Most B-schools don't teach students comparative management styles -- say, "American" versus "Japanese". While, clearly, there's no one style that can be termed superior to the other, it's important to understand the differences, and flexibly choose the style befitting the situation.

Consider the American and Japanese styles of management. While formulating a strategy, Americans are more top-driven in their approach than the Japanese who usually allow things to evolve from the bottom.

Americans tend to finalise their strategy quickly, often without resolving all outstanding issues and spend more time in implementation. But the Japanese hold many discussions to record what could go wrong and find their solutions. And once there's all-round agreement, they implement it quickly.

I think the Japanese have a superior approach to problem-solving; they "go to gemba": go where the action is. Let me illustrate this with a story. A man drove daily after dinner to buy ice cream. Whenever he bought vanilla ice cream and returned to his car, his car wouldn't start. But when he bought chocolate or strawberry, he had no difficulty in starting the car.

Any sane person would reject complaints such as these as illogical. The Japanese company that made the car, however, sent its brightest engineer to accompany the man on his post-dinner drive for ice cream. Sure enough, the engineer also had the same experience. The engineer soon realised that a vapour lock was forming after the car engine was shut and it could restart only after some time.

He then studied the time it took the man to purchase vanilla ice cream versus the time taken for other flavours. Vanilla being the most popular, was always easiest to access. The man inevitably returned quickly to the car while other flavours took longer. The extra time taken to purchase other flavours was enough for the vapour lock to dissipate.

The engineer made the necessary design changes and vapour lock dissipated quickly. If the Japanese car manufacturer had not taken the trouble to "go to gemba," the problem would have persisted.

C K Vaidya is managing director, Godrej [Get Quote] Agrovet. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta in 1974.

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