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A full transcript follows.
This week we are joined by Joy Jarman-Walsh (JJ), the host of the Seeking Sustainability Live Podcast and talk show. JJ Walsh started the show in April 2020 after organizing a number of in-person events promoting and facilitating sustainable living. The events had to be put on hold when the pandemic hit, so JJ started the live show and podcast instead. She has gone on to do over 300 episodes, inspiring many to seek sustainability in their own lives, and inspiring us at enjoi in our journey with the Diversity rocks innovation! livestream.
In this episode you’ll hear:
- How growing up in Hawaii planted a seed for JJ’s work now, promoting a more balanced and sustainable approach to tourism
- The impetus for JJ co-founding the Get Hiroshima community with her partner Paul Walsh
- How companies in Japan can implement sustainable practices in terms of how they value employees
- Why having a long term vision for your business necessitates a sustainability-focused mindset
About JJ Walsh:
Joy Jarman-Walsh (JJ Walsh) grew up in Hawaii and has lived and worked in Japan for more than 25 years. Originally she came to Japan after university with a degree in Psychology, to experience life in Japan for a year as an ALT on the Monbusho sponsored JET program. Teaching and travel around Japan opened Joy’s mind to new possibilities for work, culture and lifestyle prompting settling into a long-term investment in Japan.
In 1999, Joy co-founded GetHiroshima with her partner, Paul Walsh, and they have developed close ties to residents, visitors and local businesses in the community over many years. Raising two bilingual kids in Hiroshima helped make connections in an even wider community circle.
In 2019, after 21 years teaching English communication, business studies, gender issues, Japanese pop-culture, marketing, writing, and tourism classes to wonderful students at a local university, Joy stepped away to launch InboundAmbassador- a solo-venture company focused on developing sustainability in travel, business and social media marketing.
Connect with JJ:
Website: http://www.inboundambassador.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/JJWalshInboundAmbassador
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjwalsh-inbound-ambassador/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inboundambassador/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inboundambassador/
Connect with Jackie:
Website: https://en-joi.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackie-f-steele-phd/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/enjoidiversityandinnovation
https://www.facebook.com/jackiefsteelephd
Instagram: www.instagram.com/enjoi_diversity_innovation/
Transcript
Jackie: Welcome to Diversity rocks innovation! Volume 12. My name is Jackie Steele, I’m a long-time Canadian political scientist living and teaching here in Japan, and also the CEO and founder of enjoi Diversity and Innovation. enjoi is a Japan based global facing business, working in English, Japanese, and French to support leaders in corporations, in building out diversity positive workplaces and corporate cultures.
We believe and know that diversity rocks innovation. We are interested in inclusive innovation that amplifies and supports equality, and that powers our people systems for personal and collective good for the long game. And this live stream shines a spotlight on the beautiful diversity of enjoi thought partners who are really showing up with their own radical individuality and who are really leading the change for inclusive diversity positive and gender-equal leadership in Japan.
So each week I invite one of my collaborators to thought partner out loud with me and we show up just as two human beings, throw out the business cards we throw out and get rid of the senpai kohai dynamics that we can sometimes get trapped in, in Japan. And we leave behind all the different toxic hierarchies that maybe our society keeps pushing onto us for gender or race or age or ability.
We’re wanting to defy those outdated, and frankly, antidemocratic cultural hierarchies that plague our society even in 2021. So today we show up for each other in all of our human messiness, our complex diversity, and we commit to just enjoying all the individuality that comes through a laid back and collegial exchange of expertise, worldviews identities, professional experience, and of course lived experience.
So my guest today, and a wonderful thought partner, is Joy Jarman-Walsh. I am so excited to host JJ because her pioneering example of launching a really innovative YouTube and podcast series, the Seeking Sustainability Live series, is literally what is the inspiration for this enjoi live stream.
I saw what she was doing and I was invited to her show and I saw, wow, this is fabulously exciting. I didn’t know people could do this. And I had never seen somebody do this ingenious thing. And I went, I should do that for diversity. I should maybe change the conversation on diversity like JJ Walsh is doing for sustainability.
And I thought, wow, eureka and a live stream was born. So JJ, welcome to Diversity rocks innovation!. Thank you so much for your inspiration.
JJ Walsh: Thank you so much for having me. And I’m so excited to be here because yes, diversity and innovation does rock, and I’m really happy to be a part of your amazing project and your conversation that’s connecting these great ideas from various people to a wider audience. So I’m so happy to be here. Thank you.
Jackie: Great. Well, I mean, we’ve had certainly a variety of conversations about things we have in common and we’ve shared, but certainly for those who are joining us maybe for the first time, and they’re maybe meeting you for the first time, I can certainly, you know, do a shout out to my mom who I think is joining from Vancouver, and who doesn’t know anything about you and I’m sure will be fascinated. Among other people who are joining from around the world and in their time zones.
If you were to, if we were to do a deep dive a little bit into the backstory behind JJ Walsh, could you walk us through maybe how you want to think forward on your upbringing? Which parts of your identity, or your diversity, or your experiences, that really set the stage for your values and how you show up today in 2021?
JJ Walsh: So I grew up in Hawaii and I always think about the way I was one of the minority of white people in my group in Hawaii, and all my friends were very multi-racial and I envied that in so many ways and learnt so much about different cultures, especially Asian cultures in Hawaii.
