I make more reliable and rapid progress in my negotiations now  IAIN FERGUSON
CEO, JAPAN
ROYAL & SUN ALLIANCE INSURANCE
GROUP PLC. Could you explain to what extent ETP influenced your career in Japan? ETP has been a very strong influencing factor for my career in Japan and it has also been a major contributor to my company's progress here.
One of the major issues is the ability to conduct business meetings with Japanese counterparts in business Japanese. The understanding of business Japanese and Japanese business culture at that level is extremely important when you are trying to read the mindset of your counterparts or when interpreting their reaction to your proposals.
Probably you will find a lot of people, foreigners working in Japan or visiting Japan who will tell you they conduct meetings in Japanese. But what they actually do is start the meeting, the introduction, the initial greetings or exchange of pleasantries in Japanese and perhaps even the closing of the meeting too. But in between, during the actual meeting, all business issues are translated to and from English. In that situation, quite often I do not really believe that the Japanese counterparts ever consider the meeting being anything else than a mere exchange of pleasantries.
In the situation where you have been through ETP and you can speak good business Japanese, you have the ability to go alone to this type of meeting if you wish and meet with Japanese business partners and discuss real business issues with them in business Japanese. In that situation I think the counterpart really takes you seriously and he will discuss the business issues genuinely. They feel that some contemplation or decision is expected from them and you tend to make more reliable and rapid progress in your negotiations. This is probably the main area where ETP has been a successful contributing factor to our business in Japan and to my own personal development within Japan. Read More (PDF) |
