When Richard Pascale and Anthony Athos wrote The Art of Japanese Management, they observed that America’s managerial skills were being challenged on three fronts. The first was managerial practice, where doing more of what they already did well was yielding less. The second was a shift in social values that meant people were expecting different things from organizations and from work. And the third? “The competition is killing us.”
That was the point. The year was 1981. Japan’s gross national product was the third-highest in the world and on track to be the highest inside the next 20 years. Japan is a tiny country, very mountainous, 70% uninhabitable, with the remainder the size of Cuba. Yet with almost no natural resources, it was growing and investing at twice the rate of the US. It had overtaken previous international leaders in one industry after another; Germany in cameras, Switzerland (who would have believed it?) in watches, the UK in motorcycles, and the US in consumer electronics, steel and a multitude of other products including the zip. “Japan,“ Pascale and Athos were obliged to note, “is doing more than a little right.”