We had a lot of Japanese culture. I grew up with a strong connection to nature because we’re in Hawaii. I had a really strong connection to animals, just loved animals. We had a lot of animals and my stories of pets, or my feeling about even eating meat as a child, it’s interesting to look back on now trying to be vegan and trying to live my life in a way that I think is more honest to how I feel.
And it’s not everybody’s truth, even in my own family, nobody else was experienced that way. But I had very supportive parents, a great family life. We always had family time. We always did family adventures. So even though we were based in Hawaii, we did so many interesting things which are like travel.
And so being in Hawaii, it’s a popular tourism place as well. So in many ways what I’m doing now, trying to promote more balance for local people and tourists, is also informed by growing up in Hawaii. And then even on a different level, not wanting to leave Hawaii as a teenager, going kicking and screaming when my parents decided it was time to go live near my grandmother who was elderly in Virginia.
And resisting that change so much, but realizing now, it’s easy now many years later, realizing now that that change was so important for me in terms of what I ended up going on and doing in my university, in my career. And the perspectives of change is not that. And a change of point of view and a change of environment and a change of people around me really opened me up to a lot of different ideas and more empathy towards others who are different. And I can also empathize for a lot of my Japanese students as I was teaching here, because they have a similar kind of closed view from their perspective growing up in Japan.
And I did as well in Hawaii and I didn’t want to change, but then I saw how going studying abroad for the Japanese students really opens their world too. And how travel can be this really positive way to connect with other people in other cultures and have more empathy and connection I think. And be able to see other people.
Jackie: And to see, I guess that, I guess one thing I find interesting when you had to leave Hawaii and you were going to what would be called the mainland, of the United States.
In some ways you have, then in your next phase, you experienced the quintessentially stereotyped part of America, maybe more than what you had in Hawaii, which is not really the stereotypical American way of life. And all of the different assumptions about Americanness that comes out of the mainland. What was that like?
JJ Walsh: Well, it was pretty wild because all of a sudden I was one of the majority. And that in itself was really freaky. And I was in a group of mostly white students. And the way that they talked about people who are not white was something I’d never heard before.
You know, like you called the howlie growing up in Hawaii. And it’s very similar to being called the gaikokujin or gaijin in Japan. But then, being part of the majority, I felt really uncomfortable with that, you know? And so I’m really glad that I had that childhood being really part of the minority and being part of such a multicultural, multinational situation, which has definitely made me more comfortable living in Japan, again as a minority.
But in no way can I compare my situation to people of color and their experiences, of course. I had so much privilege on many, many levels. And probably even now, being in Japan as a white person, but it certainly made me see differences in how people are seen, by who they are, what gender they are, what color of their skin they are.
And as a teacher later on, I try to own my own bias. And I think this is something that’s so hard, but so important, for anybody. And I hope business leaders do this. I hope teachers do it. I hope the government does it. You have to realize that you have a bias towards some students. And so I would ask the students to write their name and their student number on the back of their papers.
So when I was reading their essays and their tests, I didn’t know who it was. On that basic level, can we apply that to our society in some way, because we know there’s a bias for gender. We know there’s a bias for different names or where people went to university. So in many ways, I think I’m really grateful to have such an interesting, diverse background in where I lived and who I knew.
And it’s informed me. Of course I’ve grown and become more aware. In my twenties I thought I knew it all. I came to Japan after university. I studied psychology. I had a place, going back to grad school and continuing with counseling in psychology. I had my whole life plan already written. It’s going to be like this.
And everything changed being in Japan. Just being in such an interesting environment and a new culture, even though I came to Japan thinking I knew everything about Japan because I grew up in Hawaii, and I knew how to use hashi, and I ate Japanese food, and I knew a little bit of bon dancing from the local school festival. And realizing that even in Japan, we’re talking about a lot of different areas and people, and it’s really diverse even in Japan, which maybe looks the same. That was really interesting.
Jackie: For sure. It’s interesting how, and this is partly the challenge in that I’ve been looking through 20 years of the research on diversity and Japanese citizenship, and I’m sure you’ve looked at it and experienced that in academia as well, but it’s getting to the point where there is an acknowledgement of the incredible diversity in Japan and the critical, incredible diversities of Japaneseness over time.
Right. I mean, so often we talk about mansplaining. But we can also talk about Japan-splaining, where as a gaijin, as a foreigner, how many times do individuals, well-meaning, well-meaning Japanese nationals who could come up and Japan-splain to you and you sort of think, well, and they’ll say, well, this is just the tradition.
This is the Japanese tradition. And I’ll say, Which Japanese tradition are we talking about, like traditions from the Tokugawa era? Are we talking about traditions that are like Meiji forward? Are we talking about more recent traditions, because there’s a whole different layer of which traditions we want to cling to and then say that’s traditional Japan.
And the look you get back when you ask that question, but of course every country has this evolution of their own traditions and of their own cultural practices. And of course, like you say, even Hiroshima, I was thinking, I don’t know very much about Hiroshima.
I don’t know what are the specific distinctiveness elements of the culture, or if I think about what is distinctively unique to Hokkaido versus Okinawa. Obviously looking from a citizenship perspective, yes, I’ve looked at that. But beyond that, there’s so many local flavors that we take for granted, that really, I think in Japan, we celebrate in food culture, I think in Japan, right?
