119: Bill Hall, President at Ipsos Healthcare Japan Ltd

William “Bill” Hall is currently the President at Ipsos
Healthcare Japan Ltd. Mr. Hall has a long-standing history with
Japan. He first visited the country in 1969 on a scholarship
for post-graduate research, having majored in Japanese and
Economics at Sydney University. After graduation, Mr. Hall
worked in the consulting and marketing research field, starting
his own market research company, and eventually leading
Sterling Winthrop, a pharmaceutical company. Mr. Hall then
worked for Kodak which had acquired Sterling Winthrop at the
time, before becoming the Japan President of ISIS, a medical
market research company. After selling ISIS to Synovate, Mr.
Hall then expanded the health care division within the new
organization. Finally, after Synovate was acquired by Ipsos,
the global marketing research company, Mr. Hall stepped into
his current leadership role at Ipsos. 




Mr. Hall recalls one of the first leadership challenges he
encountered was finding the right people and building a team
from scratch. He found it especially difficult as a foreign
company to convince people on the longevity of the
organization. To overcome the issue, Mr. Hall tried to provide
opportunities for people who joined the company to be exposed
to the discipline of market research, such as conducting
interviews, which is still not seen as a profession in which
people study for years to be in. Mr. Hall also was fortunate to
find foreign workers who spoke Japanese. He says the key is to
sometimes take a gamble and try to see the potential of the
person, instead of trying to find someone who is already
well-developed. 




A common problem many leaders of foreign companies in Japan
have, is explaining the difference in employee engagement
scores across different country branches to the head office.
Mr. Hall says, this is a complex matter, as there are many
cultural factors that need to be taken into account, and
companies are “reading the scales wrong.” For more information
on engagement scores and cultural bias, please contact Mr. Bill
Hall at william.hall@ipsos.com and he will be able to provide a
whitepaper regarding this topic.  




Mr. Hall finds that engagement depends greatly on the history
the employees have with the company. For example, he says that
people who are initially engaged when a company is in the
start-up stage, may not be as engaged 20 years later when the
scale of the company has grown. Mr. Hall adds that sometimes
handling long-term staff can be complex. It is important to pay
close attention to these worker who have helped the company
become what is it today, while finding the balance between the
long-term staff and younger employees and adjusting the
organization structure accordingly.  




Mr. Hall advises people to learn basic Japanese if they are
coming into Japan in leadership positions. He agrees that
Japanese can be a difficult language to learn. He understands
someone in a senior leadership role will have multiple aspects
to juggle in their life such as family commitments, generating
revenue for the organization and others. Yet Mr. Hall suggests
learning a little bit of the Japanese language will enable
foreign leaders to better communicate with the local staff
within and outside the office. Basic communication is
important, however Mr. Hall also suggests having a bilingual
assistant to translate the important business materials, so
that the individual is not dependent or pressurized to learn
fluent Japanese quickly.