The decision was made on the golf course on Saturday, and Monday's meeting was just the ratification
Decisions are usually made outside the meeting room. What happens in the meeting room is the task of giving a recordable format to what was decided outside. In the field of overseas assignments, that "outside" consists of golf courses and dinner parties. The following is a story about the procedure by which decision-making gravitates toward those places, not a story about the headquarters being bad. I am the one who runs that procedure every week.
I reported the matters decided during Saturday's round in a one-hour meeting on Monday.
On Saturday, we gathered at 5:30 AM and headed to the golf course. It takes an hour and a half one way, and in the rainy season, it takes two hours due to traffic. 18 holes take four and a half hours, and after lunch, we dispersed at 3:00 PM. The same four people spend about eight hours together, including travel time. That is where the direction of the personnel plan for the next term was mostly decided. On Monday, I reported the details in a meeting room. The meeting lasted one hour. There were nine attendees, three of whom were on the course on Saturday.
This is not negligence; it is correct in terms of time allocation. The time we can secure in a meeting room is one hour, but we have eight hours on the round. Moreover, minutes and speakers remain in the meeting room, but nothing remains on the course. There are places where the cost of expressing dissenting opinions is high, and places where it costs almost nothing. Decisions naturally gravitate toward the place where it costs nothing. I called that one hour a "report." What I was actually doing was the task of giving a recordable format to what was decided in a place where no record remains.
It is not the local office that can stop this. The people at the base do not have the authority to deny on Monday what was decided on Saturday. If the headquarters decides one line, "Proposals without the date and location of drafting will not be accepted as decisions," the eight hours will return to casual conversation. The person who designs the format for the approval process is the one who decides, and the only time it can be moved is the once-a-year period when the format is updated.
It is decided that no minutes will be taken. There are no minutes for the meeting that decided that, either.
What was decided at Friday's dinner party became "Did I say that?" by Monday. It started at 7:00 PM at a Japanese restaurant, moved to a second and third place, and dispersed at 1:00 AM. At the third place, we badmouthed the headquarters. The approval is slow, it's different from last year's policy. Everything was specific. The next morning, no one remembered the content. It is decided that no minutes will be taken. No one can explain when or who decided that.
It is not taken because it is troublesome. If you write it down, it remains; if it remains, it goes up for approval; if it goes up, the headquarters reads it. If it is read, it is fixed in the wording of that moment. If you don't write it down, only the temperature of the agreement remains, and the content can be moved later. The badmouthing at the third place has the same structure; because the dissatisfaction that became words disappears without being recorded, we can work with the same procedure the following week. The moment it is recorded, it becomes something that must be processed. I am not the one who decided not to take them. However, I was the one who most specifically explained the reason why we don't have to take them every time.
The one who can fix it is the receiving side. If you make "Decisions must be sent in three lines within 72 hours" a condition for acceptance, you can write three lines. Cases that cannot be written are treated as cases that have not yet been decided. At the same time, once a year, create a 30-minute session with minutes that only listens to dissatisfaction that does not come up from the base. Neither can be proposed from the base side. Because the moment you propose it, it remains who said it.
Hitting one stroke more than the executive at the golf reception is a local adaptation that has continued for 20 years.
I made a combination table. I lined them up in the order of executive, department manager, section manager, and me. The scores also came out in roughly that order. I hit one stroke more than the executive. This is a technique, and the better you are, the more natural it looks. It has been going on for 20 years, and everyone learns to do it without anyone teaching them. A young person who has been assigned for three months already remembers it on their second round.
I call this local adaptation, but the destination of the adaptation is not the local area. It is just confirming the hierarchy of the Japanese side once again outdoors in a form that produces numbers. The hierarchy that can only be shown by seating order in a meeting room becomes a number of a one-stroke difference on a scorecard. Once it becomes a number, it means it has been confirmed. That is why it is necessary to do it every time. I am the one who made the combination table. I thought I was adjusting the score, but what I was actually adjusting was who would walk next to whom for four and a half hours that day.
Only the side that evaluates can change it. As long as they think that the number of times they sit together affects the evaluation, the people at the base cannot get off. If there is one person who got off, you can tell, but that one person will not be on the next combination table. It is not enough to say verbally during the interview at the time of assignment that "I don't look at the number of times we sit together." It is necessary to remove it from the items on the evaluation sheet and show the person the year the table disappeared.
