who rules the boardrooms

These days, the rule of thumb in business in Tokyo is: if there’s a spot of trouble in the engine room, get a Westerner in to sort things out. When Sony latched on to Welshman Sir Howard Stringer to take over as its supremo, no one in Tokyo was surprised. Sony had been in trouble for years, or at least under-performing. Let a Brit or anyone not Japanese do the job was the thinking.

Stringer is an international businessman with many years of service to Sony on his CV. He knows the show from inside, he knows where the bodies are buried at Sony. Put him in charge, went the cry. After all, Carlos Ghosn has done a great job—firing staff by the tens of thousands, closing down old plants— and has sorted out Nissan’s difficulties. He has put the company back on the road as Japan’s number two car maker.

The Japanese have had to set aside their predilection for keeping the top jobs in industry and finance for the locals. Pragmatists that they are, they’ve seen that business is so fast-flowing these days, and there is such a premium on international experience, it’s essential to have the best man (or woman) for the job, regardless of nationality.

The Japanese, for example, aren’t good at firing. Ghosn had no compunction about laying off staff. Sent to Tokyo five years ago to do a job for chief shareholder Renault, he reported to the Paris headquarters of that company. His first reports, indeed, are said to have been frightening. “The platform (ie the company) is on fire,” was one of his favourite phrases. No Japanese company boss has ever gone in for mass firings. Stringer will have to do the same thing in Tokyo. Lay them off unless they perform or, for that matter, even if they do.

Stringer, it has been widely noted, doesn’t speak Japanese. He lives in New York, mainly, with a mansion in the English countryside, where his family is. Ghosn doesn’t know the language either. It’s not language skills that are needed, it’s rage—the guts to fire, fire and fire again. To carry out such corporate surgery requires people skills of an order that just aren’t available in Japan’s consensus culture.

What counts, first and foremost, is the survival of the company. With the South Korean Samsung group and half a dozen Japanese rivals breathing down Sony’s neck, the company’s hopes of survival now rest on the shoulders of a Welsh wizard.