Like the 47 different ramens, we can celebrate the diversity there, but do we really go beyond and then think through how does that morph. And I was very much participating in the Japanese Canadian Taiko community in Canada and the Japanese Canadian community experience is vastly different from Japanese culture in Japan.
Vastly different. Right. And so when you’re talking about doing the obon dance or having the taiko group in Hawaii, and participating in all of those cultural festivals that are Japanese American, that particular experience is really different from Japanese Japaneseness.
JJ Walsh: Yeah. And I’m glad to hear you say that you don’t know much about Hiroshima. And that even after 20 years here, I’m still discovering things that I like about Hiroshima or different pockets of Hiroshima local culture that I didn’t know about. And what really infuriated me, and I think the reason we started Get Hiroshima in 99, was the attitude of travel magazines was they knew everything about Hiroshima and Hiroshima wasn’t worth visiting.
Hiroshima was just a stop off to see Peace Park or Miyajima and then get back on the train, go somewhere else, more meaningful. And you know, living here, we were in Kyushu for three years. We traveled around Asia and a little bit of Europe for 18 months. We came back. Our first job back in Japan was in Hiroshima.
And then you start realizing how much is here and how interesting. And this is a great place and people should not stop over for two hours and get back on the train. Right? So that kind of started us on the journey of introducing local festivals, introducing restaurants and places to eat and drink that’s not your typical gaijin place, and that’s why we started Get Hiroshima, then more recently Get Hiroshima has become kind of an information hub and kind of a community support thing for international people and Japanese in the community who want to communicate about latest COVID information, for example, which is hard to find, or during the big tsunami and people trying to find friends and family in other areas and using like message boards and stuff.
So it’s become kind of a community hub in that way. And that was changing over time and depending on the need. And that brings me to one of my points I really want to say over and over again today, which also connects to my youth, is about seeing individually a case by case situation.
And I said this before about owning your bias, but recently there’s been kind of a buzz word about intersectionality. It’s been used in many ways, which is so relevant and so important, but actually it’s just seeing people as individuals, as diverse, right?
Jackie: And all of the complications of what happens when we do look at the overlapping elements of that individuality. And until you really start doing that deep nuanced look, we can’t, I often explain it that we don’t live single issue lives. If you’re being, if you’re feeling a sense of maybe exclusion, is it because you’re a woman?
Is it because you’re white? Is it because you’re Canadian? Is it because you’re not a Japanese mother tongue speaker? Which part of it is the reason? Well, who knows, right? You’re not always sure until you can really grasp the full depth of the context of why things were playing out in those ways.
And what was the rationale behind the way you were treated. And sometimes you can’t always get all that information that you need. Right? So that we can think about building our systems to say, we know where those inequalities manifest, and if we can at least try and mitigate against as many of them as possible in the corporate culture and the corporate ecosystem, or in a business, or in a university class, or in a university system in those people systems.
I mean as a political scientist working on Canadian intersectionality for 30 years, I mean, in Canada this is really what we do in public policy across the board. And we’re always sort of mitigating for bias on like 15 fronts. Because we know that there’s at least 10 to 15 that are going to be possible causes of inequality in any given system or ecosystem or dynamic.
And so when you know that you can plan and you can mitigate. But the devil’s in the details and taking the time. In the D&I space, when I’m listening I often feel that there’s a naivety that we can just, oh, well you’re a woman, you understand everything about inequality that women face. And so there’s kind of a naivety to say that any woman can know everything about how to design for equality. Or any LGBTQ person with that experience can know how to mitigate and build a system that’s queer positive as if it were that simple.
You’re sort of thinking, this is law, policy and technical design. When we’re talking about systems and the corporate ecosystem, right? It’s not actually that simple, it’s a very sophisticated process of legal and policy analysis and then understanding psychology too right?
JJ Walsh: Yeah, for sure. And I’m so grateful to have studied psychology in university and it’s really made me consider things more than if I had studied something else. So I’m really grateful for the four years that I studied that. But it’s also, this intersectionality or not being able to see things case by case, is one of the big failures that I see over and over again in Japan. And it’s been ebbing slowly over time.
So what we’re seeing right now with a lot of women who are really struggling, because there hasn’t been support for working women in particular. They’re the ones who are raising children and cleaning the house and having less secure jobs. And then coronavirus happens and they lose a lot of the security that they were just hanging on to.
And the government hasn’t given support again this year that they gave last year and we’re seeing increases in suicide rates of women. So these are like you said before, we know there’s certain structures that should be in place by the government, by corporate structures, which do work and which do support, but we have to reassess the holes.
We have to reassess what’s not working and who it’s not working for. And perhaps that’s why we’re having a lot less people having children, because that group falling through the gap is the one that would be having children.
Jackie: When we think about, and one of the things I often talk through intersectionality from the approach is, it allows us to map all the different groups affected because it’s never just one group affected.
Even if we take care giving, if we take child rearing, it’s never just women that are affected ultimately. And the caregiving issue is huge in Japan, right? I get frustrated because it’s often misdiagnosed as a woman’s problem. But really, when you think about caregiving, there are so many levels of caregiving that are required as a safety net in a society.
