96: Tim Schlanghecke, Country Director Flavour, Symrise Japan

Tim Schlanghecke is the Country Director for Flavour of Symrise
in Japan. Mr. Schlanghecke has been in Japan ever since he
graduated University from his home country, Germany. He says that
he is not able to compare Japanese workplace and management to
Germany since he did not work much in Germany. Mr. Schlanghecke
says that his first venture was a small brewery that he started
in the Japanese countryside, where people did not speak much
English. He moved around Japan quite a lot in his early years in
Japan, he spent some time in Fukuoka, Hokkaido, Mishima,
Shizuoka, Yamagata and the spent some time in the Kansai area
before coming to Tokyo. As someone who was passionate about
breweries, the natural inclination for Mr. Schlanghecke was to go
to the Japanese countryside to work there. The businesses
plateaued at one point and then Mr. Schlanghecke decided to move
to Tokyo to start his own consulting business, in his expertise
niche which was consulting breweries.


 


Since Mr. Schlanghecke is in a unique industry, Mr. Story asked
Mr. Schlanghecke if it was challenging to convince Japanese board
members and junior staff that they should come work for his
smaller organization and not a larger, more stable, typical
Japanese firm. Mr. Schlanghecke says he is passionate about his
work and that translates outward and a lot of the time he hopes
people see it and join him because of that passion. Japan works
differently than other countries, resistance to change is one
example of one thing that is different in Japan. Mr. Schlanghecke
says that this is almost a philosophical topic as the resistance
to change is deeply embedded in Japanese culture and it goes back
hundreds of years. Japan’s work culture has achieved astronomical
things, the amount of total wealth that Japan has generated and
the distribution of wealth in Japan has improved phenomenally
over the years. Though Mr. Schlanghecke suspects that what worked
in the past will not be the same way to be successful in the
future. He believes though that we are at a turning point in
society and industrialization and modern capitalism as we know it
is likely not the way forward. He believes that for the world to
be sustainable for future generations, we need to think about
climate change, change our way of thinking about society and
change the ways of working due to a changing demographic of an
aging population. Though Japan has resisted change in the past,
it may need to start slowly accepting it given the circumstances.


 


Mr. Schlanghecke’s advice to someone coming into Japan would be
to listen first and don’t complain. He says a lot of the time
people come in and make assumptions on the little knowledge of
Japan they may have; he also encourages them to go into details
and be more Japanese. Learning about Japan and the Japanese way
takes time and patience and an in depth understanding of
Japanese. Having been in Japan, Mr. Schlanghecke says that for a
foreign company to work in Japan, they need to have 100% backing
and support from their head office, all the successes he has seen
have worked in this way. Though Mr. Schlanghecke speaks Japanese
and he used to work in the Japanese language, he has recently
shifted back to communicating in English. He states that the
reason for this is that Japanese tends to have nuances and be
misunderstood by the other party because of the subtleties, he
feels English is a more direct language and people are better
able to understand instructions if he speaks in English.