114: Masatsugu Shimono, ex-senior Vice President, IBM Japan

Masatsugu Shimono is the former Senior Vice President at IBM
Japan. Mr. Shimono has a longstanding career of 40 years with
IBM, primarily in Tokyo but with a short stint in New York. Mr.
Shimono majored in Computer Science at his university when
computers were new and computer science was quite different to
what it is now.


 


Mr. Shimono says that to gain engagement on his teams, he focused
on closely managing his 10 direct reports. In addition, he held
regular meetings, and communicated well with them. He says that
he held round table discussions and regular Monday meetings.
Whenever there was a need for innovative ideas, Mr. Shimono says
he tries to lead the discussion in an innovative way. He praises
IBM for being so diverse in terms of racial background, gender,
nationality, and age, so gaining diverse perspectives is easier
at IBM than it may be in other companies.


 


Mr. Shimono says that the understanding of the Japanese culture
is quite important and the general awareness about Japanese
culture is much better than it was 20 years ago. His advice to
colleagues and people looking to come to Japan would be to be
patient. He believes there is globalization on various levels, 1)
Globalization of Japan 2) Globalization of Japanese People 3)
Globalization of Japanese companies. For newcomers to Japan, he
suggests making changes and innovating Japanese companies, as
this will be received well. However, trying to change Japanese
people and their culture may be met with resistance. He advises
even if someone doesn’t agree with the Japanese way of doing
things, forcing change can be tricky and advises people to keep
an open mind and be patient.


 


Mr. Shimono says learning Japanese is not necessary when coming
to Japan. He says learning the Kanji script is integral to the
Japanese language and this can be quite difficult and incredibly
time consuming for adults. Mr. Shimono says nowadays there are a
lot of interpreters available and many software programs that can
bypass the need to learn the Japanese language.