One is yes, childcare, and two is elder care. Three is caregiving for people with disabilities, whether they are a child or a dependent who still needs caregiving. So all of those elements, and then you have people who are elderly, who maybe have mobility challenges, so they don’t need that full-time caregiver, but they still have those elements. That is a social safety net, making sure that citizens can fulfill their caregiving responsibilities to their families and their extended families, while maintaining paid work.
And I know what’s been frustrating for me in twenty-five years of following Japanese public policy, is that this piece is not being solved in a meaningful way. And yet it is, of course, the cross cutting issue for the declining birth rates. The families are finding that if companies won’t support them in their child rearing responsibilities, then it’s an and or choice.
I either have children or a job, but you can’t do both because my company won’t necessarily support my child rearing responsibilities if it’s requiring a 10 hour day or a 14 hour day. As it may be. And that’s despite not even having job security often, putting in a 10 hour day. And so the women that you hear of, or the men that you hear of, and certainly in our relationship, we have lived this where it’s like, okay, who’s dropping children at 7:30.
JJ Walsh: I would take my students to talks. When I was teaching in the business department, I would take my university students to visit successful women who were heads of companies. And they would say it very clearly, I knew if I wanted to have a career, if I wanted to run my own business, having kids was either something I did before I started or something I wouldn’t do.
So having that balance. And if company heads are looking for it, they’ll see it. If they ask their workers, they’ll hear it. And that’s about sustainability too, right? Like everything is connected. How you treat your staff is connected to how much income you make because customers like to support your brand, which is connected to, are you taking care of the environment?
Are you using a lot of waste that nobody can recycle? It’s all interplaying and interlocked and interconnected on so many levels. That’s what’s so difficult about the program that I’m doing is people are like, what exactly are you talking about? Why are you talking about that? And everything is connected.
Jackie: Often it’s not really diagnosed in this way, but the caregiving issue for me, you can’t easily say, here’s the hard data that this many individuals have quit their jobs or leaned out, or refused a promotion because of caregiving responsibilities. We don’t have the data.
Companies don’t collect this data. Companies, if they’re not doing an exit survey, don’t even know why their people are leaving. All they talk about is, well, the women won’t raise their hand for promotion when we try and promote them. So there’s something wrong with the women. I’m like, well, maybe they’re not seeing any women managers who are having work-life balance and who have kids.
So they’re doing the math in their heads and going, all of those individuals work a 14 hour day and I have two children and I have to actually get home for a daycare pickup by no later than seven. How do I work that day and get home to my children, if I don’t have a spouse who can do that? And maybe their spouse is doing a 14 hour day at their companies.
So then you’re really in this crunch. But the solution is to not ask and do exit surveys about why are people leaving and to figure it out. Why are you not raising your hand for promotion? Instead it’s; women don’t want the promotion.
JJ Walsh: Don’t ask. Don’t tell.
Jackie: Really? Do you think women don’t want to be promoted? I think they do. If it’s under their own condition.
JJ Walsh: It reminds me of a student of mine years ago, who wanted to be a dolphin trainer. And she graduated university and it freaked her family out, but she became, she went into all the training, which you have to pay for, to do the training. And I met her in Hawaii at a sea life park and she smells like fish and she’s a cute Japanese girl carrying buckets of fish.
And she ended up doing all the training, paying a lot of her own money, eventually getting to a trainer position and they paid her peanuts and the work conditions were awful, but it’s a job which is so high in demand that they don’t have to treat you well.
They don’t have to pay you a decent wage. And I get this impression from a lot of companies in Japan that they are treating their jobs as if it was in as high demand as a dolphin trainer.
Jackie: I like this analogy. I’m going to use it.
JJ Walsh: Your job is not really the dolphin trainer. You don’t have people dying to get this job.
Jackie: Is it really the dream job?
JJ Walsh: Yeah. So how are you going to take better care of your staff? How are you going to listen to them to see what they really want and need? And adjust it so that you can keep good staff because that’ll help you cut your costs. That’ll help you have a better brand overall, right?
Jackie: There’s also a time lag in that we’re still in the lifetime employment model, right? Where the companies all do their recruitment of new grads at the same period. And it’s this forced competition where they put all new grads up against each other in a very specific period to get those jobs.
And it’s at a set period of time. I was livid because I would have my students in the law faculty missing lectures, because they were doing their “shushoku katsudo” and trying to go to these jobs. And I’m like, you have not graduated yet. You’re supposed to be in class. Why are these companies allowed to hold this during school hours of when the university says, we’re still in session. Have it after the session. Why isn’t this regulated for one, and then two, why is it made into this intense competition at this one point in time?
Because it gives them, it creates this false sense of competition that they can have the pick of the best, right? And then everyone is desperate to just get an offer, to land an offer within their year three or their year four, first uptake in the fall, because they don’t want to be left empty handed after they graduate and look like a failure to their parents.
And you sort of think we’re in a talent crunch. There is such a shortage, that companies are no longer having the luxury of assuming that any offer is like the golden handshake, like the dolphin trainer position. And yet I think what I see from the large companies is they still assume that there is an abundance of talent out there and that they don’t necessarily have to be thinking about quality of life offerings.
