The man you really want to get a call from
Roger Marshall, Partner & Managing Director, Ray & Berndtson, Tokyo Office
Interviewed by Thomas Caldwell

There is a common perception in business circles here that you have finally become a major player when you get a call from Roger Marshall inviting you to lunch.

Marshall is of the most recognized and well-thought-of executive recruiters in this country. He has been in the business for more than twenty years, during which switching companies mid-career was thought to be an act more disloyal than spying for the Soviets, and in a country where lifetime employment was preordained government policy. Of course, these assumptions have changed, and Marshall is now working in a field that has been thrown wide open.

He heads up the Tokyo office of Ray & Berndtson, of the top ten retained search consulting firms in the world. The company has 46 offices scattered around the globe and pulled in some US$135 million dollars in revenue worldwide during 1998. Computing Japan's Thomas Caldwell caught spoke Roger Marshall in his Tokyo office.

CJ: Why do companies pay enormous amounts of money to get the right executive? Especially given the current economic situation.
Roger Marshall: You can have a very good business model, you can have a great business plan, you can have it funded properly, you can have fantastic products, but if you don't have the right person, or right team of people to provide the vision, the leadership and the implementation, you're not going to be successful. Two decades ago, or even one decade ago, you still saw a lot of foreign capital companies that would come to Japan and not have their best people in the leadership positions. Whether those were people that were hired locally or brought over as expatriates, they very often were not the best the companies had to offer.

CJ: Why was that?
Marshall: There were many reasons. One was an underestimation of the complexity of the market. Many -- particularly the Americans -- tended to be particularly arrogant. Often with the attitude of 'Well, we do it this way in the United States, or the UK, Germany, or in 50 other countries, and it works that way everywhere. After all, we're XYZ Corporation and we can do it our way.' So, they would do things their way. Most of them didn't get very far the first time around. Some of them learned their lessons, regrouped and came back.

CJ: The Bubble Economy has collapsed, senior people in companies have been thrown out of work, and younger people who had promising careers ahead of them ended up on the street when their companies closed or went bankrupt, Yamaichi Securities being one example. How have these developments affected the market for finding quality people in Japan?
Marshall: Actually, from the perspective of Ray & Berndtson, we add a huge amount of value around the core. We're not just throwing bodies against the wall to see if they stick. We work very, very much in depth with our client on their business issues and their strategies. Having a lot of people on the market is not an impediment to us. Responsible companies have gotten off this arrogance kick. They realize it is, one, a complex and sophisticated market. Two, it is an extremely high potential market. Most technology companies are extremely disappointed if they are not getting ten percent or more of their global revenue from Japan. In many cases, companies are getting 25% to 30% of their global revenue contributions [in Japan] and probably a higher profit contribution. So they are taking the Japanese market very seriously now. They want to make sure that they just don't take the first person who walks through the door who happens to speak good English, knows the latest American joke off the Internet and has a fancy title on his business card. They're going to want us to do an in-depth evaluation of those people before they see them -- and they will also do their own in-depth evaluation.

CJ: Most of the people reading this interview are probably hoping somebody like yourself will someday call and it will lead to the job of their dreams. How does someone get noticed by a top-level executive recruitment agency?
Marshall: There are a number of ways. Becoming active members of industrial and trade associations is one. When I say an "active member" that does not just necessarily mean someone who buys a membership and shows up for the lunches every once in a while. Becoming deeply involved, sitting on the board of that association, contributing as a speaker or some similar activity, all of that attracts attention. Another effective method is to write something that gets published. Authoring a report or a article on you particular area of expertise -- that also gets attention. It also publicly demonstrates your skill set and level of understanding of your given industry. Our research team is always going through publications [looking for names.]

CJ: What are the opportunities for non-Japanese executives in Japan?
Marshall: More and more companies are becoming color blind. One's nationality is becoming less relevant to many companies here. Not too many years ago, it was extremely common for a foreign company to insist on a Japanese national to head things up here. You still run into it today where when a company wants to make a social statement that says "We are here to stay and we're going to prove that by showing you that we have a Japanese at the top," but they're not as common as they once were. The big question over whether or not to hire a foreigner to head up a Japanese operation is not if they speak the language well or not -- many do. It's a question of the candidate having had any opportunity to manage a significant number of Japanese in a pure Japanese environment. Although such candidates would be able to deal with the home office, if they are going to deal successfully at the senior level with major Japanese corporations the question is: "Can they do that? Do they have the depth of knowledge that's necessary." The difficulty in finding a Japanese candidate, particularly for the top position, is that they will not only have to run a business in Japan, they will also be expected to report back directly to a senior executive at headquarters. They will have to present business plans; go back and visit to argue for resources they need; understand the decision-making process so they won't be blind-sided if somebody else has a better idea; and influence members of the Board of Directors to give them the resources to do the job. They need to have a real savvy knowledge of how business is done in the country their new employer is from. They need experience in dealing with a much faster pace that comes with the speed of the Internet.

CJ: Those are skills that aren't really needed in a typical Japanese corporate environment.
Marshall: That's why most Japanese don't have them. A Japanese executive who can operate effectively in a Western business environment and a Westerner who can speak, read, and write Japanese well enough to operate in a high-level Japanese corporate environment are not easy to come by. Both are highly valued and both are very rare.

CJ: Do you see such individuals becoming more common in the coming years?
Marshall: Absolutely. On both sides. There are more Japanese who have lived and worked abroad and been educated abroad. There are also more and more Westerners who have good solid business experience and have Japanese language and business knowledge.

CJ: Someone in your position gets to see a lot of different companies up close. Given the state of Japan's economy, how are foreign corporations adapting?
Marshall: Most companies feel that this [economic situation] is a golden opportunity to come into Japan. When the Asian economic crisis first hit about two years ago, the top-level recruiting market dried up for a few months. No one knew what it all meant. However, once everyone got over it, we saw a huge increase in our business.

CJ: What was the reason for that?
Marshall: US and European currencies became stronger and had much more buying power. Suddenly, doing business here became a lot cheaper if you were a foreign company. The local competition was flat on their back, making it easier for outsiders to gain market share quickly. Along with all of these economic factors, there is a huge ground swell of change taking place in Japan at the moment. Some of it is regulatory. A lot of deregulation is going on in the areas of telecommunications, banking, and other sectors. Layers of distribution are disappearing. People are doing business differently than they did in the past. Many of these changes are market driven, but they are fundamental, major changes in the way this country works. A number of years ago, the United States began massive deregulation of many industries like airlines and telecommunications. Many European nations followed suit. Japan is just going through this process now. You have major foreign companies with many years of experience in succeeding in deregulated markets. They've gone through the pain. They know how to work in those markets. Japanese companies, for the most part, have no experience at all in operating in a deregulated market, particularly domestically. So, you've got favorable currency rates, weak local competition, and an exponential edge in making it in an unregulated market. On top of all of that, you have an affluent participatory marketplace that is also considered to be the second largest economy in the world.

CJ: So it can be said that many of the foreign companies coming into this country and setting up shop here are in the position to eat their Japanese competitors' lunch?
Marshall: Potentially. Not only can the companies coming in more easily set up their own infrastructure, but they can also buy Japanese companies. These are interesting times.

Ray & Berndtson
Sogo Hanzomon Bldg., 9F
1-7 Kojimachi Chiyoda-ku,
Tokyo 102-0083
Tel +813-5211-8411
Fax +813-3264-0910

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