The dinner restaurant returns to the usual Japanese food. What I am choosing is not the taste, but the probability of not missing.
I was told, "Try the local food once in a while," and took them to a well-reputed restaurant. It was spicy. From the following week, it returned to Japanese food again. For the two years since, I have been rotating the same three places for visitors' nights. A lunch at a street stall is 60 baht per meal, and the dinner at those three places exceeds 2,000 baht per person. Most of the difference is not the price of the food.
At a reception, the cost of failure is asymmetric. Even if the restaurant goes well, the agenda does not progress, but if you miss, even the talk you were supposed to give that night becomes light. That is why I return to known restaurants. I am paying for the probability of not missing, not for the taste. I am the one who took them to the spicy restaurant. If I had chosen a medium-spicy restaurant, that proposal would have had a next time. I thought I had increased the options by one, but as a result, I created a state where that proposal would never come out again.
The one who can fix it is the side that schedules. On a 2-night, 3-day business trip, there are only two nights, and both nights are nights that cannot be missed. If you make it 4 nights, one of them will be a night that can be missed. Whether there is one night that can be missed or not changes the restaurant options entirely. What is decided is at the stage of business trip regulations and flight arrangements, and it cannot be moved after arriving at the local area.
I arranged 42 interviews, 30 minutes each. Since an interpreter is involved, I can actually talk for 15 minutes.
I scheduled interviews with local staff during the three days the headquarters executive was coming. 30 minutes per person, 42 people. A simple calculation makes it 21 hours. It won't fit into three days, so I cut lunch breaks and squeezed them in between movements. Since consecutive interpretation is involved, the person can actually speak for 15 minutes. In the rainy season, afternoon traffic is unpredictable, and weeks spanning holidays are moved forward. Only about 20 out of 42 people were able to sit for the full 30 minutes.
I did not divide the number of people by time. I divided time by the number of people. The three-day frame was decided first, and 42 people were put into it. The 30-minute unit was also brought over as it is from the Japanese meeting room unit. If you include an interpreter, it takes 45 minutes per person, 31.5 hours for 42 people, and 5 working days. Anyone can do this calculation, and I could do it too. I reported that "I interviewed everyone." It is true that I met everyone. What I heard was half the time, and only the part that was translated into a language I could understand.
The person who can fix this is the one who approves the number of business trip days. No matter how packed the schedule is on-site, flight times cannot be changed. If you are going to include interviews, add the time for an interpreter to the total number of days from the start. If you cannot add them, cut the number of people down to 20. To avoid ending up with only the figure of having met 42 people, all that is needed at the approval stage is a single field where they must write the 'required time including an interpreter'.
In my fifth year of overseas assignment, I talked about Japan with Japanese people in Japanese at a Japanese restaurant.
Last week, too, I talked about Japanese personnel matters with only Japanese people, in Japanese, at a Japanese restaurant. It has been five years since I was assigned here. I can only speak enough Thai for greetings and ordering at street stalls. When I have a substantial discussion with local staff, an interpreter is always present. Both the BOI application documents and the work permit renewal documents are in Thai in their original form, and what I am reading is the Japanese summary.
This is not the result of negligence, but the result of time allocation. As long as decisions are made in Japanese, it is rational to increase the time spent with an interpreter present. One hour talking to headquarters has more impact on the branch's budget than three hours learning Thai to listen directly to the field. If you act rationally, this is what happens in five years. Over five years, I have become someone who can explain local matters to headquarters. In those same five years, I have also acquired the skill of trimming local information to a length that is convenient for headquarters. Summarizing is the task of deciding what to leave out.
The person who can change this is the one who writes the evaluation criteria for those on overseas assignments. It is not about telling them to master the local language. Just once a year, have them write down 'what percentage of the branch's decisions are based on information heard without an interpreter.' If you make them write it, a percentage will emerge. Once a percentage emerges, that number will start to move. Items that no one is looking at will not move even after five years.
The next time you go on a business trip to the branch, extend your schedule by just one day, and leave that day open without any dinners or golf. By seeing what fills that one day, you will understand what is currently being pushed out.