaller timescales though. If people feel appreciated and respected and you have good relationships, they will basically back whatever you want.

I think this is a very naive take. Japanese people will blame you for any failure regardless if you respect them or not. And many times failures happen in japan exactly because people are sitting around doing nothing without acting even when it's urgent to make decision. Backstabbing and toxicity is the major feature of japanese business culture

To be clear I'm describing a point of view, but not always ascribing to it.

I tend to lean towards thinking backchanneling makes sense as a general vibe, if only because it's a way of doing things that lets people have dignity, and the costs _can be_ low.

> long and slow consensus building that weighs existing stakeholder's opinions heavily vs doing "the right thing" from the outset.

How do you know what "the right thing" is at the outset without talking to the stakeholders?

I'm dealing with someone's "the right thing" that is actually wrong and dumb. They didn't ask us before rolling out the new "standard."

Some people are very confident in their understanding of a problem! Others will discount the validity of the stakeholders involved having good judgement.

I think most people have at least one issue where they discount one of the stakeholder's judgement, it's all fairly contextual. But hey, if you're the CEO of some company you have the ability to act on that discounting.

Not OP but the phrase in Japanese also carries a negative connotation, that important issues are decided by a shadow process hidden below the surface, beforehand by those in the loop. Meetings are just for show.

would take a long time to expand on this in sufficient details, because it's hard to understand unless you live it and see it. People very rarely speak up in meetings (silence is the norm, just like they were taught in school), and therefore you never get to see exactly what people feel or think about what you are planning to do. So the norm is that most people talk and exchange in other venues (usually in your back, in smaller groups - I don't mean this in a negative way, it's just what they are used to do). So when you are set to achieve something, it's a long road of 1:1s, drinks or informal meetings to get to know what they think, what they want, and how they can help you to get there. Multiply this by the number of stakeholders involved, and the politics at play between all of them, and you end up with a very slow and inefficient model to drive decisions and buy-in.

I also live in Japan and everything you wrote is true, but I would add more point: extreme risk aversion that results in any tiny change getting discussed to ridiculous levels.

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