Japanese Culture Workshops for Prime Cargo

Prime Cargo is an international forwarding company based in Kolding, Denmark. Prime Cargo has a branch office in Copenhagen, its own offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Qingdao, Xiamen, Shenzhen and Ningbo, and a global network of agents.

To accelerate the current growth strategy, Prime Cargo was in spring 2015 acquired by the Japanese logistic provider Mitsui-Soko Group, which is headquartered in Tokyo.

Prime Cargo wanted to ensure a good collaboration with the new owners and decided to give the executive management group and staff in Denmark a thorough introduction to the Japanese society and work culture.

On this basis, C3 Consulting partnered with Prime Cargo to design 3 mini-workshops, covering subjects like:

• Cultural self-awareness: Know your own culture first!
• The Japanese society and culture – highlights and perspectives
• Japanese versus Danish management, team and working style
• Understand the indirect Japanese communication style
• How to best collaborate with Japanese colleagues and managers? Meetings, agreements, follow ups etc.

The goal of the workshops was to provide the participants with a nuanced understanding of the Japanese society as well as specific tools to optimize communication and collaboration with the Japanese owners.

The trainer of all 3 workshops was C3’s Japan Country Specialist Ethan Weisgard. Ethan has lived in and travelled through Japan since 1984, has a Japanese wife, excels in the Japanese language, and is an expert on Japanese business culture and etiquette.

Results

About 60 executives and employees from Prime Cargo's offices in Kolding and Copenhagen participated in the 3 workshops that were held in autumn 2015.

Feedback from the participants:

"Great humour – makes it easier to remember. Outlined some of the differences very well."

"Ethan was very nice and was a great "performer", he made everything easy to understand. Very good general info for our future communication and general understanding of Japan and Japanese culture."

"Hands-on examples. Background information – how history has influenced the culture, makes it easier for me to understand / remember."

"The 4R Model is a good model to understand the culture in your own country and Japan. Ethan was a good teacher with experience of the culture both in Denmark and in Japan. Nice to get a better understanding of the culture in Japan."

"The feeling that Ethan had a lot of personal experience with the Japanese culture made it very trustworthy."

"Really great lecturer. You could really feel that he was truly familiar with the Japanese culture."

"It was very intensive and with very good examples that were easy to relate to. I was on the English class and it was clear and easy to understand everything. It was a "living" workshop and not just a talk&slideshow."

"Ethan was really skilled and very motivating to listen to !!"