Trust recovery Management

Bowing and convincing are the two keywords in the problem still unnamed by Trust Recovery Management. You have BCP, BCM, DC that stands for Damage Control, but I have yet to see TRM. 


TRM has been a background issue from day one following the Tohoku catastrophe. Here I am pointing not at domestic TRM, an impossible issue for TEPCO and the current Prime Minister. I am instead pointing at international TRM. The buzzword is flyjin. This newly coined word will have a short half-life and many people don't know what it finger points at, but more many people have been talking about flyjin with a different vocabulary.


Flyjin derivates from gai-jin, a colloquial slightly or totally impolite way of talking about "people from the outside", that is, foreigners. Get rid of the "gai", outside, and replace with the English "fly" to refer to foreigners who flew Japan. Few don't care, even those, probably a majority, who feel compassionate about the flyjin, especially those who over panicked and are feeling the bruise and shame and symptoms of confusion and loss, even when coming back here.


But I would like to focus here on TRM and what it means for potential or effective missions where interpretation is required. TRM is not new, and it may be perceived that in the light of the current disaster in Japan, flyjin doesn't matter. It does, and it is never a matter of how deep or superficial trust has been lost or put into question. Take for instance an acute situation, that of Citibank and damage over bad conduct related with private banking services in Japan in 2005. The story from a point of view of damage control is described in this article. 


Sorry is the hardest word as the song tells. But here in Japan, it is the key act, and you don't have to be a managing director in an international bank to experience saying sorry. If you don't, recovery will never happen and the act of saying sorry and meaning it comes early in education.


Sorry doesn't mean "we are responsible". Issues of responsibility will come later on, but expressing sorry is the way to say "I understand your feelings and I am empathic with you on that matter." The standard joke among foreigners chuckling about having heard someone say sorry about the rain today is a show of how green they still are in understanding that the talker doesn't pretend she has any power to make rain. It is a show of empathy about the consequences of rain like gloom over gray sky and the inconveniences of humidity. 


As the article about Citibank rightly mentions in the case where there was no way to escape the fact that wrong was wrong, "Job No. 1 has been bowing and scraping to FSA officials and other Japanese regulators, trying to convince them the bank is contrite and determined to make amends."


and farther down the lane :


 "Getting through this hellish period will be made easier for Peterson by the fact that he appears to have convinced Japanese financial authorities of his sincerity."


I highlighted both bowing and sincerity for those are keys and acts that cannot be avoided. But some things must be avoided especially when you are not the culprit and are white and clean as the blue sky. Don't suggest that such things could never happen with you and your corporation. Don't boast of your superiority in words but in acts. 


If you are coming to Japan to mend the fence, assure your partners that business is as usual when everyone knows that minute details (yes, batteries and gasoline are back in Tokyo just like mineral water) , don't play it alone unless you know what sincerity and the show of it means. It doesn't exactly mean the same in Texas. Play it alone at your own risk, or hire the services of a supportive interpreter.