Chosei: the Japanese art of “coordination” in business

One of my college classmates owns a company that does a lot of business with Japan.  However, unlike me he did not study the Japanese language or culture in college, so it is just recently that he is learning about Japan.  One day we were chatting about his business, and I reacted to something he said with “probably the Japanese you are working with just need time to coordinate.”  He pounced on my phrasing, saying with exasperation “Why is it that Japanese always have to ‘coordinate’ everything?  You never hear American businesspeople talking about coordinating!  But you hear Japanese say it all the time!”

Until he mentioned it, I hadn’t been conscious of how often the word “coordinate” is used by Japanese.  In most cases, Japanese seem to say “coordinate” when they mean chosei.

The literal translation of chosei is “adjust,” and chosei is a key means by which Japanese organizations organize their various components to get things done.  The chosei process occurs whenever the company is trying to move forward with a plan.  It entails both formal and informal consultations with affected departments to accomplish the following:

1) Reach consensus on what the problems/challenges are;
2) Determine what action to take and where in the organization resistance to change could potentially hinder efforts;
3) Iron out differences of opinion and facilitate compromises that won’t affect the overall integrity of the plan;
4) Follow up throughout the process to facilitate and maintain harmony.

The intended function of chosei is to harmonize competing/conflicting departmental agendas and resources and channel them toward achieving a common goal.In workplaces, it is sometimes used interchangeably with nemawashi, but it has a slightly different nuance.

Nemawashi might best be described as the private, informal negotiating component of the chosei process.  When chosei is used as a verb in the workplace, Japanese often render it into English as “coordinate.”  In this context, it is probably the most appropriate single English word, but the meaning is not quite an exact match. And as my college classmate pointed out, coordinate is not a word commonly used so often in business by Americans, so it may be confusing — or even irritating — to them.

In American organizations, individual departments are empowered to make decisions and make things happen on their own.  There is not as much emphasis on achieving consensus, because other parts of the organization are generally expected to go along with a decision if it has been approved by the top executives.  At the same time, cooperation does need to be gained, and that is often done by persuasion (plus making people aware of the top-level support that has been garnered). In an American company, one doesn’t so much coordinate as one “sells” what they want to do, and get people in other parts of the company “on board.”  But there isn’t the sense that one often gets in a Japanese company, of one part of the organization having the ability to completely derail something if they are not properly “coordinated with.”

Thus, if you hear “we need to coordinate with other departments” it might be clearer to understand it as “we need to discuss this with the other departments to make sure that they understand what we are doing, that we have addressed any concerns they have and to be sure to obtain their cooperation.”