What is the broader package that they’re offering to young people who do expect to have a family?
JJ Walsh: I think it’s more valuable. I think once they realize that if you listen to what they actually want and need from you, as women coming into your company, or anybody coming into your company, listen to what they want and need.
That’s more valuable than a higher salary, because now we’re starting to see the salaries go up because of low workforce. But the company that’s starting to offer, for example, more flexible work time. Or if you have to do something with your kid, take the day off, we’ll support you or do some of your work from home.
I mean, COVID has been good for that in kind of changing flexibility a little bit, but still people are now finding when do I stop working? Now, if I can work at home, does that mean I have to work 24/7 at home?
Jackie: Am I on a leash? If my iPhone tells me there’s a message at 10:00 PM and somebody wants a response.
And you know, I remember when cell phones came out, that was the conversation. If you had a cell phone, your company could get you at any hour. So you’d be on a leash. And so there was like a pushback against corporate cell phones because people thought, oh, this is just an insidious way to get you to work all the time and be on call.
And now the internet has changed that dynamic. And then COVID working from home has exacerbated that. So we do have to figure out these boundaries, but at the end of the day, we’re seeing a shift in young Japanese nationals, women and men, who expect quality of life. And this is exciting, right?
This is a great thing, I think, for Japan’s future sustainability. And if corporations can catch up and if the public policy sector, I mean, Japan has a strong universal daycare system that we still have access problems in overly populated Tokyo and that’s not resolved, but you know, it does have a generous childcare system.
It has maternity and parental leave, paternity leave that’s just not being accessed by men and that needs to be accessed. And so how do we encourage mandatory access? If you have a child under two, go the hell home. This is your one chance to be a parent.
JJ Walsh: That thing about childcare is really interesting. And I feel really privileged now to know that when my kids were little and I needed to work full time, that I was able to get into daycare because it’s not just Tokyo.
We have waitlists here in Hiroshima. We have waitlists all over the country. And some of my friends who were working for limited contracts, who didn’t have the tenure or the secure contract that I did, they couldn’t get in, and I was prioritized. So there are a lot of gaps there and now we’re seeing in the US, they’re talking about making preschool covered.
And is that something Japan should really consider and it is mostly covered, but you need to have it available. That’s the big, big part of it.
Jackie: And often the policy framework is too rigid. Like you suggest, if you’re not full time, and you can show, and you have the certificate from your employer that you’re full time, that does leave a lot of working parents out of the loop.
And for parents working shift work, when the daycare has set hours, how do you then deal with the evening shift? If you don’t have a two parent dynamic, or if two parents can’t do that, because they’re both on shift work, it’s hard to know. So there’s definitely gaps.
Canada doesn’t have a national childcare strategy yet. We’re now finally talking about it, having had a release of a feminist budget in Canada in 2021 for the first time. And we’re seeing investments in a national childcare potential program being built. So from that perspective, I think Japan does have a good safety net for part of the demographic, but it’s not universal in that sense yet, but it’s like, whatever you do informally is actually the culture in those companies too.
And so it’s not just what the actual contract says of your working hours. It’s what do people actually do? There’s the law, and then there’s what people actually do. And it’s what people actually do is the problem. And getting corporations to dismantle that.
JJ Walsh: You can’t do overtime is the rule, but you can’t really leave until your senpai leaves or the boss leaves. So that’s what actually happens.
Jackie: That’s the actual problem right there. And maybe COVID forcing everybody home where you’re not being invited out to go drinking. Because that’s also a different pressure to keep, you know, you’re not working, but now you’re still having to fraternize after hours and now go home to your family.
I just think it’s fascinating to me. And this is the shift. I think if we can get a focus on private life, private family life, that is emerging in young Japanese couples, that they want to actually spend time together. They actually want to see each other and they want to have time with their children and they want to spend quality time doing leisure or sports or whatever it is.
I mean, in Canada, I feel like my parents jealously guarded their private time off work. It was like, you did your hours. And then it’s like, okay, boom done. Now let’s get on with sports and music and choir and church.
JJ Walsh: I was so impressed when I took students to Australia and we were there for a two month, one month program.
And I put my son in elementary school, you know, just to have an experience abroad. And that was really fun. And he had a big hat and shorts, super cute. And I was picking him up after school at about 3:00 PM. And I was not the only parent, lots of other parents there. And I was like, are you going back to work?
And you know, some people are like, yeah, I have to go back or I’ll work from home, but this is family time. And once the kids go home with them, I mean, maybe I was in a really unusual place, but wow. Quality of life, family work-life balance. It seemed so much more healthy than what I was experiencing for myself even, in Japan. And the social pressure to stay in the office later and later.
Jackie: Even in academia. What floored me is, everyone in Canada, I would say academia is supposed to be the quintessential work-life balance because you teach, but you can do your research and all of your writing at home. And you do your ethnographic stuff, your research, on the grassroots, and you go, and you travel to those locations.
But ultimately aside from your teaching hours and your office hours, there’s no facetime. You’re at home balancing amidst family. And I came to Japan and I was floored at the pace and pressure of the publish or perish dynamic amongst Japanese professors at Todai in particular, and maybe the University of Tokyo is particularly competitive, but people were working until 7 and 8 PM in their offices on campus sometimes.
