Purpose should come from within, but also from outside Japan HQ

Recently an HR director for a Japanese financial services company in Europe told me that he had been interviewed by the audit committee of the Japan headquarters board. He was puzzled that they kept asking him about the company’s purpose. “I know the company’s mission and values, although I can’t recite them as they are rather long.” 

Another HR director for a Japanese pharmaceuticals company asked me for training for the European executive team on how to influence Japan HQ’s decision making. The trigger for this turned out to be that Japan headquarters had launched a global employee engagement survey, without asking for any input from the European executives. The executives felt there were several questions in the survey that were not worded in an appropriate way. 

The origin of will

I had noticed that Japanese companies were talking more about purpose recently, but it wasn’t until another client asked us to help facilitate workshops on Purpose in Europe that I realized why. I assumed, as katakana (the script used for borrowed foreign words) was used for “purpose” (パーパス　pa-pasu, that it must have come from an American management consultant, but then I discovered Professor Nawa Takashi’s 2021 book, ‘Purpose Management’.

Prof Nawa says he would rather shimoto　(=志本 , using the characters kokorozashi/shi 志 meaning “will”　and “moto/本” meaning “origin”) was used, but clearly “Purpose” has become the favoured way of describing his concept in Japan. 

Japanese puns causing English confusion

It’s likely Prof Nawa was also making a pun – as 志本 could also be read “shihon”, and his book is proposing 志本主義shihonshugi/purpose-ism as a better alternative to 資本主義 which is also read “shihonshugi” which has different characters for “shihon”, and means “capitalism”.

Unfortunately now “pa-pasu” has become the more popular way of describing Prof Nawa’s idea, it means that Japanese headquarters’ staff assume that overseas staff will automatically understand the concept of Purpose, because it is an English word. English speakers will understand the word, of course, but it has not become a management buzzword in Western companies to the extent it has in Japan. 

Furthermore, employees outside Japan will not be aware of the specific definitions and processes outlined by Professor Nawa. Actually it seems to me that many Japanese headquarters have not adopted these either.  

Purpose is not the same as mission

Purpose is different from mission because it comes from within, not top down. So there needs to be a purpose discovery phase – and this should include overseas operations. An employee engagement survey is an important element too, as it provides a benchmark – but again, overseas executives should be involved from the start.  

I was also rather disappointed to see that many Japanese companies, including the financial services company mentioned above, have simply reworded their mission or vision and labelled it “purpose”. It is usually something generic like “contributing to society through innovation”. This does not fulfil Professor Nawa’s criteria of being exciting, unique and inspiring employees to think “we can do this!” 

This article originally appeared in the Teikoku Databank News on the 8th May 2024

Japan Intercultural Consulting consultants have experience in facilitating purpose discovery workshops in the overseas subsidiaries of Japanese companies – please contact us if you are interested in this service.