I recently had the privilege to meet with a group of students and to speak with them about their classes in business. The first question I asked of the group was simply “what does ‘business’ mean to you?”
A young lady stood up and explained that business was about taking materials and labor and combining them to build products that made life better for everyone. She then told me she wanted to be a business owner someday so that she could better serve her community, create jobs, and make people happy.
I would not normally have considered this answer to be a particularly “deep” or insightful one, being that I teach graduate business school classes. But in this case I was pretty amazed. The young lady who gave it to me was just thirteen years old. I was speaking with her and her fellow middle school students in the city of Osaka, Japan.
I was privileged to travel to Osaka recently, my first time visit to North America’s most important trading partner, and the trip was a real eye opener. Not in the normal sense of the experience of visiting another culture, as I have many friends from Japan and even speak a bit of the language. And I don’t mean it in the business sense, as I’ve been consulting and doing business with foreign firms for decades.
The eye-opener was the attitude I discovered in both educators and the children they teach. The world of business, and the people who work in business, are admired in a way that seemed almost unreal to me.
I asked this class if any of them wanted to be movie or television stars when they grew up. Not one hand was raised! I asked if any of them dreamed of being doctors or lawyers and a few raised their hands. One young lady wanted to be a concert violinist. The remainder raised their hands when I asked who wanted to be businessmen and women.
I don’t believe there’s a middle-school classroom in America where one would get a similar reaction.
I also don’t believe there’s any other country in the world where adolescents would swamp me with questions, not about American clothes, or music, or food, but about doing business in America or going to an American business college. Half a dozen girls wanted my autographed picture…because I was a real live American business professor. They acted like our children might act if they were to meet a pop music star or movie screen idol.
To be perfectly honest, it was almost scary! After recovering from this experience I began looking at other areas of the culture more carefully. I spoke with business owners and managers, from street stall vendors up to corporate officers. I looked at the focus on customer service that you find in every aspect of their business environment. Then I spent an hour or two each day watching television.
That very next morning I watched two children’s educational channels. They were among a variety of shows kids could watch while preparing to go to school that day.
The first show I saw was aimed at five to seven year olds. It was a kind of Sesame Street sort of setting with the typical large animal costumes and smiling young entertainers. That morning’s lesson, however, was not about counting or learning the alphabet…it was all about developing leadership skills.
The animal characters and the hosts sang and danced about how to be a leader among your friends. They spoke of solving problems, facilitating disagreements, and the traits of a good leader. The show was very professionally produced, done on a very understandable level for their target age group, and it completely amazed me.
The second show left me almost speechless. It was a quiz show for teenagers. The show began with a five minute discussion between the “board members” of a make believe corporation. The people in the room debated their corporate mission statement and how it seemed to contradict the real world.
The camera then went to four teenage contestants. The commentator read questions and the four would race to hit the buzzers on their podiums. The contestant who hit their buzzer button first would have to answer the question correctly or lose points. The action was hot and the crowd, fellow students from their four high schools, cheered them on with enthusiasm.
The questions were all about the five-minute meeting they had just witnessed, about mission statements in general, and about the purpose of mission statements, business ethics, and corporate culture. These kids not only sought to be the first to answer each question, they had good answers!
I shared this television viewing experience with a couple of other US business people and all of us had the same basic reaction. We sat there with our mouths hanging open. It was a bit of a challenge to believe what we had just seen. I learned later that these morning shows are quite popular.
I returned home thinking about the similarities and differences between our two educational cultures. Both societies succeed in many aspects of educating our children and both have weaknesses in others. The one aspect I saw in Japan, and don’t see here, is an understanding and a respect for what business is and what it brings to our lives. Even when I’ve spoken with students in my local high school distributive education classes I don’t sense the excitement I found in Osaka. And heaven knows there are too many American youth who feel business is the root of all the world’s evils.
But if those kids are going to have jobs someday, and they can’t all work for government, we’ll need business people for the next generation. I’m not suggesting we all become campaigners for drastic change in our education systems, but we can make contributions.
The next time I’m asked to speak a school job’s day, or help out with a local high school business club, I’ll approach the issue differently. I won’t speak about what I do…I’ll talk about how business creates a society and maintains lifestyles. I’ll talk about how we have food and clothing and health care because of businesspeople. I’ll explain what our lives would be like if there were no companies creating jobs and producing the everyday things we take for granted. And I’m going to pay more attention to what is being told to our kids in our schools today.
We can all be a positive force for understanding in our communities, and with some thought we can all come up with ways to contribute to a better appreciation of what we do. Then we’ll see that more of our young people will want to grow up to be like us. It’s not something that will improve our bottom lines today…but in the long term it may be one of the most important things we can do, not just for ourselves, but for generations to come.
(next article in series)
