Cultural Exchange
On Monday and Tuesday, I went to Houston to meet with the management of one of my clients’ major suppliers. The supplier is Japanese-owned, publicly-traded, and the CEO and upper management are native Japanese. So, I surfed a little bit to bone up on Japanese business etiquette. For one thing, I had to bring a suit, the first time I believe I’ve worn one in 3 or 4 years, and of all places, it had to be Houston. In August.
The sites I saw were equivocal on the issue of bowing. I decided to take my cue from our hosts, and we got by with some head-bobbing and hearty handshakes. And lots of politeness, enough, after a while to get even Mother Theresa’s gag reflex going.
We had prepared a Powerpoint presentation, which I had on my laptop. They had a projector for me to use, and the gathering waited, politely, while I sought to adjust my display to feed the projector. And waited some more. I had, the week before, upgraded my OS from Windows 2000 to XP in order to try to alleviate some of the problems that I whined about last week. When I opened my display driver dialog, which used to allow me to select among external monitors, televisions and projectors, those options were nowhere to be found. While my client CEO’s polite veneer heaved to and became markedly restive, the supplier CEO’s lieutenants’ politeness increased to the level of trying to help me. Helpful suggestions, “are we there yet” inquiries and sympathetic murmurrings are equally the bane of those of us who wrestle with technology for a living, and I alternately cringed and seethed.
After what seemed, and indeed probably was, an eternity in the temporal argot of Chief Executive Officers, I finally did something which caused my laptop display to flow beneficently to the screen on the wall. My client narrated as I clicked through the slides. About halfway through, I noticed that the lieutenants were sitting erectly and assiduously taking notes as my client spoke, clinging to every word. At the time I thought this was more over-the-top flattery, but in the discussion that followed, they seemed to refer to the notes as they made inquiries. Still, I imagined stacks of these yellow pads in a dust-riddled room labeled “Customer Relations Recycling Center”.
Afterward, we took a short limo ride to an elegant lunch. Back at their office, we exchanged gifts, which is also a Japanese business tradition. We had heard that their CEO was a bird enthusiast, so we presented him with a crystal bald eagle, which he seemed to relish. We received gold Greek coins commemorating the coming Olympic games. More head bobbing, handshakes, picture-taking, holding doors and after-you-my-dear-Alphonses as we dosey-doed our way down to our waiting limo, and we were on our way to the airport.
Considring that my previous business experiences in Texas, involved cowboy hats, steak houses with scantily-clad trapeze artists flying overhead, strip bars and line dancing lessons, this experience was refreshing. and I came away with a genuine liking for these guys.
