“Nemawashi”
I took a year off in college to go work and study in Japan and went back again in grad school for an internship with Fuji-Xerox (who had some of the very first graphical user interface workstations … remember it all came out of Xerox PARC). While living and working in Japan, I learned a consensus-building technique called “nemawashi” – which translates literally into “root-binding.” It involves behind-the-scenes consensus building and feedback processes to help secure the acceptance of ideas in an organization.
Some might mistakenly see nemawashi as office-politicking. It is not. I used to use it all the time with the teams I managed, as a way to hone ideas and build consensus and acceptance for ideas.
Nemawashi is a great example of the seeming paradox: sometimes, you have to go slow in order to go fast.
More on Nemawashig: http://www.japanintercultural.com/en/blogs/default.aspx?blogid=90
The key point of the nemawashi encounter is to explain the plan or proposal or idea that you are promoting, and getting the reaction of the person(s) you are doing nemawashi with. Do they completely hate it? Like some parts and not others? Do they have specific suggestions for improving it, or improving the chances that it will be accepted?
Based on the feedback from your nemawashi meeting, you’ll want to refine your course of action. If an important person is showing strong resistance, you may want to abandon the idea or give it a complete reworking. You may have gotten other ideas for polishing the concept, or even suggestions for others to do nemawashi with. After an iterative process of successive nemawashi meetings and refinements to your plan, you’ll either have something sure to succeed, or will understand why your idea is unlikely to be approved.
Update:
Here’s another short description of nemawashi, from an older, but really good book I read while living in Japan:
Great post.
feedback and brainstorming
Learned about it recently and eager to see it in practice (cf. http://semanticweb.com/deri-and-fujitsu-team-on-research-program_b30871 😉
Quite interesting… intuitively, I’ve been doing some of this, perhaps not so systematically, for a while. Now it has a name ;-)!
I though it was more, “turning the roots”.
Thanks Brian Lockwood. Much appreciated. It’s a labor of love.
Glad to hear it, Daniel Schwabe.
Thomas Beckett, yeah, I think I might be using an old-fashioned translation from back when I was living in Japan. The character itself is a symbol for surround or around. Check out this explanation. It’s from a classic book:
http://www.transbay.net/~nessie/Pages/nemawashi.html
Gideon Rosenblatt I don’t think that the Japanese are the only culture that dislikes direct personal confrontation, but––if you want to avoid conflict––this sounds like the best way to do it. I especially like Going Slow to Go Fast. Can I steal it as a motto? ;’)
Yes, Meg Tufano, but only if you type it very s l o w l y. 😉
Hmm, turns out that this is exactly how I have been approaching a current project!
Felt slow initally, but now it feels like the buy-in is there to move very fast.
Thanks, Gideon Rosenblatt
Gideon Rosenblatt ;’)
Cool to hear that, Jeff Jockisch.
Yes, Bonsai, exactly. Nebari, root arrangement. Thanks for reminding me of this concept.