Translated from 日本語 • View original The other day, leader Maezawa wrote candidly about how the Mamoru team is struggling to communicate in English.
▼Related article "How can a Japanese person who does not speak English well lead a global team of people from a soccer powerhouse?" We have made many mistakes before we got here, and we are still in the process of building a global team while struggling.
I would like to write about what has happened in the process so far and whether globalization can make the team stronger.
Why we started hiring foreigners
Colorkrew (hereinafter referred to as "Karakul") started hiring non-Japanese people about 5~6 years ago. At that time, there was almost no work overseas.
In such a situation, we started hiring foreigners with two purposes.
To move to a global team with an eye on the overseas expansion of our products in the future.
Because the recruitment of engineers only Japanese has stalled
is the reason why it is beautiful, but 2. is the reason why it is desperate and smelly.
Early Career of Hiring Foreigners
First, I tried to hire people who could speak a little Japanese if possible. However, there are few engineers who can speak Japanese.
I decided to take the plunge and hire even if I had zero Japanese, so I hired two people from the Goalous development team.
Of course, I explained the situation that Karakul "everyone can hardly speak English" before entering. Japanese people also tried their best to communicate in English, but when the conversation became a little complicated, it inevitably ended up being a Japanese meeting.
As anyone who has worked abroad or worked in a non-Japanese organization will know, Japanese people are the only ones in the world who do not insist on raising their salaries.
With Karakul's special personnel system, discussions such as how to raise grades could not be sufficiently concluded, and frustration accumulated on both sides.
We tried our best to get closer to each other, but in the end we both quit. We realized that the internationalization of the team is still a dream.
Still, I tried to hire foreigners again (3-4 years ago)
They say it's troublesome not to give up if you decide to do it, but I don't give up because I think it's my strength.
The recruitment leader also persistently continued to recruit.
And the recruitment of the German Jan, who had a great influence on the subsequent team formation of Karakul, was decided. That was four years ago.
He had little experience as a member of society, but he was open-minded and had very high skills as an engineer, so he gradually integrated into the team.
At first, I was hired to join the legacy system development team, and although I struggled with communication between the legacy and Japanese, I was able to complete the work well.
By the way, Jan's Japanese is quite advanced, but even so, the work he did in Japanese, including documents, must have been quite difficult.
▼Click here for Jan's interview "Mr. Leadable Code, who is active in various fields, for development, for recruitment, and training!
By the way, he is the fastest in the history of Karakul to achieve a nine-level promotion in four years. (Normally, it's about one step every two years, so it's a crazy speed.)
Foreign engineers are at the center of our own product development! (2 years ago to present)
Having built an in-house track record, Jan will take the next step as a tech lead for Mamoru Biz, a business concierge tool that uses QR codes for its products.
And Goalous, which failed to integrate foreigners, was transformed into a global team by Li Ning (commonly known as Spike), who later joined. He is also fluent in Japanese. Of course, I can speak English more than that.
▼Click here for Spike's interview article "If you don't have fun, you won't last!
Karakul currently has two in-house products, and now both tech leads have become foreigners.
When leaders are able to communicate in English, the team can suddenly go global. In fact, as they became leaders, more and more foreign people who did not speak Japanese came in.
Karakul also does contract development for Japanese companies, so engineers are often required to speak Japanese there, but we are gradually getting foreigners into such businesses.
Going Global
In this way, Karakul has been promoting the globalization of its team centered on engineers, but since 2020, it has also ventured overseas in business. Daniel, who had come to Japan due to his wife's transfer, decided to return to Brazil and wanted to continue working at Caracul, so he started sales activities in Brazil.
▼Click here for Daniel's blog post "I Lived in Japan!"
It was my first time in the market, and I started by myself. In the first six months, he had a lot of trouble, but gradually he is succeeding in winning customers. Currently, there is one more person and a two-person system, mainly selling Goalous.
The time difference is exactly 12 hours on the other side of the world. I feel lonely not being able to meet him in person, but his activities are uploaded to Goalous every day, so I can see the situation in real time.
I am excited to watch his challenge to import Caracul's "work fun" to such a distant Brazil.
Has Globalization Made Teams Stronger?
In this way, the globalization of Karakul has progressed through twists and turns, but has the team become stronger?
First of all, at the beginning of hiring foreigners. I was prepared, but it is true that the performance period temporarily fell due to differences in values and communication difficulties.
There was a lot of stress for both the Japanese who accepted them and the foreigners who came in.
However, as we persistently continued to recruit and integrate, it became established, and foreigners became leaders, and the team began to function.
As a result, it has become dramatically easier to recruit human resources than when it was only Japanese people, and in fact, more and more excellent human resources have come in.
Team strength is the sum of individual strengths first, so the development power has increased overwhelmingly compared to before.
In addition, by mixing a wide variety of nationalities, I have come into contact with information about various countries and regions rather than the small world of Japan, and I have come to realize that everyone's horizons have expanded.
These liberal arts will strengthen human resources in the medium to long term, so I think we have created a foundation for the team to become stronger and stronger in the future.
Towards Further Globalization
The globalization of the Caracle team is trying to expand from being centered on engineers to the entire company.
In the future, we will also promote corporate globalization.
In terms of business, in addition to the Brazil mentioned above, there are also sales people from Italy and South Korea, so we are steadily working to have them become sales leaders in their home countries.
By the way, there is not a single person from Africa or the Middle East in the company yet, so we are looking for rave reviews.
There will still be difficulties in making communication in English the standard within the company, but in the second half of the 2020s, Karakul will move forward with the aim of becoming a fully global team and a successful global business.
▼ Global members gathered and the SNS-type goal management tool "Goalous" with overwhelmingly improved development capabilities