And there was this intense pressure that if they didn’t have their research publication out within a year of doing the research, it was old data. It was old data. And I was like, within a year? In North American publishing cycles, you would never get it out. And it would not be conceived to be well thought out because it’s too quick.
You can’t possibly parse the data and think about it and reflect, and then have something, unless it’s really just data crunching. But then what are we learning from that? So why are we publishing all of these articles that really don’t say very much, it’s just pushing out numbers. And I think there’s this speed around the way academia is shifting.
And particularly in Japan, it’s picking up all that informal culture and bringing it into academia, and it doesn’t make sense.
JJ Walsh: If it’s about your research and if it’s about your writing and things that you’re doing for teaching, I can kind of understand that. But if it’s just that pressure to stay in your office until late at night, just to be seen that you’re working hard, which I know is very typical in corporate culture in Japan as well.
It’s not merit-based, it’s not based on what you’re actually producing, what product you’re actually helping with the company infrastructure, but it’s just being seen to be working hard.
And that was my first experience in Japan. When I came over as a JET, a Japan English teacher, it’s an ALT position for anybody wondering, and a very good program, but I had to be at the office from nine to five, which is fine. It’s a normal work day, Monday to Friday. And I wasn’t utilized a lot. So I ended up studying a lot of Japanese at my desk, which was fantastic. And I was so happy to have those three years where I studied so much.
But I saw a lot of people who were in the communal office next to me, they were napping or chatting or not doing anything, but they would stay late at night. And then I was the one who wasn’t using my time wisely. For me that was a real culture shock.
Jackie: Cause you left at 5, you were being selfish and wagamama.
JJ Walsh: I left everyday right at five, sometimes like ready to go and watching the clock, like a teenager in high school.
I worked hard. I did a lot. I produced a lot. But I wasn’t considered a hard worker because I didn’t spend the time. And I saw this years later, when I was working at university, you have this same concept creeping in. And I hear from students at the corporate culture with the same concept creeping in. And that has got to change. That’s fundamental for Japan’s future.
Jackie: We are seeing, I mean, I think one of the positive shifts of the pandemic in that regard is it fundamentally changes towards a productivity model because unless you’re going to literally open up a zoom call and force all of your team to be on a zoom call with you to prove that they’re working so you’ve got face time with one another.
I mean, managers now, under the pandemic, they need an output or a work product or something that moves forward during the days and the weeks and the year now. Going on to year two. And so managing teams remotely means we’re having to reevaluate those metrics of what is productivity, what is individual and team contribution?
How do we metric it? How do we measure it? How do we value it? And then how do we shift the corporate culture to be more around that? Even if you do go back to the office and can have a facetime, because facetime is not productivity, right? It’s just facetime.
And I think we’ll get there.
And I think the pandemic in that sense, for Japan, in terms of moving the dial for Japan, this is the only thing, only a pandemic I think, could have accomplished the speed with which companies bit the bullet and said, we have to go all online, effective immediately. I don’t think we would have seen that in any other context, and Japan, when they choose to shift, they ramp up and they shift insanely fast. Right? You get tremendous progress. And so for me, that’s my hope with diversity and innovation being seen as an interlocking pair, is for those companies who want to move the dial and they’re ready to invest in their people systems, they can seriously have an impact and increase their profits and retain their talent.
JJ Walsh: And there’s only one thing you have to do. You only have to convince one person, at the top. This is true not only for Japan, this is true anywhere in the world. If you have a leader of a company, a founder of the company usually, who is passionate about something, social equity, environmentalism, equal rights, sustainability in general, you will see change happen, and everybody gets on board or they leave, and it’s passion led from the top.
And this is especially true in Japan.
Jackie: Especially true in Japan. Which is the opportunity that we have, for our respective, we haven’t gotten to yours, we’ve talked a little bit about sustainability and tourism and also you’re Seeking Sustainability Live series, but I think for sustainability or for diversity and, what I call diversity and innovation, which the output is inclusion, I think we have this opportunity, right? To really think, and co-create with those top leaders to say, how can we help you be profitable and be sustainable and have impact for the long game? Because Japanese companies, there’s this idea of legacy and being in it for the long game.
So it’s consistent with corporate philosophy in Japan to be thinking about these investments over the long term.
JJ Walsh: You look at the best companies in Japan, which are world famous by the way, people around the world emulate these leaders of companies who have led their company to success over a very long time.
And I connect that to when I was teaching marketing, Kita Kyushu University students, and I connected it to, I said, look at companies that have been around for a long time. What’s different? How is their brand different from someone or some company that might be successful now, but you didn’t know about them five years ago? Now what is the difference?
The difference to me is long-term vision. And we see this, like when I was talking to Azby Brown in the series, and he’s talking about Japanese carpenters for temples. And the planner of the temple, he was in his eighties. He’s planning a temple which is going to be around for a thousand years.
Jackie: I know. It’s impressive.
JJ Walsh: Unbelievable right? And we have the head of Kikkoman, he’s got great interviews online about his vision, to be 10 generations or more than a hundred years after he died. That’s what he wants his legacy to be. So in terms of sustainability, first think about what is your personal legacy? What do you want to have an effect on which might create positive change, or any kind of change that you find meaningful for the long term? And then you think about how you want your business to be, what kind of business do you want to work in? What kind of business do you want to collaborate with and do they fit that same long-term vision?
