The Independent Worker / What's the Gamble?

In the US, workers often pride themselves and compliment each other on how independently they can work. "She can work well on her own," is a phrase we want someone to use in a recommendation. Employers look for people that can be given an assignment, and do it on their own. Once abilities are clear and trust is established, the employer will allow the employee to make decisions and changes on her own. This creates efficiency in the work place.

And this is the opposite of what a Japanese employer is looking for. In Japan a worker who works well in a group, and who doesn't strive to work independently is the one that is valued. Japanese work using a constant cycle of consensus getting and approval. The process may be slower than Americans are used to, but also result in less risk-taking.

Let's take this discussion out of the conflict-ridden international office, and into the world of gambling in Japan.. The laws about gambling in Japan are a little obscure. Technically gambling is illegal, but gigantic loopholes allow for a limited variety of gambling. The three main types of gambling in Japan are Mah-jong, "pachi" games, and the races. Let's look at each type and see how the cultural tendency of risk-aversion is not conflicted with this gambling.

Mah-jong is a tile game popular all over Asia, and had a period of popularity in the US in the 1970s. Mah-jong can be played at home, among friends, or at Mah-jong parlors, where a single may join a three-some, like at a golf course. The cultural equivalent is poker, where a group of people are trying to create the best combination using the cards they are dealt. Like poker, Mah-jong has a long cycle of discards. Essentially it's like poker, but the winning "hand" will be of 14 tiles lined up in one of the hundreds of combinations possible to win. Unlike poker, it's not who has the best hand, but who creates a winning combination first.

Like poker, this is certainly gambling, and also like poker, skill is what creates a winner at the end of the night. It can easily be argued that the sheer number of tiles and winning combinations that need to be memorized to be successful, and then figuring out the probability of certain combinations coming up (discarded tiles are seen by the other players) require more skill than poker. That dependence on skill makes Mah-jong a much less risky gambling prospect than Western favorites, like craps or blackjack, which require more luck - or in other words, are more risky.

"Pachi" games come in two forms: pachinko and pachi-slots, AKA pachi-suro. Pachinko (which also had a certain popularity briefly in the 1970s in the US) is often referred to as "Japanese pinball", but this title is only partially accurate. Players sit at a vertically standing board, covered by glass and full of a series of pegs and pockets. Small steel balls are shot into the playing field (like pinball) and bounce off pegs until they either fall into a pocket, or fall to the bottom of the board and are discarded. Different pockets do different things, either release more balls to the player, open a larger pocket for bonuses, start a slot wheel spinning, etc. There are thousands of varieties of machines, with new ones coming out constantly, but the goal is always the same: hit the largest bonuses to release more balls than you are using, creating a win. Pachinko players do not simply sit at a machine and start throwing money in. First they look at the machine, and the machines around it. Do the pegs look friendly, or do they look tight? Is this a good machine to play on, or is it set to be a money pit? A good reader of machines will see his afternoon profitable. Fortunately for the pachinko parlor owners, more people believe they can read the machines well than actually can. But, again, there is a skill involved.

Pachi-slots are similar to pachinko only in the notion that it's human vs. machine form of gambling (no dealers and little to no human interaction required, a selling point in Japan for the shameful Japanese gambler). In pachi-slots there aren't balls and pegs, but the machines look like traditional casino slot machines, and are filled with coins. The one difference is that there is a STOP button in front of each of the three spinning reels. Players stop the quickly spinning reels in an effort to initiate a bonus round which will lead to a big payout. Like pachinko, there is a science to choosing a machine and stopping the spinning reels to lead to big pay-outs. Also like pachinko, those that actually understand the science number far less than those that think they do, but, again, risk is averted. Imagine a slot machine in Las Vegas with STOP buttons on the spinning reels! It would be unheard of! Now imagine being a Japanese slot player, and going to Vegas... it would be like playing slots with your arms cut-off. It is hard to imagine why Japanese players can't understand why Americans throw their money away in casinos? Think risk-taking vs. risk aversion.

The final form of gambling in Japan is the races. Just like in the US, Japanese horse racing is very popular, and there are fancy, high class tracks, and smaller local tracks all across the country. The difference is when we look at the other types of races you can gamble on. In the US along with the horses, we also have greyhound racing. This obviously requires no rider, so even less human involvement than horse racing. Even with pages of statistics, betting on dogs is a risky gamble. In Japan there are two other main kinds of racing: not dogs, but boats and bicycles. One can't help but think that the potential for outside influence is much higher on gambling on boats (one-man mini rockets) and bicycles. (And to be sure, boat gambling and bicycle racing doesn't have the history or regality of a big horse race. They are more local, and a little more seedy.) Japanese gamblers wouldn't imagine betting on dogs. It's just too risky. (Of course addicts will gamble on anything.)

So even in the high-risk world of gambling, Japanese tend to do what they believe are low-risk activities. Traditional casino gambling exists only 0n TV and in the movies. Japanese can respect the high-risk behavior, without feeling uncomfortable engaging in it themselves -- just as I can respect a person who parachutes out of planes, without actually doing it myself.

So back to our troubled workplace. What many Americans who work with Japanese supervisors feel is a lack of trust for the Americans' ability to be able to, and want to, work independently. Where the American feels the supervisor is "crowding" him -- asking lots of repetitive questions, visiting his office or cube several times a day, the Japanese supervisor feels like he is showing his support, and participating in the group process. (Some of this was covered in the previous post.)

The two points to keep in mind are that Japanese businesspeople want to work together on everything; everything is a group process, and that avoiding risk, even if it takes more time, is going to be considered the best route in the end.