Reinvented With Accenture | Murata
The Job
- Project
- Reinvented
With
Accenture — the Murata episode: a 10-minute CEO conversation, plus a 30-second promo - Client
- Accenture
- Publisher
- CNBC Catalyst
- Production
- SET K.K.
- Location
- Murata Manufacturing HQ, Kyoto
the film
- The First
- the series' first episode shot in Japan.
- The Look
- an informal chat between two CEOs. Two modern chairs, a clean set, one pop of color.
- The Subject
- an 80-year-old components maker running its factories on AI and digital twins.
the speakers
- The Host
- Julie Sweet, Chair & CEO of Accenture.
- The Guest
- Norio Nakajima, President of Murata Manufacturing.
the challenge
- The Window
- both CEOs briefed, filmed, photographed and out the door to their next commitment, all inside one hour.
- The Languages
- English with Accenture and CNBC, Japanese with Murata's executive team. One director holding both rooms.
- The Mandate
- Nobody on screen
feels the clock. — Two CEOs' time is the budget. The conversation has to look like it had all afternoon.
Production Diary
Japan is simultaneously incredibly convenient and, depending on your perspective, frustratingly inconvenient. You can feel it across all aspects of life. I can drop the kids off at school, bike across Tokyo to the office, put in a few hours, grab a train to meet a client, hit the gym at lunch, and then bike back home to pick up the kids before dinner. At the same time, if I get a flat tire overnight, good luck finding a bike shop that's open before 10 a.m.
In the professional world, it's projects like this one that bring these two sides into focus and demonstrate the value of having someone who can navigate the entire team through the choppy waters of convenience and inconvenience.
One of the most noticeable differences I've encountered working with American and Japanese clients is the pace at which decisions are made. On US-led projects, I've seen a single phone call, email, or conversation result in definitive decisions and action. Working with Japanese clients, I've often found that these are just the first step in a cascade of internal communication between multiple stakeholders, all seeking consensus and visibility. Even when you're aware of these different timescales and approaches to consensus, the perceived slowness of Japanese stakeholders can throw even the most seasoned professional for a loop.
There are many ways to explain why this gap exists between cultures, none of them entirely adequate. But for me, risk aversion and risk management are useful ways to think about these differences.
One framework I've found useful is The Culture Factor's updated version of Geert Hofstede's model for comparing national cultures. According to its country comparison, Japan scores 92 on Uncertainty Avoidance, compared with 46 for the US. For Long-Term Orientation, Japan scores 100 and the US 50. The framework doesn't necessarily tell us how these differences translate into individual actions and choices, but in my experience, it's a useful lens for interpreting them.
When partners with different assumptions about what constitutes a prudent or reasonable approach encounter miscommunication, I often find it's because each assumes their own perspective should be equally obvious to the other. Speed, on the one hand, could be read as reckless haste, while slowness could be read as indecision or, worse, incompetence. But at the same time, slowness could be a sign of wisdom and a commitment to long-term success. Conversely, speed could be a sign of confidence.
So when I roll into Murata's headquarters in Kyoto a few hours after leaving my home in Tokyo for a location scout, I could be thinking how convenient it is that I can leave home at a normal hour, meet a client 500 kilometers away, and still be home for dinner. Or I could be thinking how inconvenient it is that I had to travel 500 kilometers to see a location I could have scouted remotely.
Sure, you can't go into a shoot without seeing the location, especially one that features the CEOs of two global companies. But from a purely logistical standpoint, many decisions could have been made before my arrival in Kyoto, and the scope of what needed to be discussed and decided could have been narrowed, potentially speeding up progress on other aspects of preproduction.
But it's important to remember that there are also benefits to the slow and cautious approach.
For one, there's no substitute for face-to-face relationships. Knowing who your partners are, how they act, and being able to make small talk builds confidence and demonstrates a commitment to mutual success.
Second, no matter how much you can accomplish through online meetings and emails, physical distance and even minor delays in communication can result in information being conveyed one way but received another. This is especially true when working across languages. But when you're there in person, and you can take the time to walk through a plan that everyone has already had a chance to review, confirming that all stakeholders understand it in the same way, you create opportunities for new ideas to emerge.
So there I am on the location scout, and we're looking for a suitable space for our shoot, going from room to room based on our client's initial expectations of what the shoot requires. But in each room, we're discovering drawbacks, things that don't quite serve our purposes. I'm starting to sweat a bit. How many compromises can we make before we're no longer delivering according to the brief? And the client can see it. They know we have to keep looking for a better location, despite having been confident beforehand that they were showing us the best of the best.
Then, on our way from one location to the next, we walk through this beautiful atrium with a tall, multistory ceiling and a large open area perfect for setting up cameras, lighting, and a temporary set.
"What about this room?" I ask.
"What? This room? Hmm… we hadn't considered that."
And from there, a plan starts to form.
This is our location. It makes perfect sense. And having gone through the inconvenient process of seeing all the unsuitable options first, and explaining to our partners in person why they weren't going to work, we've arrived at a solution that no one had considered.
It cost us a bit of extra time. It required rerouting foot traffic through the building for a few hours on the day of the shoot, along with extra planning on the production end to make sure equipment and crew got in and out without disrupting the business. But it also gave everyone confidence that we'd considered the alternatives and settled on the best solution for everyone involved.
I often wonder how much Japan has changed who I am. Where do I fall on the scale of Uncertainty Avoidance? Has that changed since I arrived in Japan over 20 years ago?
But maybe that's not the right question.
Perhaps the more useful one is whether those years have taught me to recognize that what looks like inefficiency from one perspective might be precisely what makes a better outcome possible.
As a director, I'm not just calling action and cut. I'm not just communicating bilingually with two CEOs who speak different languages. I'm translating between two cultural frames of reference, helping everyone recognize that different approaches aren't necessarily signs of misalignment, but different ways of working toward the same goal.
Credits
Production Team (SET K.K.)
- Director
- Tom Slemmons (スレモンス・トム)
- Producer
- Adrian Grey (エドリアン・グレイ)
- Line Producer
- Shino Kazuki (篠和樹)
- Director of Photography / Stills
- Brandon Strack (ブランドン・ストラック)
- Camera
- Mike Kiname (マイク・キナメ)
- Camera
- Takeshi Fukushima (福島毅)
- Sound
- Jeffrey Jousan (ジェフリー・ジョウサン)
- Lighting
- Vince Paul (ヴィンス・ポール)
- Lighting
- Tanaka Toshiyuki (タナカ・トシユキ)
- Lighting
- Higashiyama Masashi (ヒガシヤマ・マサシ)
- Lighting
- Asai Yusei (アサイ・ユウセイ)
- Art Department
- Inouchi Katsunobu (イノウチ・カツノブ)
- Art Department
- Kimura Toshiyuki (キムラ・トシユキ)
- Hair & Makeup
- Sakurai Arisa (サクライ・アリサ)
- Production Coordinator
- Shoichi Hanaue (花上翔一)