Because if it’s long term, it has got to be sustainable. It’s got to take into account the needs of people, and planet, and profits. Right?
Jackie: And think about it, when we’re thinking long-term, and this is the thing that kind of floors me in terms of the caregiving issue. We know enough about human biology to understand there’s a life cycle.
And there’s a life cycle of when you have children potentially in a given window that everybody, all the men and all the women at some point, who choose to have children, there’s going to be a window when that hits them. This is not rocket science. We know that. So for all of that group, that subgroup of women and men who choose to have children, we can plan at that part of the life cycle, they’re going to need childcare support.
They’re going to need elder care support. We’re knowing that they’re going to have all of these extra things that the company can know, and that public policy can know and plan for and mitigate for. And so the fact that we plan long-term, but don’t understand lifecycle, or we think that, and I think it’s, we’ve not taken seriously that men have children and that men are part of that life cycle, even if they’re not the ones getting pregnant and that they need to, as fathers, be brought into that framework of having the right to spend time with their children.
And to nurture and imprint their zone of genius onto their children. Just like women are imprinting their zones of genius onto their children. We want both parents imprinting and sharing, plus all the other aunts and uncles and adoptive grandparents and anybody else who will love to caregive, and build a village for those children.
But fundamentally if companies still tune out and say, oh, men don’t get pregnant, ergo men don’t have childcare issues. They’re not a part of the life cycle equation. We don’t need to build around that because we just get men to work and we’ll just make them work longer. Well, that exploitative model that is being applied also to men in Japan, in particular that young Japanese men are saying, no, thank you. I would like to have a relationship with my children more than the relationship I had with my father who was never home. I think there’s more in life. Or why marry, if that’s the case, if that’s my choice?
Or they exit and they go abroad, frankly. They go to Canada, and the United States, and Australia, and Europe where they can have work-life balance, which is a brain drain.
JJ Walsh: We are seeing a huge exodus of talent. We need to keep that in Japan. And I’m seeing it, when I think about the more successful women working in Japan, running their own businesses, quite a lot of them did study abroad either in high school or university. And they came back with more confidence thinking there is a better way.
It’s not just that one way. Right? And so one thing I often advise, if people want to improve their travel destination or a business wants to improve how well they can appeal to international visitors, do you travel? You got to travel yourself, right?
Jackie: Know your user.
JJ Walsh: Yeah. Do you go abroad and see how are they doing it?
Oh, I really like that. I didn’t really like that. I’m not going to use that, you know, and bring back these models and bring back these experiences of what was appealing to you as a visitor.
Jackie: And empathy with the user.
JJ Walsh: Absolutely. So I think that those 18 months of travel around Asia and Europe after we left JET, that was some of my best research and study and informative time, because I came back understanding how varied people are, even within different cultures and countries. And living on a shoestring, learning to be very frugal, learning to think about what really matters. What do you really need?
Jackie: What does your happiness really require?
JJ Walsh: And then we’ve all been thinking about it during Coronavirus. Who are essential workers? It’s the people that give you food. Do we have food security in Japan?
Jackie: Food security. Caregiving security. These are non-negotiable.
JJ Walsh: And when you’re traveling around Asia on a backpacker’s budget, you are on the ground level. You’re there trying to get the local price for local vegetables or local food. And so that frugality and sustainability often plays really well together. Because you don’t have that consumer use and throw away idea.
Jackie: You don’t have the luxury of that.
JJ Walsh: If you did it, you’d have to carry it. You know?
And it’s not the same for everybody. Like for us, we prioritized certain things, you know, other travelers, different things. We met a variety of international backpackers, which really informed my whole idea of world politics and cultures and everything. It’s amazing. The one guy I remember in particular, he carried his own bottle of ketchup.
Like for him, that was key to surviving, you know? And then like for me, I might have certain hand cream or something that I could not do without. So even on that very basic level.
Jackie: Diversity of needs, of core needs on the Maslow’s hierarchy of essential needs.
JJ Walsh: The absolute most essential thing.
Jackie: I hope that we can, I think that it’s great if companies can do that thinking and hear, like you say, hear from not only the younger generation, the new hires, but all different levels and really start listening actively to what are the pain points and then how do you solve them?
And certainly, I mean, I think you’re doing that in your work for sustainability, guiding companies. We’re trying to do that for diversity and on the people front.
Your podcast, because time has just flipped by, we could talk for two hours I’m sure. You have this amazing, you know, Seeking Sustainability Live.
You’ve done how many now? Like so many, how many?
JJ Walsh: Today I’m doing 238 episodes. Episode 238.
Jackie: And it started with the pandemic?
JJ Walsh: It started with the pandemic. I was doing an in-person event, kind of a seminar where people would buy tickets and they would come for two hours. We would have short talks.
We would eat vegan food on reusable plates. We would exchange items you no longer needed. We had a zero waste shop, we had a DIY section. I really wanted people to come to this event and think, sustainability, it’s not so hard. It’s something I can try.
And it takes people to see it in action. And so that model, that was the start of it.
And then it became, during coronavirus, we can’t meet. What are we going to do? And then going online, connecting with people that I thought would be interesting in terms of sustainability.
Jackie: And so many across Japan, outside of Hiroshima then.
JJ Walsh: I never knew that it would continue. I just thought, I’ll just try it. Let’s try something new. And yeah, I just keep finding more and more people.
I have learned so much, it’s an amazing network. All of these people are doing interesting things in their own lane. So I feel like my role is to connect all the lanes and to highlight what they’re doing to a wider audience, because they’re doing a great job, but they’re focused on what they’re doing, as they should.
Jackie: And they don’t necessarily get known outside of that.
I mean, same thing for the enjoi thought partner network, so many interesting people in Japan, but they don’t know of each other. You think, well, you need to know of each other. You need to know and amplify each other. Because you’re doing similar things in your own lanes.
JJ Walsh: And now something that’s really interesting which is happening is people are contacting me and saying, oh, we need to find someone who’s doing this, which is sustainable and do you know anybody?
And you send them five people that I know, I’ve talked to them and they talked about this, you know?
Jackie: Well, I think it’s being a connector, right? I think we’re connectors. It’s people saying, I need somebody who can talk about this area of masculinity or this area of whatever, of being queer or whatever it is.
And I can say, oh, well I know these many people, and they could talk about that. And it’s where to begin to even find those people. And I think it’s how do you build these networks so that they have visibility, in particular that then hopefully Japanese leaders see how much support there is for sustainability and for diversity in Japan.
This is not an unusual place to be or an unusual value proposition. It’s actually really well supported in Japan for these facets. And I think making that visible is so key. So your series has been, I think, outstanding and obviously inspired me as well.
I’m going to ask you for a one minute takeaway or message that you want to share. Do you know what you have to share with the audience and your takeaway?
JJ Walsh: Yes. I would say now is the time to see people. That we’re all hiding behind masks. And it’s really hard to show empathy and kindness for other people.
But my homework for anyone listening to this today in some way, even if you’re just online, like what other people are doing, even if it’s just on Facebook with the like button. Comment on something positive. Say you appreciate something, let them know. In doing web content we know we get people complaining or saying negative things, but very rarely do you get people raving about what you do.
So spend a moment, rave about someone and show that you appreciate them. If you’re on the street, hold open a door for someone, wave to a little kid, you know. It’s really difficult with the mask on, but you can do it. Show your humanity, show that you’re willing to see other people. Because I think seeing other people is particularly hard now during coronavirus.
Jackie: And being seen and appreciated, I think is at the core of inequality.
So that’s such a huge gift to be seen. And as you suggest, even if it’s a stranger just saying hi or opening the door unexpectedly, that can make a difference. And I think I’ll circle back to one of your first points about the increasing rates of suicide in Japan, for women in particular, but also it’s very high for men in Japan, in Asia. It’s high for both women and men in Japan, which I think is a red flag we need to take seriously. And so those acts of kindness and amplifying others, during a pandemic I think there’s so much pain. And you look for the smiles and the eyes under the mask, but it’s not the same is it? It’s not quite the same.
JJ Walsh: It’s so difficult. So even with your eyes, if you’re being friendly, it’s so hard. So just raising your hand or saying konnichiwa or saying hello.
Jackie: Making it bigger. Something that’s more expressive.
JJ Walsh: It means a lot. And like you said, we don’t know what people are going through. And a lot of people are struggling. So if you just make a little bit more effort, online or in person, I think it can go a long way.
Jackie: Excellent. Well, thank you so much JJ for a fascinating conversation that went all over the world and back to Hiroshima. And I certainly want to have more of these conversations again, and I appreciate you’re in the thought partner network and that we can have that relationship over time as well and keep amplifying each other.
JJ Walsh: Well, I’m looking forward to continuing the conversation next week, Tuesday 5:00 PM on the 18th, as you will revisit my show and we will talk more about the great work that you’re doing.
Jackie: Thank you for that plug. I forgot about it. Awesome. Thank you so much, JJ. And on that note, I will do my last bit of announcements and play our outgoing song, which I’ll invite you to enjoy as well while you have a little refresh.
So we are looking forward to our next live stream next week, also at this time. We will be welcoming Catherine O’Connell, who’s founder and principal of Catherine O’Connor Law. She will share about her legal practice here in Tokyo. She’s won many awards. A pioneer really, I think, so inspiring also for me in terms of how I think about my business.
And also she’ll share about her upbringing in New Zealand with many, many brothers. And I think that’s really interesting how it’s affected her view of men as allies for change. And of course, we’ll hear about her new, very innovative podcast called lawyer on air. So that’s also another exciting thing that she’ll share about.
enjoi of course, has a multidisciplinary team. We have consultants, educators, facilitators, who are all Japan experts and who are diversity experts, and we [01:26:00] are committed to supporting companies and senior leaders on building their people’s systems, so we can really make a diversity positive workplace. These are the lifelines that we need within our companies, and they’ll strengthen the sustainability of those companies and also their legacy for the long game, as well as their profits. Right? We know this.
So investing in diverse talent mobilization as a business strategy is just a no brainer. And certainly that’s one of the messages that we want to promote for our enjoi team. I live this every day in terms of the enjoi team supporting me and having my back and contributing with their zones of genius in ways and showing up with their skills to support me and to support this company.
Thank you for joining.